Facebook has Provided the Blueprint

Facebook has put social media on the map, and there’s no sense in debating whether it is here to stay.  I think we can all agree that it’s not going away anytime soon, but what is debatable are the benefits social media marketing and Facebook can offer your business or organization.  For some, the negatives of bringing Facebook into the work day far outweigh the positives, while others are using the medium to effectively communicate to their current and potential customers.   Personal networks are a double edged sword!

I’d like to go outside that box somewhat and discuss a corollary benefit Facebook and other social media platforms have introduced to application designers and developers.   Social media is starting to show-up in the design of custom web applications we build to help business to be more efficient (I.e. CRM, Customer Portals, Project and Task Management, Sales Management, etc.).

When a new technology is introduced, Five Technology will figure out the best way to utilize that technology and make your business more efficient (I.e. profitable).  The mobile phone or tablet PC is the device.  The Cloud is the new storage facility for all your business critical data.  The 3G, 4G, and wireless networks provide the infrastructure and access to this data anywhere at anytime.  And finally, the software developers create apps to make the interaction with this data easy and secure.  Facebook has provided the blueprint for the web developer to accomplish this.

The two things Facebook does extremely well are Communication and Easy.  You post to your wall, and everyone that needs to know about that post (your friends) is notified of a new post.  A comment is made, and all involved (your friends) are automatically invited to the conversation.  An effective communication platform that is easy to use at all levels (i.e. my grandfather has a Facebook account).  Is a post on your Facebook wall really all that different than a task or conversation relevant to a work order?

Facebook makes online communication easy!   If they only offered a “private” or “business” version of their software that could be customized to fit the needs of an organization, but that’s a whole other conversation.  

Quick Side Note:  In addition to platform, Facebook is also doing a majority of the training for us.  Change is difficult for any organization, particularly if there is a huge learning curve to this change.  Everybody knows how to use Facebook, so if can design a system that looks and acts just like it, the adoption rate of the new system becomes a whole lot higher.

Five Technology is an online marketing company whose solutions primarily involve some web design, web development, search engine marketing , and a powerful content management system (CMS).   Most solutions address pretty straight forward marketing agendas and don’t require a ton of customization, but there are customers that are doing a lot more online than just marketing.  As a result we are involved with mapping out business processes, and it’s critical we determine the most efficient, secure, yet user friendly way to utilize technology to accomplish the task.

Five has recently implemented this methodology into a project management system as well as a portal that K12 Schools will use to communicate classroom activity with a student’s parents.   Details of these projects will be revealed as they become more mainstream.  I’ve also noticed others have come to the same realization, as I was recently reading an article in Fast Company magazine detailing what Glam Media is doing for their authors.

Facebook, thank you for providing the blueprint for successful online communication!