Want to delete a Facebook group that you created but can’t work out how? Here’s what you need to do – it’s straightforward once you know.
Go to the page of the group that you administrate.
Click ‘Edit members’ in the left-hand menu.
Delete all members until it’s just yourself left in the group.
Return to the main group page and choose ‘Leave group’. A window will appear advising that you’re the last member and that if you leave, it will be deleted. Confirm!
I think it’s time for Facebook to add a ‘Close group’ option for group administrators – it would be much more user friendly…
In the second of this (very) occasional series about things I use to help me work, I want to talk about Delicious. It’s been around for a while, and indeed I’ve been using it since I started up as a freelancer. Its staying power can only be a good thing!
It’s ideal for keeping track of all those handy articles I find and read (or intend to read…), as well as sharing them via my websites. However, it was only at the weekend when I had a bit of a fiddle around with it that I discovered some handy features.
From many to one
Previously, I had a Delicious account for each of my blogs (which proliferate faster than I can keep up), with a different log-in for each. In addition, since Yahoo bought Delicious, many of these now have Yahoo log-ins instead.
Fed up with all these different usernames and passwords (plus I don’t use Yahoo for anything else), I decided to bring all my bookmarks (both public and private) under my original account. Delicious offers an easy-peasy import and export tool for doing just that.
Tailored link rolls
However, I don’t want all my bookmarks to show on each website; they’re very different topics. So, I created a tag specific to each one, which I apply as relevant to the saved article. Delicious’ link roll tool then allows me to specific that tag when creating the each feed.
In addition, there’s an option to bundle articles and pages with specific tags (like Gmail’s labelling system), to help you quickly see articles once in your account (rather than searching by a specific tag).
Keeping things private
Of course, some pages are not for the general public, and there’s a simple ‘private’ option (which also appears as a tag) to make sure these are kept hidden. I’m sure there are other tools still to discover too.
And, hey presto, one account with a single username and password, but tailored for each blog. Now I just need to remember to use the correct tag (the one possible source of error!). Follow me on Delicious.
Last Wednesday I pottered into lovely Palma de Mallorca to be part of Mashable’s Social Media Day. There’s not a very big local networking scene locally (except for TwittPalma) so I thought I should make the most of it.
Of course, it was a Spanish event that also attracted some English speakers like myself. And herein lies the problem with lots of networking events – it’s scary speaking to new people. And if they speak a different language you’re not fluent in? Even more so.
Love people, dislike networking
I’m not really a fan of networking; it all feels a bit unnatural and, as far as I’m concerned, it’s a necessary evil. But conversely, I love meeting new people and talking with them. But not about work. And especially not in a forced way…
So, as often happens, people kept to the groups (of very lovely people, of course) that they knew. Next time, I think the ‘social’ aspect of the event should be harnessed, maybe in a ‘speed dating’ way.
Make friends, maybe influence people
Everyone who attends receives a number. Then they pick a number out of a hat and have to speak to that person for five minutes, at the same time swapping Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook details. Repeat…
After maybe 30 minutes of this, everyone will have met 6 people and, hopefully, have enough people to speak to for the rest of the evening.
Where’s [the] Wally?
Check out this brilliant timelapse video of the event – can you spot me? I’m in a blue shirt and jeans, and am stood for quite a while on the right-hand side of the frame…
As if I needed another distraction, this week I discovered Busuu.com. It calls itself a ‘language learning community’ and is basically another social network with a twist: you create a profile for yourself and add details of the languages you’re learning.
Busuu.com offers courses in English, Spanish, French, German and Italian at the moment. As well as providing units in vocabulary and grammar, it also prompts you to submit a short writing exercise that other members can then check and correct.
Improved site tools and features
This is a great little tool for language learners and much better than anything else I’ve found online so far. I’m not sure how old the website is, but I’m guessing it will of course be further developed.
A few things that I’d like to see are:
an improved search tool that lets users search using a keyword — I’d like to make ‘friends’ with people in my locality, not just my country
downloads (PDFs and podcasts) with more detail and exercises than just those found in that unit — these are ‘premium’ content that do not offer anything additional at the moment
the different languages to have different scripts — at the moment, the script is exactly the same in each unit for different languages, so if you complete ‘weather’ in German and then do it in Spanish too, the information isn’t new
recognition on your profile that you’re a premium member — I keep needing to remind myself that I’ve upgraded because I’m still being urged to do so!
Grow your ‘language tree’!
However, it’s an excellent start and I’m currently hooked! It’s great to chat to native speakers and the features that Busuu.com has introduced to keep you working are simple but inspired: your ‘language garden’ grows for every unit you progress and you collect ‘Busuu berries’ for every activity you perform.
There’s also a fabulous mix of fellow learners of all ages, and you can chat to people from Mongolia to Chile.
(Wondering what Busuu means? ‘Busuu is a language spoken in Cameroon — based on an ethnological study conducted in the 80s, apparently only eight people are able to speak this language’.)
An email popped into my inbox this morning about another social media tool, Flukle. I don’t remember signing up to receive information but that doesn’t mean a thing – there seems to be something new every week. But I digress…
With Flukle, you can ‘share where you are, and what you’re doing, in real-time, through photos’. I’m not sure if I’m missing something but this sounds a lot like Twitter with pictures to me. Hang on; that is Twitter, isn’t it?
However, I guess you don’t need to trawl through the reams of text to get to the images. This could potentially be a great tool for furthering photo journalism. Caption the photos so that people can search by a keyword and instant images of anything that’s happening in the world.
As long as, of course, someone’s added it.
I’m not going to register for this for now (after all, there are only so many photos of my home office that are worth looking at), but it’ll be interesting to see how Flukle takes off. Have you signed up? How do you use it? Let me know!
(By the way, what is it with these social media names? ‘Flukle’? Sounds like a contender to replace a certain two-word obscenity: “There’s flukle to watch on TV tonight”…)
Because I’m a web copywriter, it’s almost an obligation to be involved with social media. It’s one of those things that we should understand and ‘get’. I have profiles on the standard hat trick of networks: Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. And I’m starting to get a bit, well, bored. Of (gasp) Twitter in particular.
It’s a bit like a relationship that seems great at first, then gets a bit dull, until finally you realise you’re putting a lot in, but not getting much back. You really thought you would, of course, and you’ve ‘met’ (hey, let’s not forget this is virtual) some really nice people…
But I only use it for business; unless the person’s an extraordinary writer, I really don’t want to know what people are doing right now. I’ve made some interesting contacts, but now I read their blogs, not their Tweets.
I’ve tried to provide useful links for my ‘followers’, which has worked as their number has grown organically and they say nice things to me (yes, that’s certainly one of the good points). But while this helps me to keep up to date with my industry, I spend more time than I’d like searching out these links.
On the plus side (as well as the nice things they say), as a work-from-home freelancer it’s kind of comforting to have this online network available for those little chats you might have over a cuppa in the office.
So, should I stay or should I go? I’m been mulling over this for a little while but am worried that if I call it a day, I’m going to miss out on something. Y’know, something HUGE. But then, nothing very exciting’s happened while I’ve been using Twitter, so why should that change? Oh, what to do.
When I logged onto Facebook this morning, I spotted that two of my friends had joined a new group. The group name caught my attention: ‘Stop the usage of dogs as live bait for sharks!’. Curious (and slightly sceptical), I took a look.
Creating a sense of credibility
The group has a well-written description:
Innocent dogs are being dragged behind boats and used as LIVE bait for sharks!! Defend the rights of animals! We are asking that the French Government ensure that this never happens again. [...] INVITE ALL YOUR FRIENDS. EVERYONE NEEDS TO KNOW HOW SO MANY DOGS ARE KILLED EACH YEAR!
There is a photo of an injured dog, the description offers a link to a ‘…video that shows one poor dog being rescued’, and the administrators also appear to be genuine. All of these factors combine to create a credible-looking cause, which, at the time of writing, is supported by 1,208,122 members.
But digging deeper…
Looking beyond the facts above suggests slightly less than sincere motives. The story itself has been around for at least four years (as this Sun newspaper article from 2005 shows) and, while it has some grounding in fact, has been blown out of proportion.
In addition, the group’s contact information is not an animal rights organisation; it’s a ‘Home Business opportunity’ and the first (and only) piece of news begins with ‘EARN FROM HOME..ARE YOU INTERESTED?’. The only other links on the page are to the organisation’s website.
Typical social networking behaviour?
I think this shows that people on social networks such as Facebook:
take things at face value
believe large membership is a sign of credibility
aren’t always concerned with the organisation behind a group; simply the cause
use groups as a badge of their beliefs, views or interests.
All the ingredients for a successful Facebook group
So, despite its dubious motives, this group is a good example of how to be successful on Facebook.
Select a group name that appeals to people’s emotions, beliefs or passions; capture their attention and make them curious, so that they want to find out more.
Create a well-written description of the group and present its aims clearly.
Provide supporting materials for your group or cause, such as an image or video.
Make the administrators easily identifiable and approachable.
Provide relevant links
I doubt many people will have actually clicked through to the amazing ‘home business opportunity’, so this group has probably failed on one important point: providing a relevant link for further information.
If the link had been along the lines of ‘Sign a petition to stop this cruelty NOW!’, I am certain that a large percentage of the group’s supporters would have chosen to follow it. As it is, regular web users are now completely wise to offers of this type and, I would guess, have mostly ignored it.
More information
Here are some more indepth articles from around the web on creating (and maintaining) a successful Facebook group:
Travel social networking sites have been around for some time now (some might say the market’s saturated), helping people to plan and write about their trips. The key element of many of these sites is helping people to meet up and make friends, as you would expect.
A couple of brave souls have gone further than this and actually put their travels in the hands of their networks. In 2008, blogger and journalist Vicky Baker wrote a weekly column in the Guardian about her travel-networking experiment across Central and South America. She based the entire three-month trip around meetings with, and recommendations from, locals she met online.
Then this week, I read about freelance journalist Paul Smith’s plan to hitchhike around the world in 30 days, raising money for charity:water. Here’s the catch: he’s going to rely on the Twitter community for offers of travel and accommodation, turning it into a ‘Twitchhike’ (his pun, not mine). He can choose from all the offers he gets, but if he can’t move on from a particular place within 48 hours, ‘the challenge is over and I go home’.
This got me thinking; what other parts of our daily lives could we throw to the social-networking wolves? Here are a few of my ideas.
Live for a week as instructed by your network: what time to get up, what to wear, what to eat and how to behave. Probably best to book a week off work first; rolling in the door at 11am in orange spandex leggings and purple eyeshadow might not go down too well. Especially if you’re a guy (although it would entertain your colleagues).
Let your friends choose your job: apply only for roles sent to you via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and so on. This is a good one if you don’t know what you want to do or lack the confidence to apply. Of course, this relies on people who actually know you to make suggestions. Or not. Hell, go crazy.
Everyone’s an agony aunt: this is a bit like the problem page in the newspaper, but with a twist. Post your latest emotional conundrum on your blog; see what your community suggests you do. Choose the best three responses (or get someone else to) and use the one that gets the most votes.
Do you have any ideas? Have you heard of anyone else doing similar things?
Last night, I was searching for the Facebook ‘page’ and ‘group’ of a freelance PR and marketing networking website that I have a profile on. The website appears to be moderately successful, judging by the number of individuals listed.
When I found the correct page and group, I was surprised to see that each had only three and two members respectively. As my mouse hovered over the ‘join’ button on the group profile, I saw the list of ‘related groups’ that the administrator had chosen. I immediately decided against it. Why?
Consider the message your ‘related groups’ send about your organisation
As you know, when you join a Facebook group, it shows up on your personal profile for your ‘friends’ and networks to see. If I had joined and they had then visited this group to see what I was supporting, they too would have noticed the list of related groups. These include a number of very political and right-wing causes, which I do not advocate and do not want to be seen to.
Facebook is in the interesting position of being a ‘cross-over’ social network. By this, I mean it began as a means of personal expression, but has gradually attracted the attention of businesses and organisations as they have realised its marketing potential. In addition, our ‘friends’ are not just our friends; they often include work colleagues and business contacts too.
If they’re not relevant, separate your personal interests from those of your business
The administrator of this particular group has made an error by confusing his organisation’s interests with those of his own. He’s alienated a vast majority of an audience that would certainly have an interest in the group and its aims, but not his personal causes and preferences. They should be kept to his individual profile for his own contacts to see.
This is currently a wasted opportunity and shows a surprising lack of foresight from a network that should, in theory, know all about PR and how best to market itself. It should replace the current groups with links to groups that really are related, of use and of interest to its potential audience. Then the network might see its Facebook membership numbers grow.
I’ve had a quick look online to see if there was any guidance concerning Facebook use for companies, in terms of marketing. Most of what I could find only concerned how to protect themselves in the face of employee Facebook use. If you know of any good guides, add a comment to share them here.
Want to delete a Facebook group that you created but can’t work out how? Here’s what you need to do – it’s straightforward once you know.
Last Wednesday I pottered into lovely Palma de Mallorca to be part of 