RSS Readers: Where Do I Begin?

I am an early adopter of technology, I always have been. Afterall, I was on a computer pretty early in age. Most of my friends didn't even have a computer until they were in high school. Today's kids probably think I lived in the ice age.

By the time I was in elementary school I used to format floppy disks and get paid a quarter per disk. I don't think my kids will ever know what a disk is and what it means to format.

So when it comes to reading blogs, I probably read them in the most backwards way. I subscribe to two main types of blogs. The first kind are informational, news related to schools, life, technology, and social media. These are full of useful resources and often have information I want to share or keep as a resource. The other type I read is what I call mommy blogs. Many of these the only thing informational is a menu plan or recipe. Most of the information is time sensitive with coupons or rewards codes. If I didn't get a chance to read them, then they just aren't worth reading. They are no longer useful information.

So the way I read these blogs is I have them delivered to my aol account. This is my spam/junk mail account. I have my aol mail forwarded to a gmail account because I live on google. Then I have the various blogs I read skip my inbox and arrive into filtered folders, some for an individual blog, some into topic, and some into a folder that is just labeled blogs. When I have time I go through these folders and read the messages. At the end of busy weeks I go through the time sensitive ones and delete the ones from the beginning that I didn't get to read.

Reading a lot more blogs, I decided it was time to look at rss readers. Since I have a droid phone, I of course figured I should begin with google reader. I did a bunch of reading about the various rss readers and many people don't like gReader on droid. Feedly was suggested as an alternative, so I decided i'd try both of these. Pulse was rated higher and some of the tech news I read was already part of this. So over the next couple weeks, I'm going to try them out on my droid and see what I like best. I welcome suggestions.

Implementing New Systems - Pitfall 1

While I was doing my research for my doctoral dissertation, I read a lot about universities implementing Peoplesoft or other student information systems (SISs). One of the biggest pitfalls that all the literature had to say was if you aren't willing to change your process or adapt to the system, then the 1000s of dollars that you invest in the new system will be worthless because within a couple of years you have to begin the process all over again.

I think that this is actually useful insight into any project that a school undertakes, whether it is a student information system, a new website, or adopting social media. The biggest problem that organizations or schools encounter is while they want change they are often unwilling to break from their traditions and unwilling to look at their processes. That said the most important part of implementing any system is finding the best of both worlds. It's important not to have a radical change to your process. This means sometimes having the system make customizations to preserve central processes. But it also means that not everything is a central process.

This is challenge often occurs at ending stages of new systems. It is often hard to plan in the beginning stages for these processes because many organizations, schools, or businesses think that their processes are something that everyone does, but this is not usually the case. There are so many processes that often inherit to that specific place of business that it is often hard for organizations to keep up. They try to cater to the normal and often times your school has at least one process that is not normal.

A new system gives your school the opportunity to evaluate your processes. It allows you to ask your school, your users, and the recipents of the program questions. Are you really doing everything the most efficiently? Is there a better way to do things? And how can we work with our new system better?

The one thing to remember is with any system, there are always growing pains.

Page Timelines on Facebook, What does this Mean?

Yesterday, Facebook introduced the Timeline for Pages. The timeline has already been available for personal profiles for quite some time. Right now you could say it's in beta test mode, it will officially go live at the end of the month (March 30). Right now pages have the option of customizing it and getting used to it.

What's the Facebook Timeline?

The Facebook Timeline is a way of telling a story about your school, organization, or whatever your page is about. The timeline gives you an opportunity to review easily everything you have ever posted on your page and decide what you want to share in this story with the people who like you. The timeline leads with a bold image (the cover) and then has your profile pic.

The Cover

 This is a creative example of what the cover of a page might look like, but not one that is actually created. Image from VitroAgency The cover is a large bold that is your opening photo or introduction to your page. The opportunities for this are endless. And you can constantly change it. A school could feature a winning team (if your policies allow you to feature students on your facebook page) or another day feature student work. Think of the cover as a way to showcase your school and what it has to offer. It should change and tell a story about who you are. Here are a few examples that are interesting, both from personal profiles and also from the few brands who have already launched the new timeline for their page.

Learning from Personal Timeline Examples

The personal profile timeline has been around for a while and so people have had the opportunity to become creative. Here are a few examples that pages might learn from as they grow their develop and create their own timelines.
 
This is an interesting  example with the profile pic as part of the overall picture. I found this image online and thought it was a great example of featuring a team an athlete at the same time. Although this is an individual page, perhaps your school were the champions and you have a sub-story to tell about the highlighted person. The kids made the winning touchdown or has a remarkable story to share.
 Perhaps you have a picture of a Principal or the Head of the School looking out or doing something unique. The "Polaroid" pictures on the side can show other things happening at school or items you want to showcase about the school.

 
  This groups information written nicely on the background and integrates the profile picture into the scheme of the cover picture. What's nice about this personal timeline example is it is a good display of both visual design and information design. You could highlight aspects of our school visually with information about your school. This design gives the opportunity to show a prospective student or employee what your school is all about.

Page Timeline Examples

 The New York Times, features their mark and their office. This page is a who are we. Very simple. Pages will have to think about whether or not their page needs to changes or can this be an evergreen approach.
  This says who they are and shows something unique about them. When you think about the United States Navy, you probably associate ships rather than airplanes. The sea is still captured in this picture, but there is another aspect of the Navy that you might know about. I wonder what the next cover image will be and how long before this picture becomes old. This picture is definitely inviting and tells a story.
 
 A picture can sometimes tell a 1000 words. This definitely depicts exactly what I would expect to see on the Muppets page. It's visually interesting. Right now the Muppets page is all about the movie coming out, but this page could be about other movies or other Muppet related items.

Some examples of Facebook Timeline Covers

10 Examples of Brands (Macys, Manchester United, AT&T, Coca-Cola, Red Bull, Ford, Today Show, LiveStrong, Starbucks, Adobe)
30 Creative Timeline Cover Examples for your Facebook Profile
Facebook Timeline Cover: 40 (Really) Creative Examples.
New Facebook Timeline Famous Brand Pages Cover Designs | Cool Ideas & Examples for Fan pages

Content for Your Timeline

The content changes slightly. Now the content is about the time that something happened. Engaging your audience continues to be an important part and it should still remain an important part of your social media plan. But now it's more about your story and what happened when. On this day you won the championship. Or on this day 100 of your students came to school dressed in the school's mascot. Imagine then featuring an album with all the different renditions of your school mascot.

It's Time to Revisit your Content

When you were first starting out you probably had no clue how to use Facebook. You might still not know really how to use Facebook and what works for your school. Part of technology today is it is changing so fast sometimes it's hard to keep up with. So what you posted at the very beginning might not be the kind of information that you think you would like to post today. The new timeline displays information in a different way and this is your opportunity to look over the story you have told in the past and clean it up. You can easily hide posts that you don't want to share.

New Features

Coupons

A new feature is that now pages will be able to create coupons directly in Facebook and share them on the timeline. Page likers will then be able to share those coupons and then they could become viral. I was trying to think about how this would impact a school or how a school could use a coupon. My first thought was about auxiliary programs. We run a summer camp at our school and I was thinking that we could offer a $50 discount to Facebook Followers. Then I was thinking about the other kinds of programs we run at school and we run a lot of other classes and events and there are so many opportunities to offer a deal or a discount that could then be used in our online registration system.

Communicating Directly with your Followers

This has been one of the things I have always found frustrating. I have not necessarily had a way to communicate with people following us. Now our followers will be able to direct message us from inside Facebook. It does mean yet another place that you'll have to keep up with in the ever growing load of information.

Friend Interactions

This feature definitely caught me off-guard. When a follower views your page, you will be able to see your friend interactions toward the top of the page. When I visited the Navy page, I wouldn't have thought I knew anyone who would have posted a comment there, but I actually had a few friends from Facebook who had posted on the page. It definitely made it a more personal experience.

Other Examples and Information about Facebook Pages

Timeline for Brands: How to Prepare for Your Company’s New Facebook Page
Facebook Timeline for Brands: The Complete Guide
Politicians Using Facebook Timeline
9 Ways to Prepare for Facebook’s Timeline for Business Pages
Facebook Timeline for Brands Coming Later This Month [REPORT]
What PR pros need to know about Facebook Timeline for brands
Facebook Timeline for Brands: What Does This Mean for Marketers?