This year in our advanced techniques for information management class we received the assignment to make a Facebook or social media group and try to get as many "likes" as possible. The team with the most likes at the end of the semester would win. We were asked to write a report, which I chose to write in English, of our thoughts on the matter. This project has made me want to leave my comfort zone on the internet.
I realise I might still have a lot to learn about social media. It is evolving every day so do not refrain from sharing your honest opinion about this article to me as well allowing me to continue learning about it!
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Social Media : the art of making your opinion worthwhile to read
Getting involved in social media is important these days, especially as a young student. Using social media to your every advantage is key in the IT-society. Yet if social media becomes a race for the most likes it loses its purpose. Promoting yourself or a certain webpage should be pure and you should promote something in an honest and goal-directed way by sharing the ideas you stand firmly by. This being yourself, something you are actually actively involved with or even your company. This for one has meaning for yourself but also for the people you want to attract to your cause. If you start promoting something that is artificial or something that is insincere then you are providing people with cluttered and redundant information that everyone finds informal or inappropriate. A majority of Facebook sites are either ran by people who do not have enough dedication to keep providing sensible information to the users or by people who only expect input on their site without ever providing any form sensible output.
If I look at the project of the people from Hap & Tap I can conclude that they have been working towards a solid site. Their theme was to create a site where people could find and judge fast-food restaurants in and around Leuven. They have used the advantages that Facebook provides them. They have made applications which go well with the site and they provided the user with a lot of content that has meaning. These applications raise the chances of the user to return. After this whole project their site will be rendered useless or abandoned though because they have no real reason to keep going on with it. The project is finished and too much work will be involved into making something really popular or successful out of it. They will halt their efforts in providing sensible input towards the user and people who actually thought to find a use in this site will be somewhat dismayed because the sensible input they used to get will not be provided anymore.
When the ability of making Facebook groups was first introduced everyone participated in liking random groups which only proved lack of sincere interest in any of them. This
obsessive attention-seeking behavior proved no real contribution to the medium. People who made these groups saturated every wall of every user with nonsense in the hope of getting as many “likes” as possible. People who actually pushed the ‘lazy button’ on these groups however were proving that they themselves lacked the wit nor the passion of posting worthwhile statements. Such users “like” anything that can be “liked”, not to contribute to their profitable online-persona building, but rather to gain as much coverage as possible for that one minute of fame.
With these examples in mind I can conclude that that every social media group
has to have a meaningful purpose behind it. If you have a specific goal with the page you have created it will be a success for both parties. Facebook offers you a 2 way connection between creators and users yet if this connection is only to the advantage of one of these parties the incentive of participation will decrease. A good example of creating a successful two-way social media environment is
Gopro. Gopro is a company that creates action sports cameras which can be mounted anywhere. They have made a Twitter and a Facebook account where they post a daily picture/movie they have made with one of their Gopro cameras. They use Facebook as a medium for competitions and to distribute the video compilations they have recorded with the camera. These videos are on YouTube, which is an excellent social network to expand your commercial influence. The company achieves a competitive advantage over its rivals by combining several social networks. As a thanks for spreading the word people who like this page also get something in return in the form of entertainment by their ‘favorite’ camera. It is very important to think about what you want to achieve with your social media website. It is very important to keep your own goals as a creator of the website in mind and it is equally important to find reasons why a user would actually ‘like’ your page and return to it every day or week. Social media pages should be created in order to serve a real purpose to both the sender and the receiver.
Facebook is evolving into a more professional environment. People are using Facebook to their advantage and they are starting to use social media as their primary medium of communication. People see the use in Facebook to stay connected or rediscover friends and family. I think that sending e-mails will become a rare phenomenon in 2012; one that will gradually be replaced by social media websites. Social media websites are becoming the portal site to the internet where anyone can share their thoughts and emotions in one click of a button. I don’t understand why
Google is not more actively involved in this exchange process. Google’s /ig page allows you to connect to everything you want to use on one page in a modular way. They provide apps, calendars, email integration, games that you can add to your personal portal site. People are falling back from this idea as a homepage. It is inconvenient, and social media websites offers people so much more. People seem to prefer social media over e-mail when it comes to sending messages. Google+, however, is a very good medium though that will most likely gain popularity in the coming year. They have made a modular system that combines a lot of existing, stand-alone applications such as Picasa for example. It will allow a user to create his own social medium where he will be able to decide which Photo album software or application he would like to use. If Google would integrate all of the features of their /ig page into one organized, accessible and modular social media page;
Google+ would incite people to switch from Facebook. The power of social media though lies with the user that is manipulating it and the medium’s communication value depends on user input. When there is no user input, the social media website has no purpose. Even though it may provide every tool in a way that is so much more convenient than all the other social media websites, if it’s not being used it serves no use. User input is both the strength and the weakness of social media. This is probably why Google+ is having a hard time starting up, because few people are interested in creating and managing yet another unimproved profile page, while Facebook already seems to be taking up all of their time dedicated to social media.
General opinion about the project:
I didn’t like this project personally. At First I did not want to give up my privacy just like that nor did I feel like being forced using this medium under my own name. When people suggested creating a fake account and starting from there yet it occurred to me that such a plan would not be feasible. You simply have zero friends on that account to promote your site to initially and jump-start your project. I believe that you need this initial group of friends and family to get your site launched and provide you with the initial stimulus needed to carry on. When I think about Facebook I don’t think about Farmville or all the redundancies that are built into the medium. I think on the other hand of how to sustain my established ‘
virtual relationships’. Social networks allow others and myself to stay connected with each other’s daily life and it is also a way to ‘check up’ on those that we do not get to see on a daily basis. I was not keen on starting this project because with my actions I knew that all the contacts I had would have been pulled into it as well. I did not want to give off the impression that I was an Internet spammer who saturated friends’ walls with ‘join-group’ requests and I was scared of thus losing them from my contacts. Even though I don’t care about having the most friends on Facebook, I actually care about the reputation I have in general. When you think about someone and the first thing that comes to mind about this person is his “annoying Facebook behavior”, it isn’t a good thing. When the project progressed I was actually subjected to spam like this. I hated how I had to vote on “my favorite book every week” even though I never even took any interest in the page. It came to the point where I wanted to send a message asking politely as a friend to stop sending me these polls about their project on a weekly basis. I refrained from doing this because I thought it to be rude and I figured it would stop one day. Nevertheless, the polls continued and are still going on to this day. After a while I started to see how easy it was for other groups to get many likes by simply posting their page on walls of other random groups. We decided to opt for the same tactic and it proved to be very fruitful, until one of our members was blocked from posting on group walls because he was spamming them too much. Facebook flagged his personal account as “spammer”.
Social media is not a fad, but rather your online personal and professional identity. These days social media has an impact on every role in every kind of company, in all parts of the world. Social media websites have a lot of points in common yet every platform has its specifics which makes it hard to make a general assumption on it. Social media allows people to participate in trends and hot topics. It thins the line between client-company communication and encourages people to give their feedback on certain events, situations or comments. It attempts to get people involved. Social media encourages sharing through suggestions and recommendations. People would rather take advice from friends than from annoying, misleading commercials. The more a topic is shared, the more widespread and popularized it becomes. This is called “a trending topic”. Although social media sharing is at times frowned upon by today’s generation, it remains one of its most important facets. Social media is about broadcasting a certain opinion to everyone who wants to hear about it. It is also about the art of making your opinion worthwhile to read. At the outset, I was weary of this medium and the impact it would have on my actual relationships with people I see on a day to day basis. I am however glad I was considerate towards this medium because now that I have actually learned most of the tricks I can use the flaws it has to my advantage as well. One of the things social media lacks, however, is privacy.
In the beginning I was very skeptic to what extent Facebook would assure me of my privacy. This project however has changed my view about this. I accept that privacy is dead and I have to use this shortcoming to my advantage. I attempt more and more to post more worthwhile statements. I’ve created an account on every type of social media that is relevant to me. By doing this I’ve attracted a couple of interesting people whom are now following me on twitter for example. By simply expressing yourself in an honest and meaningful way to ‘the world’ you can promote yourself. You are able to make a name for yourself. I have learned to slowly get a more open view about this and I’ve learned to realize that the more you expose your inner thoughts, opinions and feelings, the more people will be able to relate to them or even share them. Each follower on twitter has his/her own reason to follow you. I can only conclude that when I post sensible information on twitter, and people follow me because of it, that I actually have something worthwhile to offer them. A perfect example of beneficial and intelligent self-promotion is Bart De Waele from
@Netlash. He posts pertinent information that actually provides people with inspiration to evaluate issues from different perspectives.
I believe that
YouTube is also a useful social communication medium. I think this platform can offer a lot to companies. When you get actively involved on YouTube your videos are always are more likely to be covered on the home page. I notice people making curriculum’s and posting them on YouTube. These videos start trending and I can only imagine what coverage it brings to the creators of these clips. Vlogging on YouTube is still a bit frowned upon by the majority. People assume that to be able to vlog you need to be pretty, successful, awesome and all the things that turn you into a socially desirable character. Although such qualities may help to initially attract the viewer’s attention to your vlog, in the end it is the attraction of the Vlog’s content, its honesty and pertinence that retain the subscriber. Likewise, viewers think that YouTube is the kind of platform that requires humor in videos in order for them to get as many ‘hits’ as possible. The entertaining aspect adds charm to the video’s content, yet that video’s success lies more than in its superficial catch-lines. I am looking forward to see the first company to make weekly vlogs about their employees and the state of the company. The firm’s vlog would get visitors and employees involved on a more personal level and the audience will get a chance to look at the company’s management operations.
Our project
At first we tried to make a site that offered polls to people. We wanted people to vote on our polls and by doing this spreading popularity. We were aiming for that one poll that would reach out to many people from different parts of the world. We discussed a new topic every week and We tried aiming big from the start.
We tried to go for an excessive broad audience. While everyone was going for the most amount of likes in the shortest period of time, we were aiming for the most likes in the long run. We wanted the curve of the amount of likes we received to be exponential, whereas we expected the curve of the opposing teams to reach stagnation at a certain point. Whether this was a good approach or not, we are not sure of since we opted in the end for another tactic. After the first meeting we received the comments that we should aim for an audience that was located closer to us. The question aroused skepticism. Personally think you should aim for big. But The people who commented on our page were right in the sense that it’s easier to start with friends and family and only then try to launch your social media website to a broader audience. After receiving these comments on our site we made a new page. We were aiming to ‘catch the big fish’ and surprisingly enough we saw immediate improvement.
We launched a polling site about the US presidential elections 2012 which allowed users to vote on their favorite candidate. We would post news about the candidates and let people comment on this news. We have not had numbers below 20 people who are “talking about this” and we had 170 likes in a couple of days. We posted our site on the pages of the candidates on purpose because they were the group we were aiming at initially; (this being the group of people that would like to use social media to express their opinion about the US presidential elections). We were flagged almost immediately though and could not promote our site on Facebook anymore. Our site, however, has a lot of user input regardless of its size. We have aimed for a specific audience and it worked. People are openly expressing favoritism and are posting their views on candidates. If we had the means but mostly the dedication to promote this site more, then we would have a “hit”. If
Facebook had not blocked us from posting about this site, then we would have been able to promote it more as well. What we could have done as well was to create a Twitter account and tweet to all the electives, in hopes that they would respond.
We learned during this project that it is very important to have a
passion and an interest for what you are trying to promote online. If it gets tedious for you to actually be involved in the matter then you lose interest and the innovative mindset that you initially had fades away. A lot of our group members were not motivated to invest a lot of themselves into this project.
We had trouble finding our niche. In the case of this project, I believe that if you do not find and adapt to an existing niche market, you will most likely fail. If you market to everyone you will lose sidetrack of who you are really targeting and lose those valuable customers in vain attempts to attract a wholly undefined market. If you are expected to market to everyone you can find with the hopes that as many people as possible might actually like the thing you are marketing, you are basically throwing mud against the wall and hoping it will stick. The site of “Memelicious” ( a site that gathered, made and posted memes ) successfully adapted to an existing niche market and instantly found results. They were even praised by the judge that they were original and had a really good concept, although most of the students in our class did not agree with the judge’s opinion. It was, however, the best approach for this kind of task.
Social media in an organization
Social media creates a platform where employees can connect instantly to their superiors, helps to centralize problems or data and provides access to everything a co-worker could need from you. You can even use the chat function to chat with one another. It creates an excellent customer relationship platform as well. I follow a company called “Mojang” ( Creators of Minecraft ) who use Twitter daily. The employees tweet every single day about what is going on in the company or in their personal lives. Each individual member of Mojang is being followed by thousands of people providing an extensive social network. People who have complaints do not hesitate to post them and when the idea or critique is relevant they will reply every single time.
Social media is a very good way to get immediate contact with users and provide them with a fast and accurate response to their questions. It can also be used to monitor flaws in a company’s operations. When thousands of people tweet daily to the NMBS about trains that are late every single day, they can easily process this information of what exactly is wrong and where to improve. The strong side of social media is that it does not provide data that needs to be “processed” into information, it provides direct information which could save you a lot of time, effort and money.
I can also see how social media can
improve your business process management. Fast-food restaurants could easily implement social media to order food for example. Fast-food restaurants could easily create an application that would allow the user to order on-line. This Facebook application would even improve the delivery process if the user fills in his contact information. With the evolution of technology it is possible to include Facebook applications in your daily professional environment. If you use this kind of service as a user in an honest way, and companies openly guarantee to their customers that their personal data will not be used for spam or reselling purposes, then people will be attracted to the idea of it. Registering for a site is the most tedious thing you could possibly make a customer do.
Reassuring the customer that their data is safe with your company is important though and I think this is a bias that has to be overcome first until your application will become “trending”.
If in the future I would have my own company, I would use social media to my every advantage. Having a platform where employees can interact instantly can work towards a better operations management and efficiency. LinkedIn can be used as a good social media tool for these kinds of tasks. LinkedIn is meant to be more of a professional platform and users are going to interact in a more formal manner. Having social media in the company can be considered as a risk because employees are liable to spend more time on it than on their work. LinkedIn’s initial purpose is to promote a professional separate, different and distraction-free environment for the user. All employees on LinkedIn provide a good foundation to build up a social web that will expand the company’s network. This way the social circle will slowly expand in time and form a cobweb-like figure. The more roads that lead to the center the better. The length of these roads is very important as well. It is in the company’s interest to have direct access to people who might be interested in their services. Using LinkedIn will give the company a ‘professionals only’ environment where every person in and out of the company is only one click away from you. LinkedIn can also be used to locate business partners/competitors, analyse trends and find new customers or employees. LinkedIn is a useful medium to establish a higher “Klout” score in the corporate world.
Why Facebook?
Facebook generates a sense of community. where friends, family and colleagues can stay interconnected at all times. Communities are open to all and are directed towards one item or person with either praise or hate. It is a good “small talk” subject and can be brought up in many circumstances. Facebook can be used as well as a form of beneficial and honest self-advertisement. By sharing links, the user is recommending a certain item to one of his contacts. When such proposals are sincere, your friend will rather believe you than tedious advertisements. Facebook is a way to stay connected to (lost) friends and family. I personally have rediscovered contact with my family using Facebook. We meet every so often now because we can actually get in touch in a way that is easy and convenient. Facebook is a free service that allows for self-expression and self-representation towards anyone.
Why not Facebook?
Unless you specify the security settings on your profile, anyone can see your profile. This brings with it a huge concern of privacy. You never know who has seen your profile page. Information you put on Facebook could work to your disadvantage in a number of ways, eg: stalkers, practical jokers, thieves, con artists. Universities and companies are using Facebook for background checks and general information gathering proving once again how important it is to use Facebook for promotional ends. If you don’t save your password safely then you could be a victim of identity theft.
Conclusion:
Any online communications medium has both its pros and cons. It is important to maintain positivity towards your contacts. Getting involved in socially unacceptable topics is not recommended. Conversations but also pictures can be pulled out of context and be interpreted in a way that is negative for the person that’s on these pictures. You must also be aware that online communication can and will be viewed by others when they have the access to it. Put your profiles on private as much as possible. Only let things that are in your advantage slip out to the ‘outside world’.
If I was the CTO in a company, what would I do?
Personally ,I would aim the benefits of social media towards small businesses. It is a free medium which is accessible from all sides. With the current tablet and smartphones, innovation is more than possible. Convincing small businesses to get involved with Facebook is not as hard as it sounds as I did the test with a local sandwich bar. I asked them why they did not have a Facebook or an iPad application that would allow customers to order their sandwich online. He thought it was a brilliant idea yet the only thing or in this case “excuse” that refrained this man from innovating his company was the fact that his desk was not large enough to fit a computer with a screen and that a fax machine worked way more to his advantage. He had obviously not considered an iPad because nobody has informed him about its benefits. Informing this man about the benefits a tablet could give him, and giving him a visualisation of what you are capable of providing him would definitely pull him on your side. Using tablets instead of computers proves to be something very useful for companies. Some people do not need a computer in an organisation yet need certain applications to stay connected and be provided with the latest updates. In my opinion the NMBS could find a great advantage in a “
Where’sMyTrain“
application, and provide users with actual and accurate information about the train of their choice which is not based on the static timetables. Combining social technology to an already existing machine or in this case GPS to ‘tweet’ about its status updates will be the next innovating step in social media.
In my own company I would try to find a use in new technologies like iPads. Having a couple of iPads in the break room for example would provide a perfect distraction for employees who need a break. Having no restrictions on what sites are visited on these machines would provide workers with the needed stimulus that will give them a mood- or productivity boost. Every one of the company will know that whenever someone touches the tablets on those tables they are doing something that could be considered taboo on the work floor for example: “checking Facebook”. Such innovations create a social environment where employees can oversee each other’s behavior and actually comment on it if needed. If someone decides to use this feature, they can use it freely but will limit themselves because they know they’re being frowned upon.
Smoke break? How about an iPad break?
I would personally try the vlogging experience as well. I would try to include some if not all people of the company in monthly or fourth yearly vlogs where our company is being presented in a good or even a viral way. It is a free commercial you can make every certain period of time. It will give other or competing companies a view on what’s going on there and it will keep our names in their heads. It will provide workers with a ‘feel good’ experience about working at the company. This would be something truly innovative and experimental. Using YouTube as a way to promote your company is definitely worth trying in my opinion.
I would definitely make one wiki or a
personal blog for every employee. If the employee has fixed a certain problem where he or she has been stuck with for a while they can take their time to write an article about this and publish it. Having individual blogs linked to one centralized system would benefit the company’s website for visitors and employees. Being provided with help and the latest news is important. If for example students are stuck on the same subject and land on the company’s website, they might even take the website into consideration.
I have learned a lot about social media and I am expecting a lot from it in the future. It is forming the internet in a way where online messages will be exchanged on a more personal level. You will, however, have to write practically everything under your own name, your own initials so you might need to become more reserved or professional in your own opinion. You’ll need to be able to accept criticism as well. An online profile can be created based on your internet activities upon which you will be judged, even if you have filled out an alias instead of a name. It will link other profiles with yours and create an actual profile which can be used for monitoring your internet behavior or pushing commercials. If people could go check what you have to offer “the internet”, which is more and more becoming a new way of personal communication, they can and will make decisions on whether to like or even hire you. My conclusion is to be very careful and aware of posting things you stand for yet not fearing the possible negative outcome. If you do so in an enthusiastic way where all things that could result in personal attacks or negativity towards you are left out of it, there will be no problem.
You should definitely try and promote yourself to the outside world. Do it now when you still have the chance to stand out, because in the future you will probably be just another brick on the wall of social media.
I would like to thank people that inspired me while I was writing this article :
Ron Tolido - CTO Application Services Continental Europe, Capgemini -
@rtolido :
For your excellent presentation about innovation. It has truly changed
my vision about the uses of current technology to find or create new
"black swans". It has helped me improve my ideas about process
management as well.
Bart De Waele - CEO of Netlash-bSeen.be -
@netlash : Thank you for "
het trendrapport" which has broadened my thoughts about Google's social network site.
