How to Use Facebook

Facebook can be overwhelming, confusing, and downright maddening.  Hopefully this tutorial will take some of the negative feelings away from the thought of using Facebook and you can see what a great communication tool it can be! 

So now you've created an account.  Now what?!?!?!  Well, let's just see.  When you first log in after creating your account, you'll see the screen below (without the red markups I've created, of course).  But what does all of that mean?

1.  Newsfeed:  This is where you can read posts that your friends and family make.  If you are a fan of any pages (sports stars, celebrities, sports teams, local businesses, national retailers, etc), you will see any updates they have made as well.  Your newsfeed is how you keep up with everyone you are connected with.  If you post an update, your friends and family will see your posts on their newsfeed. 

2. Messages:  With Facebook, you can send a private message (or PM) to someone and only they can see it.  It's kind of like email within Facebook.  You can send group messages if you need to send to more than one person, just like you can send emails to more than one person.  With Facebook if someone includes you in a group message and you no longer wish to be part of the conversation, you can leave it and don't have to receive the messages any longer.  It would be nice if email would allow you to do the same.

3.  Events:  If someone plans an event and uses Facebook, they can invite you to attend.  This is where any of those types of notifications will show up.  You do not have to respond if you do not want to.  You can ignore them and they will go away once the event is over.  If you do wish to attend, you can indicate that you will or you can say "maybe" if you're just not sure.  You can also use this to create an event yourself!  The event can be private so that only those you invite see it, or you can make it open and everyone can see and everyone invited can invite others and so on. 

4.  Find Friends:  This will help you do just what it says!  Facebook will look at the information you have entered on your profile and search it's other 1 billion plus members for those that have similar answers.  For example, if you said you attended John Q Public High School in 1984, Facebook will find other people who have given a similar answer and suggest them as a person you may wish to "friend." 

To get started, we will "like" the Facebook page, Flowers by Mary Lou.  In the search bar in the upper part of the page, type in the name of the shop, as shown below:

 

 

You can see that the first result gives you the flower shop located in Springfield, IL.  That's the one we want, so click on that result.  It will take you to the page created by Flowers by Mary Lou.  As you can see below, Facebook will urge you to "like" the page by clicking the LIKE button.  This only means you are a fan of the page and you can see updates posted by the page's administrator.  They cannot see anything about you, other than you are now a fan.  They will not be able to see your updates. 

 

 

 

 

You can also join groups on Facebook.  Those are just like what they sound like, a group of people with the same interest(s).  There are groups for just about everything under the sun from yard sale-type groups to those interested in a particular breed of dog.  Similar to pages, but instead of just one person posting information for you to read, the posts can come from any member.  If you decide to post something on a group page, everyone in the group can see it and comment.  If the group's privacy is set to public, your other friends and family may be able to see your posts as well.  If the group is closed or secret, then only members of the group can see what you post or what others post.

 

 

Facebook can be a great tool for reconnecting with family and friends, but use caution when posting regardless of your privacy settings.  Once something is on the internet, it's out there for everyone.  Even if you have everything set to private, a not-so-great friend/family member can always take a screenshot of what you've written and share it in a way you had not intended.  A good rule of thumb is to never post anything on any type of social media that you wouldn't say in person.  Another good rule of thumb to adopt is to never, ever make any disparaging comments about your workplace, the company for which you work, or your co-workers.  You never know who might end up seeing it.  There have been documented cases in which people have been fired for a posting on social media.

 

I hope this has lessened your fears of Facebook.  There are still many, many other ways in which it can be used, but that's all we have time for right now. 

 

Thank you!

 

 



Advanced Pinterest

In this tutorial, we will learn more about what can be done with Pinterest and what all the buttons mean.  To start, click on the profile picture by your name.  You'll see the following in the upper right:

Clicking on "Your Profile and Pins" will show you your profile, any boards you've created, and the pins that are on them.  You can rearrange your pins, set certain pins as the cover page for the board, delete pins, or even share pins. 

"Settings" will take you to a page where you can change your password, the way your name is displayed, your profile picture, what emails are sent from the site, whether you want to connect any social networks or apps.  You can change these settings at any time. 

"Find Friends" will show you any of your friends that are using the site.  You can simply click "follow" and you will be subscribed to their pins.  When they pin something, it will show on your log in page.  If you see something interesting, you can pin it to your own board.  Your friend will receive a notification that you are following them and they have the option to follow you back.  You can view their pins and boards and they can do the same for you. 

"Follow Boards" will show you different boards that people have created that may be of interest to you.  If you wish to follow their board, just click "Follow."  You do not have to know that person to follow their board, so don't be surprised if a stranger begins to follow one of your more interesting boards.  It's ok.  You're not giving out personal information and neither are they.  Think of it as they are merely interested in something you are interested in. 

You can also visit the Help Center or Log Out.

Since this is a social networking site, people will "like" your pins and even repin them.  You will receive an email notification of this, if you have signed up for it, and you will also be notified on the site.  Next to your name is a button with two push pins.  This is your notification button.  When people have liked or repined your pins, you will see something like the picture below.

If you are using Pinterest as a business page, the idea is to get your pins out there and to have people sharing them, liking them, and repinning them, so do not be alarmed if this happens.  It's a good thing!

Happy Pinning!

Getting Started with Pinterest

Once you've created your Facebook account from the previous tutorial, you can easily create a Pinterest account.  If you do not want to use your Facebook account, you can use your email account like we did with Facebook.  It is recommended that you use different passwords for each account.

If you choose the "Sign up by email" box you will see the screen below.  If you wish to create a business page for Flowers by Mary Lou, you can select that you would like to use the site as a business. 

After you've created your personal account, you can take a guided tour of the site.  It is recommended you do so in order to have a better understanding of what it is about and how to use the site.  You will finish the tour by searching for something that interests you, such as flowers.  When you type flowers into the search box, you will be greeted by several categories of flowers.  Select the one that is most appropriate.  For this, I will select "flowers wedding."

As soon as you hit enter, you will see a page filled with all the other "pins" people have created that are tagged as "flowers wedding."  Some may be appropriate and some may be mislabeled.  Just keep scrolling down until you find one that interests you.  As the instruction in the picture below suggests, just click on the pin to learn more!

 



As you click on the picture, it will enlarge on your screen so you can get a better view.  If you don't like it, you can click on the X in the upper right to dismiss it and go back to your search results.  If you do like it, you can "pin it" using the red button in the upper left.  The site will guide you through this process as well. 

In the image below, I have clicked on "Pin It" and it is asking me to create a board.  You can think of these as bulletin boards or files of related pictures.  You can be as specific as you like (Spring Wedding Flowers, Winter Wedding Flowers) or as general as you like (Wedding Flowers).  You can always rearrange things later and move pins from one board to another, or copy them to multiple boards.  Whatever suits your needs.

 

 

Once you have decided which board to place the pin, you can edit the description or leave what is there.

Since the person that typed this in misspelled "lavender," I'm going to rename this pin with the correct spelling.  After you have typed in the description you want (and remember - everyone will be able to see what you type), click on the red PIN IT button in the lower right.  Congratulations, you've created your first pin!

You will then see a pop up that shows you other boards that the pin has been pinned to.  You can dismiss this and go back to your searching.  Continue to repeat with as many things as you're interested in.  The beauty of this is that there are no limits to what you can pin!

How to Create a Facebook Account

For this tutorial, you will need an established email account.  If you do not already have an email account, you can create one for free at www.gmail.com, www.hotmail.com, www.hotmail.com, or through your internet service provider.  This tutorial will assume you already have an email account established.

First, go to www.facebook.com.  You will see the sign up screen below.  We will start by filling in those fields.

After you have filled in the required fields.  Click on the green SIGN UP button.  It might take a few moments, but then you should see a screen similar to below:

If you would like to try to find other friends who are already using Facebook, click the "Find Friends" link below your email address.  If you have accounts with other services, you can do the same for those.  If you'd rather not, click on "Skip this step" at the bottom of the page.  There will be a pop-up box that asks you to confirm that you do want to skip, so if you have changed your mind, you can find friends now.  We will proceed to skip the step.  We can add friends later.

On the next screen, it will ask you to fill in your high school, college or university, employer, current city, and hometown.  You can skip this step or fill out as much or as little as you wish.  Next to each line is a picture of a globe with a down arrow, indicating there are more choices.  For each line you choose to fill out, you can select the privacy level of that information.  If you don't mind if everyone knows where you went to high school, you can leave it as public.  If you would rather no one sees it, you can select "Only Me."  You can also customize the privacy, but we'll save that for another time.  As with the previous screen, you can also select "Skip this step" and fill it out later.

The remaining two steps are similar to the first ones.  You can select different pages of celebrities, sports stars, movies, TV programs, etc that you may be interested in.  By doing so, you are subscribing to their Facebook pages and will see any updates or information they may post.  Not all of these pages are run by the actual celebrity, but may be pages created by a fan. 

The final step is to upload a profile picture if you would like.  You can use a picture of whatever you like, as long as it's not obscene.  Some people use pictures of their pets, children, a funny cartoon, their favorite sports logo, and so on. 

The next page will ask you at the top to go to the email account that you used to sign up to retrieve a code.  You must do this to complete the registration process! 

Once you have confirmed your account, your Facebook page will be created!  You can start searching for friends and family, finding pages that you are interested in, and even playing games.