Do you ever ask yourself: “What’s the point?”
Don’t worry, I’m not getting all philosophical on you – I’m not going to start rambling on about the meaning of life. That’s a bit deep for a Monday morning. But do you ever look at some fancy gadget or bit of technology and wonder, “what’s the point of it?”
I know I do. And sometimes, I really can’t come up with a good answer.
But it’s not always like that – and Facebook is one example.
When I think about it, there are actually loads of great ways to use it – once you get past all the adverts – so I suppose it’s got more than one “point”. It’s pointy… like a hedgehog. Anyway, where was I? Yes… so…
Some people use it to stay in touch with friends they see all the time – you can use the messaging feature in it to quickly send messages to someone else, or to several people at once. Handy if you’re organising to meet up later on.
It can also be a good way to get word out in a particular area – by posting a message to your local Facebook friends. Just recently I’ve seen it used to try to track down a lost cat – and within a day or so, hundreds of people in the area knew about the cat and were keeping an eye out.
You can buy and sell things locally (or not so locally). You can use it to find out about and get in touch with small businesses – a lot of them don’t have websites any more, they just have Facebook pages. You can sit and scroll through videos of cute cats, art demonstrations or daft comedy sketches – whatever floats your boat.
But none of those are the main point of Facebook for me.
No, I think it’s best for keeping in touch with people who you don’t see all the time. Friends and family who don’t live just across the road. Maybe even in another country. For example my friends and family are quite spread out – Cumbria, Rochdale, Plymouth, Ireland, Spain, Italy… even Australia!
So it’s really handy to have a good way to keep up to date with everyone. We can jot a quick note on Facebook to say what we’ve been up to or any news – and anyone we’re friends with can see it.
It’s not always the big significant things, either. Just being able to see what people are up to day to day helps you feel like you’re not thousands of miles apart, even when you are…
Facebook One Step at a Time
As you can imagine, there’s quite a bit to this Facebook lark. It doesn’t have to be complicated, but often people do find it tricky. And there are lots of extra bits and bobs that you don’t have to know about – but you might find some of them useful (and even if you don’t, if you don’t know what they are, they might get you a bit confused).
We first wrote a book about Facebook five years ago now – and a lot’s changed in that time!
So we’re busy putting the finishing touches to a brand new version of “Facebook One Step at a Time”. This book explains exactly how to use Facebook and what it can do for you – right from setting up an account if you don’t already have one, through to all the different things you can do with it.
It’s not available yet (because it’s not quite finished) but I’ll have a bit more information on it next week, including when it’ll be available and something else we’ve been working on at the same time.
Watch out for next Monday’s email – more info then!