Tag: socialmedia

Designing Compassion, Part 2: Legos, Locks and Land Mines

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K-16, by Peter Engelmann

Why it’s worth your money to pay a professional to optimize your website, app, or social media’s user interface so it’s easier to use and understand.

(If you get bored by anecdotal introductions, just skip-scroll to the TAKIS AND CHAI TEAS section down below.)

I just finished a text conversation with my business partner regarding the Apple music player, which for some reason won’t allow songs on her playlists to play in sequence, like a jukebox, and instead repeats the same song. Yes, there’s a solution to this, but one shouldn’t have to do any detective work to find the solution for this simple feature.

The main headline font for one of my WordPress sites all of a sudden changed from a sans serif font to a disco-looking typeface, simply because I updated the theme, because WordPress recommended that I do. Of course there’s a hack to fix this, and I did, but I shouldn’t have had to.

My octogenarian mom decided she wants a Facebook page, and so I tried to set her up with one. Because her last name, San Diego, has a space in between, Facebook’s algorithms (I think) decided that it may be a business account trying to disguise itself as a human being, and disabled her account. I don’t remember Facebook doing this back when I set up my account ten years ago. When I have more time and more patience, I’ll try again, and probably experiment with different ways to type her name so that Facebook doesn’t red flag it. Again, I shouldn’t have to. Life shouldn’t be this difficult.

Now, imagine being a business owner who’s basically new to this online thing, but who heard from one of your buddies that you should have a more updated website, even have a shopping cart for your products, and while you’re at it, you should also have social media accounts like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for your business. And then you see the commercials on TV that make everything look easy, like GoDaddy or Wix or Squarespace. Or even Fedex/Kinkos and the UPS store, because it seems like IT’S EASY TO BE ONLINE! LET’S GET YOU STARTED!

I’ve lost count of how many people I’ve talked to that called those 800 numbers and wound up abandoning their projects a few weeks into it, but continued to pay for a year’s worth of hosting because they had no choice. (Or had their nephew set them up initially, but the nephew goes to college and doesn’t answer his phone calls anymore, because kids these days would rather text than talk to the elders, you know how it is…)

The bottom line is THIS STUFF IS NOT EASY, unless you’re doing it simply for fun, like kids on Snapchat or Instagram. They don’t have to worry about customers like business owners do. They don’t have to worry about losing a sale because they couldn’t login to Facebook to answer a customer question. They don’t have to worry about setting up 2-step verification so it’s safer to access online receipts.

So what do you do?

If you’re one of the smart and/or lucky ones, then you did your proper research (and you’re a little lucky finding the right people to help you.) You Googled “web developers” or “designers”, looked at their portfolios, then checked out their reviews on Yelp, or looked at their work on Behance. You joined moderated Facebook groups, or subreddits, and asked for advice there. You went on LinkedIn, and are now reading this article:)

Oh yeah, why is this article titled “Legos, Locks and Land Mines?” Because some of the problems you’ll run into are like walking barefoot on a Lego block—it’ll hurt for a minute but it’s easily fixable and you’ll be walking again soon enough. Locks, because too many locks (safeguards, verifications, tedious ID checks on contact forms) can hurt your business more than they help, so you have to have a balance. And Land Mines, because you can wind up in a really bad situation, like getting your whole ecommerce site hacked because you’ve installed a nefarious WordPress plugin, and don’t have protocols set up, like a backup website that you can redirect your customers to in case of emergency.

I’m not gonna get into the nitty gritty details but here are some reasons you need help from people that specialize in this stuff. Regarding social media, here’s something to think about:

TAKIS AND CHAI TEAS

Social media experts eat, live, and breathe this stuff. If you’re away from social media or not downloading the latest updates for the two dozen apps on your mobile, then you aren’t as plugged in as that dude (let’s call him Trevor) that just graduated with a computer science degree, who plays video games with one eye and watches the Twitch channel with the other eye, all the while checking out his Twitter and Instagram feeds on his dual-screen Android. While you’re “running your actual business”, Trevor has been swiping through hundreds of trendy memes, knows what the President had for lunch, has subconsciously seen hundreds of pop up ads (and is aware of corporate branding AND what works and what doesn’t), while searching for ways to make his 2010 Craigslist laptop run faster without spending any money. During all of this, Trevor has managed to study WHY he likes doing what he’s doing, has more than 3,000 hardcore followers on his Instagram page and posts something new every time he enters a new zipcode on his commute to work every day.

His female counterpart, let’s call her Cecile, has watched hundreds of how-to videos and has an excellent sense of what gadgets and hardware tools the younger generation (your target demographic) are into, can navigate the Dollar Tree blindfolded, and has set up her own YouTube channel, produces and stars in her own videos, and has managed to get a handful of corporate sponsors while attracting 35,000 subscribers on her DIY channel, The Fixit Chick (I didn’t check to see if someone is already doing it, but if not, you’re welcome, Internet.)

These social influencers have literally spent THOUSANDS of hours absorbing this subculture into their heartbeats. And you think, dear business owner, that you’re gonna buy a book and pay GoDaddy a hundred bucks a year so that you can do what they do?

DIVI UP, PLUG IN, AND GIRD YOUR CHILD THEMES

Truth be told, I have a love-hate relationship with WordPress. I get a couple hours sleep a night, which means I’m nowhere near the best at wrangling it, but I try. Oh WordPress, how do I love-hate thee? Let me count the ways:

  1. Everybody uses WordPress, so I gotta use WordPress, and you gotta use WordPress, and Oprah’s gotta use WordPress.
  2. You should update WordPress and its plugins whenever there’s a new version, but doing so may result in your site looking mightily different when you wake up in the morning. Which means you (or that person you pay what you think is too much money) have to babysit it weekly, and even daily, to make sure that child theme is still behaving itself in relation to the parent theme, which just got an update. If this doesn’t scare you, here’s a verbatim result from Google if you search for “updating parent theme”, a legit question from a dear pilgrim:

    If I create a child theme, then Activate the child theme, then at a later date an update is released for the parent theme. Do I activate the parent theme, update the parent theme, then activate the child theme?

     

  3.  You need to know what plugins to use, and how stable each of these plugins is in relation to the theme that you’re going to use it in. Meaning, some plugins play better with certain themes than others.
  4. Everything is a moving target and nothing is ever set in stone, because plugins and themes and your content are continually being updated. The heart of WordPress ENCOURAGES content creation and growth, and the Internet gets bored easily, so you always have to stay fresh. I know, ouch wallet, but if you convert those expenses into sales, then you still come out on top.
  5. As of July 24, 2017 there are 14,864 WordPress themes to choose from, each of them with their own idiosyncracies and predilections. Imagine going on a field trip in a really big elementary school bus that holds 14,864 kids. There ya go.
  6. In terms of options, you can build your site using the basic WordPress control panel, or you can use third-party plugins to make the job easier (where “easier” is a relative term). Divi, Elementor, and Beaver Builder are three of the most popular, and there are people that specialize in those as well.
  7. Okay, the list is much longer than this, but I’m tired so I’m gonna wrap it up now.

This is the truth:

YOU WILL NEVER RUN OUT OF COOL STUFF TO USE ON YOUR WEBSITE.

YOU WILL NEVER RUN OUT OF COOL STUFF TO POST ON SOCIAL MEDIA.

IF IT’S COOL, YOUR CUSTOMERS WILL BE ATTRACTED TO IT.

Your biggest problem will be trying to keep everything together and working efficiently once you begin. And if you can get somebody else to do the keeping it together for you, then you can just concentrate on your business. Yes, you will still step on Legos from time to time, and during those times you’ll have colorfully-worded conversations with your web developer and social media contractors. But at least you won’t accidentally lock yourself inside your own house, and you won’t have to worry about stepping on a virtual land mine.

*This article also appears on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/designing-compassion-part-2-legos-locks-land-mines-gerardo-san-diego/

Facebook is Not Just for Food Porn

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Some people say that Facebook isn’t trendy anymore. They say that kids have now switched over to Instagram, or Snapchat, or YouTube. They say that Facebook is only for old people.

What I say to that: Good.

Because that’s not what I use Facebook for anyway.

True story: My business partner and I were waiting to be seated at Hof’s Hut, when she looked over and jokingly said, “I can’t believe how much you’re on Facebook…”

An older gentleman, who was also waiting to be seated, heard what she said and looked up from his newspaper and smiled at the both of us, then looked at the smartphone in my hand, with my thumb in scrolling position.

I turned the phone around to show them what I was looking at, which was basically my newsfeed from Facebook:

Facebook screencaps

I don’t remember the last time I saw any of my friend’s food on Facebook. Maybe I just don’t pay attention anymore. I don’t remember the last time I clicked on a “share this if you are a true friend” thread. Maybe I just don’t pay attention anymore. I do remember unfollowing friends that purposely add me to their Candy Crush group, or friends that post thirty inspirational memes an hour, or entertainment pages that post 40-year old photos of Linda Blair throwing up chunks of pea soup in The Exorcist just to shock you into clicking the article. That was then.

This is now: AP News, New York Times, Reuters, Scientific American, Bloomberg, CNBC, Public Relations Daily, Technobuffalo, The Washington Post, CNN, Internet Architects, InfoWorld, Film Riot, Book Riot, Nova/PBS, City of Hope, Cleveland Clinic, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the list goes on and on…

Facebook, at least to me, is INFORMATION. It is an endless newsfeed of everything that you want to know, about topics that you care about that will increase your knowledge in business, in life, in productivity. Because of Facebook, I know how the stock market is doing and WHY it’s reacting that way. I can check the local news as well as what’s going on in the nation, and not just in a general way but much more specific, more targeted–many times a news entity will have a subdivision, and that subdivision will have its own Facebook newsfeed. Huffington Post Finance is very different from Huffington Post Food, is very different from Huffington Post Technology.

Facebook isn’t just a newsfeed, it’s also an event organizer. The New York Times FB page includes an Events section that lists local conferences, concerts, art installations, and other social gatherings. Within each listing is a calendar and RSVP feature that you can tick off so Facebook reminds you when it’s about to happen. It has a map of the venue that clicks to your phone’s Google Maps or Waze app to help you get there. If attendees take photos and tag them during the event, those photos are linked to that event’s page, so you can see it from other people’s points of view.

Facebook isn’t just a bunch of selfies, it’s also your online portfolio. If you’re an artist or designer, you owe it to yourself to have a Facebook page that features photos of your work. Your fans and customers can comment on your creations, can buy your products directly from Facebook (YES, Facebook has a store!), can ask you questions directly as well as engage others in conversation about your work, and when you have an exhibit, you can invite all your Facebook fans to that event with one posting, AND keep track of who wants to go!

Facebook fan pages isn’t just for celebrities, it’s also for people that aspire to be like one. You can easily do a Live Video with your smartphone (at least the relatively new ones can do it), and anyone can snoop in on your business meeting, or while you’re making linguini with clam sauce in the kitchen, or doing a reaction video that supplements your monetized vlog on YouTube.

So for anyone in business, YES, Facebook is absolutely useful, you just have to tweak the settings accordingly. To begin, you can use Facebook to read industry news and check the weather to prepare you for the long drive/flight to your business meeting. You can organize your colleagues with one notification of that event, with time, place and map, within Facebook Events. You can message your business connections through FB Messaging, AND send them Word files, Excel files, and other presentation files directly through Facebook. (Note that some mobile devices require that you download a separate FB Message app to handle the messaging, but it’s directly linked to your Facebook app, so the experience is basically seamless.)

The bottom line is you can plan, organize, conduct, and chronicle a whole day using just Facebook.

So don’t be too upset when your kids make fun of you for being on Facebook. While they’re taking selfies and posting on Instagram, or gossiping about Taylor Swift on Snapchat, you’re on that old fuddy-duddy of an app, and you’re getting down to business.

Why YouTube?

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YouTube logoA client just asked me if it’s possible to keep their company videos within their own website, running it off their own web servers, instead of posting it on YouTube. He didn’t want to involve YouTube but was open to Vimeo.

I told him that anything is possible with enough resources, but I highly recommend we go with YouTube. Keep in mind that this is MY opinion, and I do my best to know as much as I can but I don’t know everything, so take it with a grain of salt. My reasons:

1. YouTube is a division of Google, and we all Google. Google is the most popular search engine, used by the most people. When Google acquired YouTube, it benefited the both of them; Google brought its cachet (number of eyeballs, trust, ubiquity) to YouTube, and YouTube brought its content creators to make Google even more powerful. So content meets marketing.

2. YouTube is the fastest growing search engine, and it’s not slowing down. One of the big reasons is technology has made it affordable and accessible to make your own YouTube videos (you can make videos using your smartphone then instantly upload it to YouTube), so there’s much more video content out there, on all topics, which means the average person on their mobile devices will more and more likely turn to YouTube to find answers. If you can’t find it on Google, look on YouTube. Which is owned by Google. See the pattern here?

3. YouTube is a more accessible and adaptable platform than Vimeo or most other video services–you can easily share a YouTube video, embed it onto your website without messing around with hidden codes, you can post it in a Facebook page or post, you can link to it in an email, and you can even resize the video to fit whatever platform you’re serving to. These aspects have their pros and cons of course, but the accessibility and versatility of a YouTube video, again in my opinion, is unmatched.

4. YouTube’s server farms continue to grow and evolve, backed up by Google’s resources–their expansion is basically UNLIMITED. If you try to stream your company’s videos off your own server, once those videos become very popular and you get tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of eyeballs watching, sooner or later you’ll have to upgrade your equipment to allow for more people to access your content. By going with YouTube, yes, you’ll have to put your corporate videos on their servers, but they will have the burden of maintenance and eating the cost of upgrades.

5. If YouTube’s servers get hacked, it’s better than your own company’s servers getting hacked. Your company’s security isn’t compromised, and your data is still safe since you still have the original videos on your company’s machines, hopefully backed up to other devices and your corporate cloud account. Even if all your videos on YouTube get wiped out because of a YouTube server malfunction (and from my knowledge this has never happened), you can simply re-upload your videos back onto YouTube when their machines are back online.

6. YouTube has an app for pretty much every platform out there. If you try to serve videos from your own server, you’d have to spend that extra time to test your videos on different browsers, different computers with different configurations, cellphones, tablets, smart TVs, etc.

7. YouTube is OPEN-ENDED, meaning that the experience doesn’t have to end after viewing the current video. Because of YouTube’s Autoplay feature, where a related video will automatically play after the current one has finished, as well as its Playlist feature that can “play all” within that playlist, if your company has, let’s say, a collection of 50+ videos, you can configure YouTube to allow the viewer to play ALL your videos back-to-back until they’ve seen everything you have to offer. In terms of “stickiness”, the ability to make your audience spend all day with you, watching your videos…well, think about how valuable that is to your marketing strategy and bottom line.

This is just the tip of the YouTube iceberg. In the near future, I’ll talk about monetization methods, using YouTube in tandem with other social media, using YouTube for fundraising events, and using the right video and audio equipment to make YouTube videos, among other things.

Stay tuned, and thanks for reading.

Gerardo San Diego