Catching Up Online

Catching Up Online

or. why you should be on Facebook, Linkedin, and maybe Twitter, too

By Debbie Gardner
PRIME Editor

I recently added a text package to my cell phone.

I did this so I could better keep up with the comings and goings of my 20 and 30-something nieces and nephews.

I also did it so I could be more accessible to some of my younger colleagues at Reminder Publications.

Do I love texting?

At this point I'm not really certain. The typist in me craves a phone with a full keyboard (not this silly scrolling through letters and switching screens for punctuation and numbers) and a dictionary of abbreviations.

Did I feel I needed to do this to keep up?

You bet.

I feel much the same way about experimenting with what's come to be known as social media.

You know, Web sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

So far, I've resisted signing on to most of this online stuff.

To me, the spectre of opening a Facebook page or Twitter account just means one more thing I'll need to look at and update, and I've already got two e-mail accounts and two work Web sites to check on a daily basis.

I've also felt funny putting so much of myself "out there," where an online world full of strangers can find out about me. What if an old boyfriend wants to "friend" me on Facebook or follows my tweets? What do I do?

You see, at heart, I'm a pretty private person. I keep an old-fashioned paper journal and still call my closest friends on the phone when I have time (though I do regularly e-mail certain friends because our schedules just don't jive these days). I don't have a blog on our PRIME Web site, though most media research tells me that would be a great place to put one.

Heck, I don't even have a private blog, though many of my colleagues do.

And, according to well-documented research, I'm missing the boat.

Facebook recently published data showing that since September 2008, the number of women over 55 who have signed up for this social networking site has tripled.

Moreover, according to statistics supplied by Forrester Research, more than 60 percent of boomer men and women regularly access and use social media. [DirectMarketingNews web site.]

Given that information, it now seems that if I'm going to keep up with my own boomer peers, I'd better take the plunge.

What is Facebook?

According to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, this Web site, which was launched in February 2004, is "a free-access social networking website that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. Users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region to connect and interact with other people. People can also add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves."

Figuring out Facebook

Still, I wanted to find out a little bit more about what I was getting myself into before I took the plunge.

So I contacted John Garvey, principle of Garvey Communications Associates Inc., who recently hosted a local seminar on how businesses could utilize Facebook and Twitter.

Garvey gave me his take on popular social media sites, and also connected me with seminar presenters Ann Latham, Gordon Snyder and David Sweeney to get their perspectives.

"What I see happening with Facebook [is] that it's become a communication medium, a way to stay in touch, to exchange information and tips," Garvey told PRIME.

He said users post photos, keep track of family members, and in general connect about what's happening in their lives through Facebook.

"What's scary is that you can have three generations young people, parents and grandparents exchanging information on the same platform," he said.

"It's like sharing a scrapbook online," Ann Latham, owner of the consulting firm Uncommon Clarity Inc., said of Facebook.

It's precisely that scrapbook function that got presenter David Sweeney, owner of The Communications Dept., a freelance service that provides such things as meeting support, video or speechwriting services for small and medium-sized businesses, hooked on Facebook.

"I had an account open but didn't do much with it until my [out-of-state] grade school class had a reunion," Sweeney said. "I couldn't go, but one of the girls in the class took a bunch of pictures, and the only way to see them was on her Facebook page."

He said there were 20 people at that reunion, and many saw him online after he connected with the photographer through her Facebook page.
"It's been a good resource, a good way to keep in touch with friends from high school and college" he said. "And I'm getting some local friends [in Western Mass.]"

One of the things that enhances that connectedness, Sweeney said, is Facebook's e-mail -like function that sends you alerts of activity on your page.

"[Facebook] will send you a status if someone sends you a message or responds to you" Sweeney said. " You share some stuff and other people share stuff. I check it a couple of times a day."

Creating a Facebook account
To sign up for Facebook: Go to the Web Site, www.facebook.com, and enter your full name, your email address (work or personal, your choice) and create a password.

Facebook will also ask you to provide your real birth date (month, day and year), for security reasons. You can hide this information on your profile.

Once you have logged in, you will be given a page where you can post a photo and fill in information about yourself ( job, schooling, etc.) It's up to you how personal you want to make this stuff. Before you log out, be sure to click on the the privacy settings tab and adjust who can see your information. If you want to limit your public online exposure, indicate you only want yourself or your friends to see certain parts of your page. Then, you just need to be careful whom you accept as an online "Friend."

"Be very careful with photos of kids," Sweeney said.
For how to identify and link photos to friends Facebook pages, visit: www.ehow.com/how_2031208_tag-friends-facebook.html

What is Twitter?

According to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, Twitter is a "free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other users' updates known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters, displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have subscribed to them (known as followers). Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications. The service is free to use over the Internet, but using SMS may incur phone service provider fees."

Testing out Twitter

Another of the hot social networking sites that I've steadfastly avoided joining is the much-talked-about Twitter.

"Twitter is more of an adult thing," Gordon Snyder, director of a national science foundation located at Springfield Technical Community College told PRIME.

"It's another way to get communication in real time, a combination of text messaging and instant messaging and blogging."

Messages, called tweets, are comprised of no more than 140 characters, and usually include information about what a person is doing at the time. Tweets can also be answers to questions.

The most common platform for using Twitter is a cell phone with Internet access. Individuals can also Tweet from a laptop or desktop computer.

Users communicate by posting tweets, or by following the tweets of someone they find interesting (such as Ashton Kutcher, Elizabeth Taylor or the "cat" that now famously tweets its daily experiences.

Finding your 'Twitter' voice

However, unlike Facebook, there can be a bit of a learning curve for new Twitter users.

"With Twitter specifically it's somewhat universal. You sign up, get an account and say, 'now what do I do?'" Sweeney said. "You go away from it, come back and a lightbulb goes off."

Sweeney said he didn't use his account for about three months after he initially signed up.

"Then I ran into John Garvey, who suggested I follow him," Sweeney said. "then I started following more Western Massachusetts people, and from there it grew into more of an industry thing [for me]. '

"Now I'm connected to people in California and Australia and all over the world." he added.

And he said he's also a genuine face-to-face side to many Twitter relationships.

"The interesting thing about Twitter is that you connect with people, and then there are regular Tweet-ups and you can go meet the people who are regular users," Sweeney said. " You have these online relationships and they can carry over and become
interpersonal."

To sign up on Twitter:

To sign up on Twitter: Log on to www.twitter.com and click on the Join- Get Started! button. This will take you to a page where you'll be asked to enter your full name, create a username and password, enter an email address and retype two security words. Clicking the "create my account" button at the bottom of the page will take you to a page where you will be offered a slate of other twitter users that the site thinks you might wish to follow.

Be sure to click on the profile tab and complete your profile. On this page you can also decide if you want your tweets to be public, or available only to the people you accept as followers.
The best way to understand how Twitter works, according to Snyder, is to just start using it.

"Talk first and follow later," he said. "Consistently post content and you will understand how it works."

He said it's best to start posting to a small group of friends, and then expand.

"Some people keep their posts private. I think you want to keep your posts public, that way people will follow you," he said,
Once you've established a presence on Twitter, Sweeney said there are downloadable applications such as TweetDeck that can keep you from being overwhelmed by posts and responses.

"On Tweetdeck I'm following tweets because of key words [of interest to me], not people," he said.

To follow David Sweeney on Twitter link to twitter @_daves.
To follow Gordon Snyer or twitter link to www.Twitter.com/gsnyder.

What is LinkedIn?

According to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003 mainly used for professional networking. As of May 2009 [update], it had more than 40 million registered users, spanning 170 industries".

Getting LinkedIn

The only social media site of these three that I was already somewhat familiar with was the business networking Web site called LinkedIn. At the invitation of The Reminder's marketing director, I'd signed up and created a very basic profile of my work life a couple of years ago. But I'd never done much more with it than accept invitations from colleagues to link up to their networks.

So it came as a bit of a surprise when a colleague from a former job recently called me looking for help locating a graphic designer. She said she'd found me through my page on LinkedIn.

"That's one of the key benefits of LinkedIn people can find long-lost colleagues," Latham told me. "It's the more professional, business-oriented tool."

Garvey said in this down economy, LinkedIn has also become a useful job-search tool and "a tool that recruiters are using to find qualified candidates."

"It's visibility," Latham said of LinkedIn. You start doing things so your name is appearing to people, you start connecting [to people], you start putting out posts, updating your status [at your job], update your resume . as a result people will see you in LinkedIn updates on their home page."

To make more use of this form of social media, Latham said users can pose questions, post interesting news and links and in general try to be helpful.

"The flip side is, [with LinkedIn], your [audience] is pretty limited because it's just your connections," she said.

To sign up on LinkedIn:

To sign up for LinkedIn: Go to www.LinkedIn.com. You will be asked to enter your first name, last name, e-mail address and then create a password of six characters or more. Once you have joined you can create a professional profile. Photos are optional (I don't have one posted on any site).

LinkedIn also lets you search for people and view a limited profile of someone before you sign up to see if there are people you'd like to connect with.

Making time to keep up

We've only scratched the surface of the big three social networking site for boomers, and there are plenty more out there to explore.

All of them have a learning curve, and an investment on your part, dictated by how involved you want to get.

And bottom line, they can all become tremendous time-waster , if you let them.

But they don't have to be.

"I recommend that, for people starting out [with social media], that they divide their time and look at social media in two categories," Latham said.

"One category is exploration. That's the time you spend playing, learning and figuring out what's going on. This is separate from the time you spend using these sites."
She said individuals need to "devise a plan as to how this works for you and how much time you want to spend on it [per day, week or month]."

"You can be very specific this is my plan for using social media: it's a half-hour a day, or Friday mornings," she said. "Always being online isn't something you want to fall into."