Facebook

One piece of technology of which I believe I have a solid understanding of is Facebook. I'm particularly interested in the role of social media in advertising, so I believe it is important to have a good understanding of sites like Facebook and Twitter. Not only do I regularly use Facebook for personal/social reasons, but I'm also the moderator of a few group/fan pages on Facebook. This has helped me to understand attracting outside visitors to one's page and how to interact with users through something like a fan page. It has given me inside knowledge on how to effectively engage users so that they feel they are contributing or belong to something, and how to quickly disseminate information to a large group of people. I think Facebook is a great tool for encouraging becoming familiar with a brand and brand interaction- it greatly aids in the creation and proliferation of communities. Understanding how it works has helped me (with the pages I moderate) build communities around things (namely my a cappella group from undergrad and a popular blog about my undergrad institution). While it may seem like the social media obvious choice, there's a reason it has that reputation- with hundreds of millions of users, with a wide range of age and social status, it can be used to reach almost anyone with an internet connection.