We’ve all done them. You’re hosting a little shindig at home when you’ve realised you don’t have Fred’s new phone number and that you’ll probably just get Julie’s answering machine for the next few days again. What do you do? Facebook it.

Sure the effort of doing so isn’t a lot, but how effective are they in actually gaining a successful guest list? In my experience, you could always assume the social network addicts would sign up first, if not immediately, then slowly the numbers creep up until you’ve got the record player set to Hottest 100 Party Tracks as guests shyly arrive.

Well, anyway, I asked fellow Twitter addicts how they use Facebook events. Next week, I might ask the neighbours, but they’ll just look at me strangely and offer a cup of sugar instead.

“I think they are fantastic, except not everyone is on FB. Good marketing ploy of theirs though” – @kirstywrites

Attendance

Clearly diminishes 20% on average. Due to lack of interaction with the host? Possibly. As Facebook ages, less people are taking their RSVPs on the website seriously.

Personal Touch

The main argument many people I speak to have against Facebook is the lack of face-to-face communication. No Twitter respondants actually mentioned this!

Time frame

Clearly you’re unable to post a Facebook event for the same day. A week might suffice depending on the size and nature of your event, also on how active your guests are on the social network which can be quite a lot of assuming. Four weeks or even more for a major celebration or fundraiser is ideal if you have this time frame available.

Then there is the “Maybe” RSVP option. Dreaded by event hosts, loved by attendees:

“I can reply ‘maybe’ to events & they still show up in my timeline, so I can decide to go closer to the time.” – @scarlettjen

Diary Management

@ccake, like @iusebiro and @brentoe, syncs FB events with other calculators and also chooses to have e-mail notifications turned on for when the invitations come in, much like @kissability does.

“I do use Facebook events and I have email notifications turned on for invitations. I find it very useful in my busy schedule!” – @kissability

“Handy for knowing about harder to find things (house show parties, gallery openings) new facebook keeps it more hidden though.” – @vivzilla

“[I] check my requests (incl event invites) daily, a bit spammy but still quite useful.” – @djackmanson

“Events is my primary use of Facebook- I use it constantly as my social calendar. Find it incredibly useful.” – @glittertrash

“I use it all the time, both as an attendee and organiser. Very handy.” – @sleepydumpling

“I rely heavily on my Facebook events. I’m very forgetful, so having them display in ‘coming up’ on my homepage really helps.” - @hellyeahkate

Authenticity

Having only a Facebook event for an invitation, do people trust these or seek verbal confirmation of the event? @brentoe doesn’t seem to think so, but @erikveland has other ideas:

“I rely on it to track my events. Unfortunately event spam has made them useless as a source to send out REAL invitations…Because of event spam, most people will just ignore invitations altogether unless you specifically bring attention to them.” – @erikveland

“I use them and so do nearly all of my friends. Event isn’t “official” until it’s on FB” – @brentoe

Suggestions for Facebook

Option to lose the ‘Maybe’ RSVP. That would be my main suggestion. What do you think?

“The “no chance” ones can be annoying. It’s OK to be invited once, but multiple times?! We need ”never invite me” op” - @divabat

“If FB used microformats for events it would be a great improvement. Otherwise I rarely check events” – @zuzu

In closing…

I’m having a house party next weekend, which I’m very excited about, and the Facebook event went up a week or so ago. Let’s see how many make it, but in the meantime, what are your views on Facebook events usage?

Welcome to the fourth installment of my Twitter for N00bs series. You can find the intro post here.

My fourth blog of the series is balancing out my previous on giving to the Twitter community, now I’m making a list of useful resources you can use to find interesting stuff on the network. Afterall, there’s no point in tweeting if you’re not  getting anything out of it!

• Search the Twittersphere! – Just check out what people are saying on Twitter. This is helpful for keeping track of conversations, events, people… anything! I was showing my father over my holidays how to look up industry activities on Twitter. He still hasn’t a Twitter account, but my mum was interested in how to look up “gardening tips” for sure!
  
• Hashtags – Mentioned in my last blog, these things are so useful! A bit tricky to get a grasp on at first, you’ll be using them in many, many tweets from now on. To quote from a recent reader, “If people are looking for tweets about the TV show ‘Lost’, they probably aren’t interested in someone talking about their lost cat (though they possibly should be). So people use #LOST to show the tweet is specifically about the show.” Excellent way of putting it!
• Twitter User Groups – A little self-promotion here, but I cannot stress enough the helpfulness of your local community. Find them, follow a few and ask away! Using the hashtag for your city (e.g. #Brisbane) is a good way of finding local information too. Another way to find local tweeps is by visiting Nearby Tweets. (thanks @jendudley for the reminder!)
• Wefollow – A category-based user directory. Put yourself up there by nominating three categories and ye shall be sought!
• Twellow – This one I feel is a bit outdated, but it’s still a good one for finding tweeps with common interests.

Bonus cleaning mentions

These are the two sites I tell tweeps about when they’re complaining of issues managing followers.

• FriendorFollow – Just as the name says, this one lists who is following you, who you’re following and who is a mutual friend. I use it when I’m jack of following uninteresting people
  
• Twitoria – Best. Ever. This one shows who the slack tweeps are you’re following. Someone hasn’t tweeted for a few months? Few weeks? Easy clean-up!

Well, I hope I’ve delivered on easy-to-use resources for finding interesting things on Twitter. And just for the marketing gurus who are looking for something a little specified: How to Use Twitter for Marketing & PR

(So, Paul… still think we’re lonely? Stupid?)

Welcome to the third installment of my Twitter for N00bs series. You can find the intro post here.

Today’s (well, yesterday’s really. I had a day off.) is all about proving yourself to the Twitter community once you’ve done that other stuff I’ve talked about.

• Be concise. Obviously you’ve only got 140 characters to work with, and if you’re hoping or expecting (you cocky thing, you!) people to retweet you, leave 20-30 characters space so they can credit you without altering the content.
• Variety. It’s cool that you’re linking to your blog, but don’t do just that; interact! Ask questions. Share a joke. Share a picture. Just don’t do only one thing (unless you’re a specialist account for a particular company or reason, but even then they’re pretty boring after a while). Even @MyToaster pipes up occasionally!.
• Show your stuff. You know a whole lot of stuff about law? Construction work? Kittens? Show it! There’s a phrase called “thought leadership” which is quite relevant here in that you can make a name for yourself by being the go-to person for your passion or area of expertise. Share what makes you tick.
• Hashtags are awesome! This is the aspect of Twitter which I am most asked about; “what are those damn hashtags all about?” I don’t even  fully understand them myself, but there are plenty of places about which will tell you. Just don’t use too many in one tweet. It’s annoying.
• Know how to Retweet (RT). I am tempted to write a whole blog about this entirely, but I won’t because it’s over-thought. The commonly accepted format of a retweet (crediting someone with content) is:

RT @username: CONTENT

not

CONTENT. (RT @username)

Feel free to use “via” in place of “RT” when you are not quoting them word-for-word. And please take out extra usernames if there is a chain happening. Usually the username closest to the content is the original author.

• Ask yourself: does anyone really care? It’s as simple as that.
  

Okay, I’m done; this is my simple list. Any more to add? Come on, people! I’ve only just wet your tongue with this stuff!