Mark Zuckerberg must have seen me coming. I don’t know exactly when his plan to become the internet was hatched, but he has definitely succeeded in my household. Facebook is the most accessed site on my computer, with Google a not-so-close second. Facebook is an excellent aggregator of information, whether it be public or personal.Certainly, I use it to lurk former classmates’ pages and boast about my son’s most recent accomplishments, but I also use my news feed to follow actual news. You know, major-world-event, earth-shattering, is-it-ISIS-or-ISIL, real actual news. I like pages from alternative and mainstream media outlets, personal blogs, local organizations and other aggregators. Rather than trek from one website to the next, I can simply scroll through my news feed for a (truly) fair and balanced look at what’s going on in the world beyond George Takei’s latest amazon review.
I use Google in a similar way. When something is happening that I have a particular interest in, such as the current Ebola outbreak or reviews of new TV shows I might want to binge watch, I set up a Google Alert to automatically push the information I want to my inbox.
In terms of listening or trend-watching, I will admit I don’t do much of that on my own time. However, because I am involved in my organization’s social media strategy, I do engage in monitoring on a professional level. I use Facebook Insights to identify different demographics in our target audience and what content most interests each of them. In addition, I follow our competitors and stakeholders on Twitter to see what conversations we should become involved in and to identify potential gaps in our offerings. Finally, I host a biweekly Web quiz on our corporate homepage and provide an analysis of the results to our third-party content providers. This helps them identify whether their messaging is being heard and, more importantly, being understood.
- Comment
- Reblog
-
Subscribe
Subscribed
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
Algonquin College Social Media Certificate Program 
There is a book that I read… science fiction… about 20-25 years ago now… and I remember in that book the narrator describing a scene in which the main character goes to her desk and flips on her screen and sees a stream of all of the news and information that she cares about all brought to her. Not in email. But some new fangled technology that was never really described because it wasn’t really the point of the scene or the story. I read it back when web was new, and the way one obtained information on the web was by searching for it and going out and getting it, not having it brought to you. Every once in a while I’ll be on Facebook, and I’ll be presented with a “recommended post” or even an ad, or even notice my feed has some how magically filled with particular types of stories that all just happen to suit my interest. And I think of that book. I wish I could remember the name of that book. That one very minor scene was such a foreshadow!