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Transcript

Hello, and the welcome to "Using Facebook and FREE Apps to Engage Family." We are so excited that you're here today to share with us our joint love of families. My name is Kelli Shipp. I function as my friends' and my family's technical support hotline, and I love finding ways to use technology that brings families closer together. My name is Jamie Wade, and I love anything to do with traveling, traditions, or family. Now, I know we look a lot alike, and we get asked if we're sisters quite frequently. We're not, but we are cousins.

So you know those awkward moments that you might have? Maybe you're running errands or at a class reunion, or maybe even a family reunion, and someone approaches you by name. They clearly know who you are. They talk about your family. And your mind is going, I can't remember their name! Right? We've all had those awkward moments. As we prepared for a family reunion that was celebrating my great-grandparents' 100th wedding anniversary, we wanted to reduce--or even eliminate--those awkward moments that our family might have. And we decided to turn to social media, specifically Facebook Groups. So how did it work? Well, a couple years ago at Thanksgiving, my parents set up this really long table. Seated across from me was a younger cousin of mine whom I don't know very well. Senior high school, college freshmen age, and he started talking to us about our family Facebook Group--about all the things he was reading about, this and that, and how excited he was about it. Now, Jamie and I, we were doing the happy dance under the table--very quietly, though. And we knew at that point it was working. We were reaching the older generation. We already knew that. But now we were using our family Facebook Group to reach out and hit that younger generation, as well. So today we're going to talk a little bit about Facebook and what it is. We're going to specifically be looking at Facebook Groups and how we can get engagement with our family in those groups. And then we're going to look at a lot of the features that Facebook Group offers and how we can share that information from the past--all that historical information that we've collected with--along with the information from the present, and even information of the future. Then we're going to take a step back from those third-party applications, and we're going to look at other things outside of Facebook. I'm sorry, we'll take a step back from Facebook, and look at those third-party applications and see how we can use them with our Facebook Groups to further enhance those stories that we want to tell. So go ahead and raise your hands if you've heard of or seen Facebook before. Alright, most everyone, great. Go ahead and keep them up if you have a Facebook account. Alright, a lot of you. Great. Now keep them up if you've heard or posted something on Facebook before. Hang on, we're going to go back here. And if you're comfortable posting something on Facebook, keep them up. All right, Kelli, we've got a lot of good Facebook users here.

So we were asked, why Facebook? Of the 7.5 billion people in the world, more than 25 percent of those people have Facebook accounts. Now, if we drill that down just a little bit more, within the United States, you look at--over the 200 million people have Facebook accounts, which is more than 2/3 of the United States' adult population. So we wanted something that people were already using, that it was convenient, and it wasn't one more thing that you had to go to a website, remember a username and password, and that it was convenient and comfortable for families to go into. So we chose Facebook Groups, specifically, for our family, because it has some additional security features that were really appealing to us. We could control membership. It's easy to use, and we have--it's that cross-generational that Kelli was talking about. We have some of our younger cousins, and we've got some of the older cousins all involved, and all of our extended family could use it. Additionally, we've got some family members that I may not be Facebook friends with, but between Kelli and my other cousins and aunts, we all could add membership. And so then that way, everybody can be a part of our family Facebook Group. So we're going to go ahead, and now that we know why we've chosen Facebook, we're going to look at some Facebook jargon, so that way we've got that common picture of what we're looking at. So this is what a Facebook page looks like. This first section in here is a post. So this is where we would go to write a comment. Then this next section is a discussion, or a newsfeed. So within your personal pages, it's called a newsfeed, or it's a discussion within a Facebook Group. And then, as you'll notice on the left-hand side of this screen, there's a navigation bar. That's how we interact with Facebook, and maybe the pages or groups that we're a part of. Now, you could be asking, what is a Facebook page versus a Facebook Group? A page is something more for an organization, where it's one-way communication to you, whereas a group is meant more for conversations.

How many of you participate in Facebook Groups already? OK, a huge chunk of you. How many of you have your own Facebook Groups? OK. So for those of you that don't--for those of you that don't, we're going to watch a quick video that shows how to create a Facebook Group. It's super fast, and it's super easy. In fact, it goes by so quickly, you miss this important aspect of Facebook Groups, and that is the privacy settings. There are three privacy settings with Facebook Groups. The first is a public group. That means anyone on Facebook can find your group and see the members and see all of your information. The second is a closed group, and this is the Facebook default. A closed group means anyone on Facebook can find your group and can see the membership, but they can't see the information in your group. And finally, a secret group. Now, secret group is just that--it's secret. No one can search Facebook and find it. No one can see the membership except the members, and no one can see the information or that discussion feed except the members, as well. Now, we recommend Facebook Groups for family groups--if you're looking at making a family group--for a few reasons. Number one, we had minors in our family. We wanted to help protect their identity and their security. We also have some law enforcement members in our family, and so by keeping that secret, it helps to protect them and their families. And finally, quite honestly, we just didn't want our family information available to everyone on Facebook. So here's how we create a Facebook Group.

There are numbers of ways to do things in Facebook. We're showing you the way that makes the most sense to us. This top right-hand corner arrow--choose Create Group. You get this dialog box. You type in your group name. You add some people. You choose your privacy setting. And then in the bottom left-hand corner, it says Pin to Shortcuts, and that's quite important to check. Oh, but wait, there was a problem. Oh, we forgot to add a member. Facebook now requires that you add at least one member to your Facebook Group when you create it. And then you choose an icon that best represents it, and you click OK, and you have your Facebook Group. Now, how do we know that we are in our Facebook Group? Just underneath the Facebook logo, on the upper-left corner, it tells us the name of our group, and it gives us, in that navigation bar, different ways for us to navigate the group. Now, remember I told you, when we created it, there was that little check box that said Pin to Shortcuts? That's where you see this. Right underneath that navigation bar, you see Shortcuts, and that's where you'll be able to find your group the next time you log into Facebook. Now, now that we've created our group, we need to maybe make it a little pretty. That black box is--I like black, but maybe not quite the right look for our family group. So let's add a picture, and then I think we'll be able to go ahead and add numbers. So to add a picture, we choose Photo. And you can navigate to something you already have on Facebook or in your group already. We chose to navigate to something on our computer. We selected it. It uploads it, and then you have a little bit of repositioning ability. And then you click Save Changes, and your picture is there. Now, just under that picture, on the right-hand side, it allows you to add numbers right on the screen. As you type the name of your friends, Facebook will prompt you, and you can just choose them from the list. Now, let's say I wanted to add George Clooney to my family Facebook group. I mean, who wouldn't want George Clooney in their group, right? So maybe I type George Clooney, but his name doesn't come up, because you have to be Facebook friends first before you can add them to your group.

Now we're going to take a look at some of the features within Facebook as far as the settings go. So first we're going to orient to the screen a little bit. There's two more buttons that we're going to talk about today. The first one is located right under the photo, within that menu. And if we go ahead and take a closer look at that, the next one was within the post, which is just to the right and down. You'll notice that it's got a big X on it, because we're going to look at the one right under the photo, which means anything we change in here is applicable to the whole group, as opposed to the one specifically for the post. So when we go ahead and we click on this More button, we've got these options here. So you'll notice that we've got Edit Group Settings, or Pin or Unpin to Shortcuts. So let's say you forgot to add that pin when you created your group. You can add it here. So we're going to take a look, and we've got a short video looking at some Edit Group Setting options. So we're going to go ahead--we'll navigate to that More under the photo.

And we're going to click it, and then we'll click Edit Group Settings. This top portion that it displays is all about searching your membership, or allowing your group to be searchable on Facebook. So if you've got a secret group, this isn't applicable. All right, so then if you scroll down a little bit further, you've got your privacy settings. So you can adjust your privacy settings at any time. Then this lower portion here we're going to take a closer look at, concerning membership approvals and postings. So Facebook defaults that anyone can add to this Facebook Group. But we don't want that, because we wanted that second layer of security for our family group. So we recommend, for your family groups, that you click only administrators or moderators can add. People can recommend, but only those two can approve it. And then we left the rest of these the same as Facebook recommended, because we wanted our family to be able to engage freely, and who has the time to approve every single post within a group? So we've created our Facebook Group, but now--we always talk about this word, engagement. And I've had people say, well, what really does engagement mean? So let's take a look at what it means. When I was in college, I remember taking a communications class. And we had an image--something like this--where there was a sender and a receiver. And the sender sends a message to the receiver, who in turn provides feedback to the sender. And that's the only way the sender knows the message was delivered and received. In email or text or social media, we don't get these audible and body language cues to know that something was delivered. At home, it might go something like this. Hey, son, would you please take out the trash? Pft. Again? Right? That's the feedback. But for social media, it looks a little bit different. In Facebook, the sender sends a post. That's what we're posting to Facebook. And then the family, or whoever is a member of your group, provides feedback--whether it's typed, whether it's a or a comment, or maybe they send you a private email. That part is the engagement. That's how you know when you have engagement. So looking at Facebook specifically, what does engagement look like? Well, this post is--first option is a like or a comment. So let's take a closer look at the likes. When you click on that, you got these fun emojis that you can respond to that post. So you can say you like it, you love it, or maybe an angry face. Then the other option is to write a comment. So this, you would just simply type a comment and click Enter, and it goes within your Feed. Now, you'll notice, on the right of your screen, this is an example of the comments we received to this post. So it was an engaging post.

So engagement is great, right? We want people to be talking and getting excited about things. But what makes for an engaging post? Well, there's a couple of guidelines we can follow. Number one, keep the information relevant. Post things that are on topic. I like to use the example that if I was having a really great lunch and I took a picture and I put it on my family Facebook group, would they really appreciate that? Probably not, because that really isn't the right place for that information. Also, how about making it interesting? With Facebook, you can keep it short. We don't need to write the novels. Use some emojis in the text. Add a photo, or better yet, even a video that relates to what it is you're posting about. And then do things that encourage responses. Ask questions. Ask for help. Ask for feedback.

So we've got an example for you. This slide is a screenshot of the next slide that you're going to see, minus the dialog boxes. All of the words are exactly the same in all three of the posts, which reads, "Just a reminder, cousins game night is this Saturday. We will also be celebrating Kelli Shipp's birthday. Who can make it?" So what's going to happen is your brain is going to take in the whole slide, and then your eye is going to be drawn to a specific area, all right? It's going to happen really fast, so pay attention. Where's your eye drawn, and where does it gravitate? Ready? 3, 2, 1, go. Alright, who was drawn to A first? B? How about C? Alright. Now, you may see that this isn't exactly accurate, because within our discussion feed, all the images are on top of one another. So we're going to rack and stack them one more time, and remember, note where your eye is drawn. Ready? 3, 2, 1, go. How many people still saw C first? OK, a lot of you. Now, you may say that this isn't exactly accurate, because the images were exactly the same. But the premise is there--that photos make more of an engaging post. And with a great photo like that, who wouldn't be drawn to go see it? So we've created our Facebook Group. We've made it pretty. We've talked about what makes an engaging post. So how do we put it all together and put it into practice? We've got this information from the past that we want to share. We've got today's information, and we can even use Facebook Groups to share things that are coming tomorrow or in the future to build that family history today. So we're going to take a look at--more specifically, we're going to look at examples sharing posts and uploading documents--Facebook documents--Polls and Events. Now, these are Facebook Group features. So we're going to look more deeply at how we can utilize each one of these. This first example is a picture of my great-grandmother and a vehicle that was in her family. We know this vehicle is an Oldsmobile because we can read Oldsmobile on the front hood of the car. We believe it was probably in the '40s, but that's really all we know. We don't know the model of it. So we put this post out to our family and said, help us solve this mystery. We're trying to figure out what model of car this is. Well, I don't think we have any midcentury American car buffs in our family, because we couldn't figure out what this car was. So my plea to you today is, if you are here and you happen to be a midcentury car buff or know someone who is who could help us solve this mystery, please come speak to us afterwards. We would really appreciate that help in solving this. Another great feature is, think about all those stories, or maybe family newsletters that you've written over the years, and how you want to share those with your family. There's a way, within Facebook Groups, to be able to do this. So we're going to walk through that. So once again, we're going to go to that More tab. But this time, it's within the post--here. And we're going to select that top option to add a file. Once we do, this dialog box comes up, where we can write a post about it. And then we can click Choose File, where we would navigate to our computer, much like we did when we selected that photo. Then, as you'll see, it says, ABC-issue 1 there, and we're going to go ahead and click Save. Now, this is what your post looks like within your discussion feed. Anybody in your group, then, can download or preview that document that you just uploaded. But as the Administrator or the Owner of that post, you are the only one that can upload a revision. So it's a great way to share documents. OK, Facebook calls this next feature Create Doc. We like to call it Create a Living Document. It's a little bit more explanatory. We're going to continue to choose this More in the post box, and we're going to choose Create Doc. And then the screen changes. It gives us this gray box across the top for us to add a horizontal image, a title, and some text. And when we do that, this is what it looks like. And then when we hit Save, this is what we get as our post. Now, how could this be useful for us? And you notice there aren't any people in that picture. Well, this is a great example of a way of uploading a picture, adding the title and some text, of trying to solve a mystery. The people in this picture have been cropped out, because this isn't about the people. This is about the painting that's hanging on the wall. I had just come from these fancy museums and seen pictures of girls at pianos playing piano, and I could see this picture barely, just like you can see it here today. And I researched this and researched this and finally came across this picture on the internet. And discovered, this looks just like the picture on the wall in the photograph. And as I did more research, I found out, yes, this was painted by a famous photographer. And you could see my wheels in my mind racing. I'm thinking, OK, I know that original photograph is quite old. I wonder where this painting or this picture came from, that was on the wall. Could this actually be, like, a lost painting in the series of paintings by someone really famous, right? You can see that, my mind's working. Well, by putting this photo out and asking some questions about helping me solve this mystery of the photograph, or the painting on the wall, we did discover it had quite an adventurous past to get to the wall in that house on that photograph. And not only that, the image that you see here on the screen is a cell phone photograph of the exact one that was hanging on the wall. We found who owned that--who owned the painting--and where it was hanging. Now, this is a living document, and Facebook is really, really great at creating this communication--this cross-communication. But Facebook is not a great historical place to save your historical data. So when you uncover facts such as this, you want to make sure to save that outside of Facebook so that you can preserve that for the future. The next feature we're going to look at is a Facebook poll, could also be known as a survey. So if I do, now--we click in the post box, and on that bottom menu, we select Poll.

Now, we're going to walk through a brief video on how we would set up a poll. So we're going to do that by once again selecting that Poll button within our post, and we're going to type our question. Now, we're going to start adding response options for our users. Facebook may or may not try to anticipate options for you, but just keep typing, it's fine. If you need more than the three options shown here, you can add as many as you need. And then in that lower-left corner, you've got that thing that says Poll Options. If we select on that, that's how your users can respond if you can allow them to maybe add another option that's not listed, or if they can select multiple. For this one, we're going to unselect submitting their own and only allow them to select multiple. And then we click Post.

And this is what it looks like within our Facebook discussion feed. Now, you may be asking, yeah, but now I've put it out there, how do I know and get the information from it? So you're going to see, on the right-hand side, you've got those little photos. And the top one has the 3 plus the circle with a +5 in it. That is saying that that top one is clearly the winner. You'll also notice that there's a thin, gray bar across that middle section, which shows that that number--or that first option--is the clear winner. And then the second one, it has that gray bar halfway through. OK, and the final Facebook Group feature we're going to dig into is Events. It allows us to create Events, which would be sharing that information for the future. We choose the More that's in that post box, and we click Create Event. It brings up a dialog box that allows us to add a picture and the event details, and then when we click Save, it takes us to an Events area. And my favorite part about Events is it allows you to have this RSVP section. So when your family sees the event, they can say they're going or not going, et cetera. Now, it works just as well as any other RSVP for events, but it is there, and it is a great little feature. So now that we've shown you some of the features, we want to give you some examples of ways that you can apply these features within your family Facebook groups. So the first one--as you're digitizing your research, you may be able to share birth certificates or newspaper articles, along with any other documents that you come across, with your families. Now, you may be thinking, well, but I've got journals and all these other documents. Those could be scanned and uploaded and shared as well. The great option that I think would be-- let's say you have your great-grandfather's mission journal. Maybe you scan it one week at a time and upload it, so that way, during his 100th year of his birthday, you can post consistently, one week at a time, to share that year of his life with your family.

Another fun way of sharing information from the past is to take a picture that you have illustrating the past and relate it to the present. So on the left, you have a picture of my grandmother holding some very sizable fish in each hand. On the right, you have a picture of myself holding some very sizable fish. And the caption reads something like, have the fish really gotten smaller over time, or has my family's ability to fish diminished that much?

Another way is that poll that we talked about, or that survey. It's a great way to get instantaneous information back from your families. So let's say that you've got an event coming up and you're trying to find a date. Instead of going into those group text or emails, trying to compile the information, you can put it on Facebook--as well as, maybe, some menu options for that event, or even a reunion location. All of those could be engaged with your family to get their input through a poll. And we talked about sharing the past, sharing the present. But what about planning for the future and sharing that future? Because that future ultimately becomes our family history. Well, these particular examples I'm going to show you are specific to a family reunion. And these are actual examples that we used in our Facebook Group. The first one--we wanted to bring our family on the journey with that family reunion planning committee. Get them involved. They get some skin in the game, and then they get excited. And they can see it as it progresses so that it isn't just a date in the future with nothing happening up until that point. So this first example is cinnamon rolls. But how is that relevant to our family group? Well, the family reunion committee was planning on having cinnamon rolls as one of our items for breakfast one day, and this was a taste test. So we collected cinnamon rolls from our area and put them all together and brought our family along on that journey of tasting them with us. We also posted pictures of things about the event that would be coming in the future. This is an example of just some candy that was going to be on the tables, and how it was decorated. Now, this is a fun thing to do with your groups, and this is a game. We had a number of items in this game where we said, what is this? And the first one who guessed exactly what it was would win a prize. And that was another way of encouraging that engagement. Now, this particular example is a fabric, or a woven tag, that was actually sewn into the T-shirts--on the bottom of the T-shirts for that family reunion. And this last item is simply just elements that were part of the decor. But it's in a fun, unique way, not laid out all pretty, but just to whet their appetite and give them something to look forward to. What this is also good for are when you have family at a distance who maybe isn't coming to your reunion, it allows them to have glimpses and pieces of that reunion so that as they're planning in the future, they'll even be more excited about reunions in the future. Now, we've looked at how we can use Facebook. We found some things that--maybe some hints and tricks--that you would find helpful just like we did. So these are a couple ones that we'd like to go through today. The first one is a Group Search option. So you'll notice that, with this photo, on the far right side just below it, there's this search box here. We're going to type in the word "cousins" and hit Enter. This is what comes up. It filters every post that has the word "cousins" in it. So if you're like me and really busy and you forgot to download that birth certificate a couple weeks ago, instead of having to manually filter through the documents and every post--because your family's really engaging--this is a great way to search and be able to consolidate and get that information. Our second hint and trick is frequent and consistent posting. Now, what does this mean in regular English? It means pick a schedule and stick with it. And then we get asked, well, what's the right schedule? How frequent do we need to be posting? Unfortunately, there isn't any magical formula for that. It's really what works best for your particular group. Now, I would say, if you're doing a family group and you have an event or a large event coming in the future, that if you want to build that excitement for that family event, that you post maybe a little bit more frequently as that family event gets closer and closer. The next thing that we're going to look at to help you maintain that consistent posting is the ability to schedule within Facebook. So to do that, we would click in our post tab--or our post box--and we write our post out. Now, the trick is, with this, you have to write the post first. Then we're going to go down and click on that little clock that's next to the Post button. When we do that, this box comes up, which allows us to be able to schedule. The caveat with it is you have to schedule at least 5 minutes ahead of present time to be able to do that. Once we get the date and time selected that we want, we go ahead and click Schedule. Then it comes up in our discussion feed this way, showing that we have one scheduled post. Now, one of the awesome things about this is you can schedule 1 to over 100 posts. So let's say you're on a roll one Saturday or Sunday afternoon, you can go ahead and schedule a whole bunch of posts and get them ready to go for the next month or week or whatever you'd like, and then you can engage in other ways on your group--because your consistency is already established. Now, the positive side of this is nobody else can see that you have posts scheduled. So they can't see yours, and you can't see theirs. So it's like a secret squirrel thing going on. Another way you can schedule through Facebook is to use a third-party application, and we are going to go over what third-party applications are. But this is an example of two of them--Hootsuite and Buffer. Now, you may be asking, well, if I can schedule in Facebook, why would I want to use a third-party application to do it? These third-party applications interface with other social media platforms, OK? So depending on your family group and how connected they are on social media, you could have several platforms where you can schedule your post in, and it will post to Facebook, and, let's say, Instagram, at the same time. So it's a great way to save you more time. OK, so we've talked about how we share the past, the present, and the future with Facebook Group and with those features that Facebook Group offers. But we haven't yet talked about how we can do that and further enhance that experience for our extended families by using third-party applications. Now, I've had someone ask me, well, how do you know exactly what a third-party application is? So I thought I'd just quickly review it. You, as the user, are party number one--the first party. And you interface with Facebook, Facebook being the second party. But Facebook isn't the only app on our phones, and we certainly use more applications than just Facebook. So we have all these other applications over here that we use, as well. Now, when we take the information from these other applications and we put it on Facebook, then these apps are third-party to Facebook. So what does that look like? How can we share that information with third-party apps? Well, this first one's kind of a trick, because it's not really an app. This is a cell phone, so if you have a smartphone with a camera, you have this time-lapse function. This is our family reunion that was held about a year ago, and we set the camera up to record. I'd recommend you plug it in. This recorded a number of hours. And what you're seeing here is the setup of the family reunion in a very short video. Now, why is this fun? Well, again, for those that are at a distance that can't make that event, they are excited. They get to see it. They get to participate in that family reunion virtually. And for those that were local or that had come into town for the reunion, it gave them a little bit of flavor for what they were going to be seeing later in the day. Of course, this wasn't all of the decor. This was just the room where we were eating and playing and having games, et cetera. But it helped them see the vision for what was coming in the future. Now, this third-party app is called Publizr, and it's one of many that offer this ability. Let's say that we have a book that's been written by our family, or maybe it's a history of someone's life, or maybe we've compiled it, or maybe we're putting together pictures and stories and building it ourselves. By taking that information that we've done electronically, saving it as a PDF, we can now upload that to a third-party site. In this case, that third party is called Publizr. And what Publizr does is it takes your PDF and it puts it on their site in a format that allows your viewer to flip through it like a magazine. So that interface is just like a magazine, and it's a really fun interface for someone to read. So this is what we did. We put together various issues of a family magazine, if you will. We uploaded the issue to Publizr and created the link and shared it to our Facebook Group, which is what you see here on the left. Now, one of my cousins clicked this link, was taken to the Publizr site, was reading the magazine, and got to this story. This is just a simple story, two pages with some pictures, and he's reading the story. The story is about my great-grandparents raising a family during the Depression and the things that they did. It talks a little bit about the firewood and stories with firewood, and it talks about a saw that was used--that was very important to the family--with the wood. Now, my cousin, reading this, says, oh no, no, no. That is not the saw! I actually have the original saw. So he went out, got his saw, laid it down, took the picture you see here on the right, and then he didn't stop there. He decided to tell us stories about the saw--how he inherited it, how he used it as a child. He and his brothers had to use this saw when they were younger. And even better, they had a nickname for the saw, and the nickname for it was the misery whip. That's how they referred to it. So we were able to take his--I want to show you this. We were able to take his picture, which is what you see here on the--oh, you can't see my thing--is the picture you see on the right. And at the bottom--right down here at the bottom, this is my cousin's story. So what does that do for us? That further enhances the story we already had. Now we have even a greater story from what we already had with the actual saw in the picture. Now, this is one of my most favorite apps of today. This app is called Boomerang. It's only available on mobile devices, but it is Apple and Android. And here's how it works. When you turn it on, it takes a burst series of 10 photographs. And it has a flash so you can do it lower light conditions. It takes those 10 photos. It smooshes them together and creates this looped video. This is just a really fun way to share part of those moments as, maybe, you're getting ready for a particular event.

So right now, I'd like you to think about a tradition that you have in your family. This is one of ours. So this is in honor of my great-grandmother. Every Christmas, she would make these wonderful, tasty popcorn balls. We'd go to her house on Christmas Eve and come home with a grocery bag of popcorn balls and just be in hog heaven, for sure. So we honor her every year by making her popcorn balls. So this is some photos--or these are some photos--of this year's popcorn ball event. Now, if we were to take those photos and to put them into Facebook, they might look something like this. Well, the third-party application of Flipagram might make things a little bit more interesting. So this is definitely an engaging post. It's fun. It's got color. But if we were to use Flipagram, which puts things into a movie, we might be able to see something like this. So this is the photo once it's been posted to Facebook, and we're going to go ahead. We click on that link, and this is what-- [MUSIC--KATRINA AND THE WAVES, "WALKING ON SUNSHINE"] (SINGING) --knock on my door. Yeah, every time I go for the mailbox, I gotta hold myself down.

'Cause I just can't wait-- So who's ready for some popcorn balls? [LAUGHTER] That recipe will also be available on our secret site, just for you, because they are absolutely amazing. But it is one way to capture the same information in a little bit more of an interesting way. This next application is for Apple products only right now, and it's called Clips. And it takes a static image like this one and adds different filters over the top of it. So you can voice-to-text over it and put some words on it, if you'd like. And just imagine how great this would look in your discussion feeds, as you're scrolling through, to update your family. Really interesting, right?

There are so many third-party applications out there. I mean, there's hundreds of thousands, probably. And we've discovered quite a few of them. So I've added some more to our secret site that will be available with the updated syllabus.

So we talked about these third-party applications. How do you get that information from those third-party apps like Boomerang and Flipagram--how do you get it from there to your Facebook group? Now, third-party applications are interesting. Most of them that have a social feature allow you to share directly to Facebook, but not all of them that share to Facebook allow you to share directly to Facebook groups, which is a little bit deeper of a level. So what does that term, "sharing," mean? That term, "sharing," is simply taking that information from one app and moving it, in our case, to Facebook Groups. So what does it look like? These are two posts from third-party applications to our Facebook group. They look quite different. The one on the right looks native. I'm sorry, the one on the left looks native to Facebook, and it's right in your discussion feed. The one on the right is a link, and so we all know that when you click on this, it's going to take you outside of Facebook to that third-party site. In this case, it was that Publizr site so they could read that magazine. Now, sharing can be a little bit confusing, so we thought we'd walk through what that looks like on some social media platforms. So think of sharing as that one to two, or in this first option, the megaphone. So it's one to two people, or it could be an arrow, or simply the word Share. They can be various colors, but they all mean that same thing--going from one to two, or a movement. We're going to take a look at, from a computer, how you would share on the Publizr site. So this is very clear. It says Share. So we're going to go ahead and click on that option. We get this menu here. We're going to select Share on Social Media. When we do that, we get this box that comes up, which we have to select which social media application we want to use. In our case, we have to click on the F for Facebook. This dialog box comes up, and we're going to take a closer look at that. So we have to select Share on Your Timeline. But I don't want to share it on my timeline, I want to share it within my group. So we're going to need to change that, but first, I'd like you to note--at the top of this screen--that it says it's www.facebook.com. So at this point, you are actually in Facebook. So that helps with the security thing, at least for me. So we'll go ahead, and we're going to click Share on Timeline, and we get this option of different ways or places we can share it. So we're going to select Share in Group. When we do that, it comes back here, and we can start typing our group name that we want to share it to. Now, as you can see, Facebook is anticipating which group that we want to use. And so we are going to go ahead and select Best Family EVER. When we do that, we can type a post. You don't have to, but you can--just saying, yes, it's here. We're so excited! Or whatever you'd like. Then go ahead and click Post to Facebook in the lower right-hand corner. Then this is what it looks like within Facebook, and so you can click on that link and go view that document that you've stored on that third-party application. And back to my favorite app of the day, Boomerang! This is my cute cousin posing for us. Now, Boomerang, as we mentioned earlier, is a mobile app only. So how do we share from a mobile app to our Facebook Groups? The image on the right is what it looks like on my phone. And when I choose that particular Boomerang--because that's what they call these videos, clever, clever--it gives us some options on the bottom to share. We click on Facebook, Share to Facebook, and then PowerPoint crashes. Isn't that awesome? [LAUGHTER] So we click on that Share to Facebook, and it brings up, on our phone, a top line that says, Friends and Family, Friends for Facebook, with a little side arrow, a space to write the message, and the Boomerang image. So that top line has that little side arrow. We click on that, and it'll take us right into Facebook. So Facebook manages that process of sharing into Facebook. So we click on that, and we can choose friends, our personal areas, or we can choose Group. So we selected Group, and then it tells me all my different groups that I'm a member of where I can post. I choose Best Family EVER. It populates that on that top line, and then I type my message that I want to appear on Facebook. And then in the top right-hand corner, it says Post. And when I touch on Post, it goes right to Facebook, and I get to see my cute little cousin dancing.

We've covered a lot of information today. We've looked at the connectivity of Facebook and how you don't have to be Facebook Group friends, but somebody in your family might be to get your whole family within the same group. We've looked at the security features that are really convenient and easy to use. We've looked at membership controls, and how it's cross-generational for your entire family to participate. We've looked at engagement and what that means on social media, and how we get responses back within our Facebook family group.

Then we looked at different ways of using the Facebook Group features to share that historical information that we have sitting around in those photographs, those stories. We looked at how to share the present and how to, maybe, solve some mysteries along the way. And then we looked at, how can we prepare for the future or share things that are coming in the future? We looked at those not only through the Facebook Group features, but also through many of the third-party apps. So we've been asked, does this work, and is it really worth it? Well, you've seen the information that we've shared within our family Facebook Group has been about the present generation and the past. Through the sharing of that information on social media, connections have been built, especially with those family members that are out of state. Relationships have deepened, and we've truly become better friends. Now, I don't know about your family, but our family dynamic has changed a lot over the last several years with marriages and births. And all of those have been shared experiences through social media. The ultimate test for us was that large family reunion where we didn't have those awkward moments because all of that ice breaking had occurred online. So for us, it is totally worth it. And it is definitely worth it in our family. So remember that with every post, comment, and like, you are adding to your family's history one link at a time. Thank you for the opportunity to be here today and for allowing our family to help connect yours. [APPLAUSE]

Use Facebook and FREE Apps to Engage Family

Description
This demonstration will unleash many great (and free) features of Facebook while helping you preserve and share family memories. Then look at other apps that can bring your history to the present.
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