Random thoughts about online marketing

Many were asking why I have been silent in this paper for the last two weeks.  You know it’s not an easy feeling when you know that people expect to find you here but naghihintay pala sa wala.

Thing is, when you have your mobile phone with you and you’re getting the hang of it, the thought of working at your desk becomes joyless and punishing. But we need our computers as they can do better not only in typing but to make our lives easier in school and office.

The only advantage our mobile phones have over our desktops is handiness, which makes it easy for us to be in touch with friends or associates. And that’s all there is to it. The apps in our mobile phones that try to replicate desktop functionality still have a long way to go when it comes to user-interface and usability issues. But no frets. The future, which is not so distant, of mobile computing will be a lot smaller than our iPhones, which can be worn as a bracelet but spews a hologram display of your desktop applications or content.

Mobile apps will still be there for awhile but I look forward to the great come back of desktops in this kind of form factor for me to do some writing while on the road or on air. Hahahaha…what a lame excuse.

But seriously, carrying a laptop is just too much for me nowadays when I travel. It makes me feel that I am bringing along the office and all the things that I dread to do. But that’s the way of the world now – mobility. The people you work with, your customers expect you to respond quickly to their texts, emails and all. And so does my editor (smiley emoji here). 

I have pondered a lot about the way we do things now. While technology has made our work a lot more convenient now, we are also hooked to our phones most of the time limiting our personal interactions with people. You may not notice it, but when there times that when you talk to someone, somehow you have this urge to look at your phone for some text or chat messages. We sometimes tend to ignore personal interactions to make way for those notifications on our devices.

Technology has made it also different in the way we make personal and digital interactions. People tend to behave differently offline than online. For example, the reactions people make on Facebook are so “unlike them” when you talk about the same things face to face – they come shy or loud or poker faced. It seems that our devices have created for us a whole new persona in the way we behave online. And for some reason, a lot of us wonder about the true nature of the person we are talking to on a personal level.

Yes people tend to be more expressive on Facebook but are those really honest expressions of themselves? Are they really happy when they say on their statuses “feeling happy?” or when they say they are “feeling sick”? How do we know which one is fake or real? Or maybe there’s just a flood of “feeler” type of persons on Facebook who are KSP (Kulang Sa Pansin).

I do not wish to tell them how they should use their Facebook but I see so much time is wasted in trite and mundane activities there. Ok, they do spice up a little bit the monotony of seeing selfies, food pictures and shared romantic “churvas” and “charness” (drama in street lingo), but really, how much do they contribute to the things that really matter in our everyday life – like our finances and productivity? 

Say we put two hours on Facebook daily (the average Facebook time, a user spends is said to be 3 or 4 hours a day), and put a value to each hour vis-à-vis the minimum wage, so we spend roughly about P100 a day just to read our get read for all the dramas we have over a sore relationship! Yah, I know, not everyone is into this, but mostly — and they flood my feeds the whole time.

The point to what I’m trying to say is that, people can actually rationalize their time on Facebook by doing more worthy efforts than selfies. In fact, Facebook has always been purposed that way – to get people coming, connect them together and eventually do business.

In other words, Facebook can be a powerful tool that you can use to do or expand your business.  I’ve seen people getting rich by showing their wares. Next time I will talk about Facebook marketing.