How to use Facebook/tips for Pensioners

How to Use Facebook for retired activists

Firstly I would like to say that although Facebook was set up to be a fun way of communicating with friends, this is not what Facebook does now.  Businesses all use it as a way of marketing and PR.  Treat online at Facebook as a job. Commit a couple of hours a week and don’t let it take over.

1.       Set up your Facebook Account – you can use any title, your name helps people recognise you if they haven’t seen you for a while and you can have more than one or two pages. So I have my personal account, my business page and an activist page.

2.       Try not to put in a lot of personal information about yourself. Minimum is fine.

3.       People can contact you through messenger, located in the top right hand corner.  Download the app on your phone as it is a very useful tool too.

4.       Top right hand corner.

First the title of you page- this is your timeline if you click on it. Second - Home, these are your posts and posts other people(your friends) send you, then messages and notifications this tells you if your post has been shared

5.       Take a piece of paper . Make a list of all the organisations and people you have known in your life, especially younger people, children you have known when you were younger etc.  Then in the left hand top corner there is a search facility- search all those people and invite them to be your friend or join/like/or follow organisations that you have a connection to or would like a connection to.

6.       When you receive a post and it might be that you think it is very useful, then there is no point just reading it and doing nothing.  You can delete it, you can like it – this means that you will keep in touch with your friend otherwise after a while Facebook stops sending you their posts, or you can share it, which means that it will go directly to the place that you share it to. The words  Like and Share are under the post.  I try to like and Share all the posts that I agree with or interest me.To delete – there are three little dots in the top right hand corner of the post. ( It was ages before I realised that this was not just for decoration)  When you see these three dots it means that there is a drop down menu.  Click on them and you will be given a variety of options.  This is very useful if you want to unfollow someone who is a nuisance or offensive.  Of course other people can do this to you too so include funny posts, informative posts and treat your posts as a journalist might, engaging the reader.

7.        These three dots are computer language they appear on other things too, if you see them click on them to explore your options. Eg the very top bar of Facebook

8.       You receive a post and it has -The comment box- This is very useful if you cannot be friends with someone and you are following an organisation.  If, for instance you have a URL (www…..) of an interesting article that adds to the discussion put it in the comment box or you can also create a new post.  But if it is in the comment box other interested people may like what you have said and request to be your friend.- requests are also found in the top right hand corner of your home Facebook page. The more friends you have the better because if they then either like or share your post what it contains then is sent on exponentially.

9.       Create a new post by entering in something where it says  ‘what is on your mind’. It could be a film from Youtube, or an article or something you want to pass comment about but always include the visual stimuli because people respond more to a visual and ( if it has a cat in it that helps!  Ha ha) When you create a new post you can tag someone.  You can only tag someone who is already a friend, but if you know that the friend agrees with your point of view then it will alert them with an email to look at your post and share or like it. Or if your family members will like it too tag them.

Try not to bang on with one theme and be kind to your friends sharing their interests too.  I have some really good Facebook friends, I have never met them but I know them moderately well and this is a very gratifying thing,

This will take you a bit of time – next step do the same thing with twitter but this is a harder thing to master , Twitter is a harder programme, and then you can link the two and when you post to Facebook it will automatically go to twitter – therefore it helps to use the same name for both.

10 That brings me to Blogger.  This is very useful too, this is where you can put your own personal spin on the world, it is free and you don’t need a website. It is run by Google, it is called Blogger. Easy peasy to do. But you need a gmail email address to do it,so set one up and use it for your activism so not to confuse it with your personal stuff. Or your business.

That brings me to passwords, I use a different  password for all these business/activist accounts. And I keep my personal stuff elsewhere.  I use my gmail address as the sign in name and then password is the same for all  of them. Open up gmail and then the other google applications will come up automatically. Keep your sign in and passwords to hand other wise it will be very frustrating.

Blogger, When you make a blog – I have several- you are asked to save as a draft and then publish. At the draft stage blogger has labels not tags and this is how people find your blog so  for my craft blog, I would use the term “how to” this is a very good word on google to use ,it is a standard phrase used by searchers. So I would put as a label How to make a father’s day card for instance. Another standard word is “find”.

Then  publish don’t forget photos in the blog and you will see at the bottom of the post  view blog and share.  If you click share it goes onto Google- Great news people can find you, and you can earn money too but only pence I’m afraid in my case.

When you 2view2 the blog at the bottom of your post there are mechanisms to post directly onto – you guessed it- Facebook and you can go into your blogger account and share on Facebook again and again whenever eyou feel like it and this cuts out some of the work.  Short blog posts work very well.

Setting up a gmail email address will also give you access to  a Youtube account.  That brings me to photos and videos.  Take as many and as often as you can. If you have a smart phone and all your google accounts are set up you can upload directly from your phone.

I use a iphone because at 72 I know these things are child play to the younger generation and that iphones are for older people and children because they are the simplest to use.  I am all for simplifying my life.

I could go on to say how to make a stopframe video for Youtube, which I did here.

Commerce or Conscience?   https://youtu.be/ca1zILXit8g

But this is quite another thing for another time. Again it is quite easy when you know how.