Today in my Social Media Communications class we had a terrific guest speaker talk for the class. Communicating via Skype from Phoenix, Arizona Dennis Yu discussed the way Facebook is at the front of effective advertisements in social media. The conversation offered a small glimpse into the application of data for targeted advertising, data that is easily obtainable for anyone.
First off Dennis Yu is the founder of Blitzmetrics, a social media dashboard company that allows for data from multiple social media sources to be displayed efficiently and effectively. Like other dashboards out there the goal of the dashboard is to allow companies and businesses to track public opinion on any subject and also makes it easy for the companies to tell what content is the most effective at getting a good reaction on social media. Tools like what Blitzmetrics offers are integral if a business or company wants to have an effective social media influence.
One of the more intriguing things he showed us was what you could do to find more information about specific users on Facebook. For example he showed us how if you simply add “graph.” before facebook.com and then followed by a user’s name or id number you can see information about that user. You can see mine here. This is a feature that anyone can use for free. It enables data to be easily interpreted so you don’t have to go hunting down for all the details. It’s all in one easy to find place for you.
Another really really neat feature he showed us is the lesser known feature on Facebook which is the ability to use the search function and be able to filter out generic searches. Normally you can simply type in a name of a person or organization and if they have a page they will show up. The lesser known feature is that you can put in more generic search terms and filter out the results. For example I can type in “friends of Devin Broell who like Ice Skating”. This search will produce results that fit the criteria put in. You can see an example of this here.
Yu’s guest lecture was really thought provoking as it showed me how there are all these free tools out there that can easily be used towards an advertising advantage. It was great to hear from someone who is a major professional in the industry.
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