SMUG Social Media University Global

Facebook Focus Groups: Prologue

I’ve written previously about how Facebook can be used disruptively to provide souped-up pictorial directories for churches and other organizations, how it can serve as an on-line booster club (complete with video and photo highlights and links to newspaper coverage) for high school and youth sports teams, and other “off label” uses of Facebook and Twitter. It doesn’t take a lot of thought to see how it also could challenge sites like classmates.com or reunions.com, particularly as people of the Stayin’ Alive generation (who have stayed alive) move into Facebook.

Facebook has some market research features that are part of its paid offerings, but there’s another way companies or organizations could conduct qualitative research among current or potential customers or members. These could be either short-term focus groups, or ongoing customer panels.

In my next few posts I’ll take a step-by-step approach to creating these groups in Facebook. I’m attending the Frost & Sullivan Sales & Marketing conference in Litchfield Park, Ariz. over the next few days. I’ll be part of a panel on blogging, and blogging about what I learn there, but I think these qualitative research methods using Facebook that I’ll be describing could be an immensely practical and cost-effective way to interact with current or prospective customers or members.

8 Things You Didn’t Know About Me

Shel Holtz has tagged me in this meme, and I’m glad to join. Like him, my life is pretty much an open book since I’ve been blogging, especially since I have used my blog to send Christmas/Thanksgiving family newsletters last year and this year. And those who are my Facebook friends have had yet another window into my world.

But while both of our lives may be open books, Shel’s has definitely been checked out of the library more often than mine has, with him being a podcasting rock star and all. So for anyone who’s new to my blog, I’ll mix a few things regular readers might know with some never-before-disclosed items, starting with…

I’m going to be a Grandpa! Actually, I didn’t know that about me until yesterday, when my daughter Rachel called to tell us that she and her husband Kyle are expecting in September. My Dad was 55 when Rachel became his first grandchild; my wife, Lisa, and I will be 45 at the Borg baby’s birth. We met and became engaged at 18, married at 21 and had Rachel when we were 22 years, 8 months. That’s almost exactly the same age Rachel will be when she delivers.
We have an unusual family (see above.) I think we’re in about the 99th percentile for family size, with six children. That’s three times the U.S. average. Three boys and three girls, but without the Brady Bunch blended family model. We got them all one at a time. Although we’re of German and Norwegian descent, two of our daughters are Irish twins, born 50 weeks apart. They’re in the same grade in school: one born Sept. 14, the the other Aug. 31, just three hours before the enrollment deadline. Not that it mattered when they were younger, because…
Lisa has homeschooled all six of our kids, at least until they reached 9th grade. Two (Rachel and Jake) waited until they were high school juniors to start public school, and at that point took advantage of Minnesota’s Post-Secondary Enrollment Options (PSEO) program, which lets students get both high school and college credit for the same courses. They have both now graduated from UW-La Crosse; Jake turns 21 in March, and Rachel turns 22 a week from today.
Our kids are living proof that you shouldn’t make snap judgments about athletic or academic ability. Rachel walked at nine months, but she’s one of our three non-athletic kids. Bekah wasn’t even rolling over at that age, and didn’t walk until she was 14 months old, but she was our earliest bike rider and made the high school volleyball and basketball teams as a sophomore. Ruthie couldn’t read until she was seven. Within a week she had progressed to reading chapter books, and I’ve blogged previously about her memorization abilities. She just scored a 31 on her ACT and made the 99th percentile on her PSAT. Joe, our middle son, walked when he was 10 months and 9 days old. We remember that not because it was particularly early or late, but because he walked the day O.J. walked.
I played in the Minnesota Boys High School Basketball State Tournament, back in the days when basketball shorts were and Kool & the Gang was. We were 24-1 in my senior year, losing in the championship game. You can see my personal highlight reel by becoming one of my Facebook friends. I got this VHS tape thanks to the generosity of a friend whose brother was among the 1 percent or so of people who actually owned a VCR back in 1981, when they cost more than $1,000. My, how times change. We didn’t get to see video of our games until we made the state tournament, although we occasionally would get home in time to see highlights on the 10 p.m. news; now I post video highlights of every one of my daughter’s regular season games on Facebook.
I’m a self-taught computer programming geek. I took one computer class as a high school junior, where we waited in line to write programs over a modem hooked to a mainframe at Mankato State University. We also had a couple newfangled Apple II+ computers with monochrome monitors and 64K. I spent about a decade tinkering in BASIC after I got out of college, then got a Mac and 4th Dimension programmable database software, which I used for more than a dozen years. Since I got my managerial job in Mayo Clinic media relations, I’ve gotten away from the computer programming. But now, with Facebook’s platform and FBML, it’s time to start experimenting again.
I ran for State Representative in 1984, when I was 21. I didn’t win, but it led to a 14-year career in politics and government at the local, state and national level, ending as a congressional press secretary.
I used to dream of being George Will, writing a couple of columns a week to be read all over the world. Blogging has made that dream come true. Well, except for not being featured in the Washington Post or appearing weekly on ABC ‘s This Week. Then there’s the absence of best-selling column compilations, too. But it is kind of a kick to have made blog friends in Houston, Virginia, Chicago and foreign countries like Hong Kong, Australia, Egypt and California.

I’m tagging Rachel, Kyle, Ben Martin, Aruni Gunasegaram, Daniel Rothamel, Rick Short, Dennis McDonald, and Janet Johnson.

Netflix on Facebook

The posts have been sparse for the last couple of weeks for three main reasons:

Life isn’t blogging. This will surprise some of my co-workers. I had 11 days off from work, during which time we had about 35 extended family members celebrating Christmas in our home and had our college students home. When you’ve got all that real life happening, virtual connections via social networks take a back seat.
I’ve been switching computers, from a Macintosh PowerBook G4 to a MacBook Pro. I expect to be writing about that soon (the process has been great, and I love the new laptop), but it’s taken some time to be sure I have all of the files synchronized. It’s been a good chance to do some digital file hygiene, and get rid of files that had built up over the last three years or so.
Netflix. While we also patronized our local cinema, including 10 of us catching the Enchanted matinee on Christmas Eve (I also took my bride to National Treasure: Book of Secrets and my youngest to Alvin and the Chipmunks), by far the biggest consumer of our family leisure time was Netflix, both in the DVD methodology and through the “Watch Instantly” feature.

That’s why I was excited to see the development of a Netflix Application for Facebook (hat tip: Anthony LaFauce) that puts the movies you’re watching and the movies in your queue on your Facebook profile.

Read Anthony’s review for fuller details, but I installed it and it’s pretty nifty. It’s one more example of Facebook being a platform that can integrate feeds from your various web activities in one place.

Some people complain about Facebook being a walled garden, and that you can get data in but can’t export it. Some kinds of export and feeds have happened, but mainly Facebook is taking the Apple approach: engineer such a great experience that people will want to use it as the integration point (like iTunes and the iPod) because it’s so easy.

Compared to the vaporware of Google’s OpenSocial, I think it’s a winning strategy for social networking.

365 Days of Memories

Just as companies may choose to use a fiscal year that doesn’t coincide with the calendar year, I’ve decided that my annual Aase family year-in-review should go from December 30, 2006 to December 29, 2007. When I did my first on-line Christmas letter last year (around Thanksgiving), we were only looking forward to one of our family’s major milestones. It seems only fitting that this special day should be the starting point for any review of the last 365 days, and that I should be writing about it on the one-year anniversary of the event.

A year ago today I walked my eldest daughter Rachel down the aisle for her marriage to Kyle Borg. If you’re in Facebook, you can go here to see the highlights. My brother, Mark, took a lot of candid photos and did a great job. We’ve thought about starting a little weekend business doing wedding photography and video, and that may get going in 2008. But for now, we’ve both been really busy with our regular jobs. So I videotaped four weddings in the last year (including Rachel’s and, as a bookend to the year, Mark’s daughter Allyson’s yesterday) to help friends and family and to get some experience. I set up a Facebook group to display some of our work, and then also a Facebook fan page when that became an option in November. Perhaps in 2008 we can make some time to update our Facebook presence by getting more video and photos added. I do think Facebook would be a good way to market a business like this.

In May, we had the unique event of having both my 20-year old son, Jake, and my brother Mark graduating from college on the same day. Here’s a post about that special day and Mark’s commencement speech; Rachel followed Jake in graduating from UW-La Crosse earlier this month. Jake worked at Camp Shamineau this summer, co-leading the high school counselor program. Now he’s working in La Crosse as Rachel and Kyle spend their last year there before Kyle graduates and they move to California for him to attend seminary. We’re glad Rachel and Jake are so close and that Jake and Kyle are good friends, too.

In early July we had a fun family trip to Kansas City for the National Bible Bowl Tournament, where our youngest daughter Ruthie did extremely well as an individual and led the team that included her siblings Joe and Rebekah to a 10th-place finish. Ruthie and Rebekah are both high school juniors this year, taking all or most of their classes at Riverland Community College through Minnesota’s Post-Secondary Enrollment Options programs, which enables them to take college classes for high school credit. This is the plan that enabled their older siblings to graduate from college before age 21.
Bekah made honorable mention all-conference in volleyball as Austin’s middle hitter, and is starting on the Packer girls’ basketball team that’s off to a 6-2 start. As I discussed here, we’re using a Facebook group as a way for team members, parents and fans to share photos and video highlights, and to link to newspaper coverage. She’s almost 6’1″ and is barely (for now) taller than her 13-year old brother, Joe. That won’t be true next year.

We (mostly Lisa) continue to homeschool Joe and John (9). Lisa’s good homeschooling work has been validated by her early college graduates and how well Ruthie and Bekah have done on their ACT and PSAT standardized tests. While in my work I tend to get more immediate feedback on successful projects, Lisa’s is more of the long-term variety. I think she has good reason to take immense satisfaction in what has resulted from how she has given of herself for our children.
John has zero interest in sports, but is a sharp student and more of an artistic/creative guy. Joe plays in orchestra at the middle school and also is involved in football and basketball. It’s really special that he plays on both teams with his cousin Tom, Mark’s son, and that my parents get to attend all of their games (and Bekah’s.)

I often say we have a Norman Rockwell kind of life, with three sons and three daughters being raised in my hometown, near both sets of grandparents. Lisa and I are so grateful for all of these blessings, and for my job with Mayo Clinic that has made it possible for us to live in Austin.

Speaking of my work, 2007 started with separation of another set of conjoined twins from North Dakota. When they went home in February, it capped a one-year period in which three sets of conjoined twins were successfully separated at Mayo Clinic. Our team coordinated the media involvement for the families and medical teams.

New Media, also called social media, are becoming a more important part of my job. We launched a series of Mayo Clinic podcasts in July. This blog and my Facebook exploration have been keys to my social media learning process. It’s interesting to me that a year ago my familiarity with Facebook was indirect; four of my kids were in Facebook, but I wasn’t. Now Lisa and I both have Facebook profiles, and we’re “friends” with Rachel, Jake, Bekah, Ruthie and Joe. I’ve also enjoyed meeting people with common interests through this blog and through Facebook, and at several conferences throughout the year.

So, if you’re a regular reader of this blog, I hope this personal digression won’t make you irregular. 😉 For you, I’ll be following up with a post about how blogs and social media can do a better job than the traditional Christmas card/letter at personal updates to extended family and friends…or how they can make an annual update unnecessary.

And if you’re a family member or friend who got this link from me as part of our annual Christmas letter, I hope you’ll join Facebook and “friend me” so we can stay connected throughout the year.