Tips For a Better Facebook Experience
1. Complete your FB profile by sharing as much information as you feel comfortable sharing, drawing a line to keep some of your private life private. But, let people know who you are, people and businesses want to know whom they are doing business with and they want to like you.
2. Stick to your core message. Who or what do you want to be? What image do you want to portray to potential clients? Make sure your message is clear. Don’t deviate from your message.
3. Fan Pages vs Group pages. Fan pages are used for developing a business or a brand over a long period of time. Also, Fan Pages have more flexibility in the long run for adding applications to the page, delivering digital content to your fans, SEO, statistics and possibilities for vanity URLs. Group pages do not offer these benefits. Group pages should be used more in a club sort of way (they have a non-commercial connotation to them).
4. Building your list of Friends or Fans purposefully. There are varying views on this… one mindset is “the more the merrier” but others tend to build their friends list a bit more methodically. Sometimes you just don’t know who has a friend of a friend that needs or likes your services.
5. Care about the people that are following you. It’s about having a conversation with your friends, fans or potential clients. You must contribute value to the conversation and be able to listen. If it’s all about you and what you are doing, it won’t be for long. Do not try to be a marketer, be a member first. Relationships before business!
6. Be consistent. Use the feeds on FB to communicate with your friends. Post Photos, videos, status updates and more to keep a steady stream of content in the community. Keep your viral visibility high.
7. Limit your time to a daily schedule. Set limits on your time and delegate tasks where possible. All social media can be a time suck if you let it, but so can TV. Have a strategy and schedule tasks accordingly. Try to delegate to interns or employees to monitor or track conversations about your Pages. Just make sure you are the voice of the message getting out.
8. Facebook is just one piece to your marketing plan. Social marketing today, can and should also include others such as Blogs, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin, and so on.
In closing, let me assure you that social media is NOT just for being social. Anyone who thinks these outlets are going away is mistaken. The way in which we market and communicate with each other about our products and services has radically changed and will continue to shift more to the side of permissions marketing.
Ideas used in this post were compiled from a recent webinar I attended presented by Mari Smith, a relationship marketing specialist. To get more information about FaceBook or Mari go to http://www.marismith.com and http://www.whyFacebook.com
7 Responses to 'Tips For a Better Facebook Experience'
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My tip for using Facebook is to be careful how much you use it or you may not be able to use it at all. I built a network of personal friends an an extensive network of other photographers/asmp people from my own list and using Facebook’s “people you may know” feature. I also had my blog set up to update my page daily. Evidently, I was using FB too much, because about 1 1/2 months ago, my account was disabled with no notice. I have tried repeatedly to contact Facebook to ask why, but no amount of effort has returned any answer. Not so much as a “sorry” email. Evidently Facebook’s customer service department does not exist, or the entire network is run by a computer and no humans actually work for them. Facebook has very strict rules, however, they do not tell you what they are. Break the rules, even unknowingly, and you are gone, and there is apparently nothing you can do about it, no appeal, nothing. A search on the web shows that I am just one of many that has had this occur. They want you to use their network, but just don’t use it too much.
Dan, not sure what might of happened with you, but just so everyone is aware there is a general rule of thumb not to have more than 20 outbound requests a day on FB. They see this as spam if it gets to high. You can have as many as you want incoming. You can also only have 5000 friends on a personal profile. However, a fan page can have as many requests in or out as you want in a day and can exceed the 5K limit that personal profiles have. Hope you get your page back.
Ed,
I think I probably had more than that 20 outbound requests number, because I was working to build a network. My total number of friends was much, much lower than that 5000 total. The problem with Facebook is that they do not make public what their rules are, and if you break them, even accidentally, they don’t tell you, they just get rid of you. At that point you have no recourse. I’m more than willing to play by the rules, but I need to know what those rules are. At this point, I’m not that concerned about losing my status. I spent a lot of time and energy building a network, and it looks now as if the whole process was a large waste of time. I have mixed feelings about the real value of social networking. On a personal friend level, I can see the value of Facebook to reconnect with old friends, although I sort of feel that if you have a relationship with a friend, it’s probably easier to actually call or visit them, if they are a real friend. On a professional level, I can see the benefit of FB in helping out your SEO and using it as tool to drive traffic to a website (which I agree can be very important). As for doing real promotion, I have had mixed feelings. It seems that most of the people that are using it for promotion are doing just that, they are promoting themselves or their website, etc. I am not sure if there are a lot of folks going to Facebook LOOKING for services. IE, outside of the personal friends networks, I seem to see everyone selling and no one buying. If there are that many people promoting, then I become just a small player in a large group again, which is sort of like being a listing in the Yellow Pages, with the only difference being I can update my status easier.
Dan Routh
One of the things that is till holding my breath here is that FB offers a Business account, which I tried to open, to end up having to sign up with my real name, so it all just appears as if I have 2 personal accounts with the same name, so I may be out of FB at any time soon.
I thought , and still think , this would be the perfect solution, to have a business account so I separate my personal stuff ( this was my original intention with my FB page, just family stuff), and my company, which could use FB features as a marketing tool.
If anyone knows or finds out how to use this Business feature and make a formal separation, please explain.
I have kept this -alleged- business account empty, ready to discard it, before I get expelled for good, if I do not find the solutions, available who knows where…Ironically, once you discard one account in FB, it turns messy to go back and re-register, so I am in the middle of all this, with no apparent solution.
Jorge
Jorge,
You have to open a personal profile account fist before you can register a business account. However, business accounts are not a new or different account. They are called “Fan Pages” don’t ask me why they call them that, they just do. I think they could have a better name, but what is, “IS”. These Pages are an extension of your profile but separate. You can call this Fan Page any thing you want, like Jorge Parra Photography or anything else you want. Also, now you can get a vanity URL for your personal profile and your Fan Page. If you still need help call me off line and I’ll try to walk you through it. Take care and happy FaceBooking.
As an update. A friend has started a “Facebook Bring Back Dan Routh” group. Youare welcome to join. Any help will be appreciated.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=144586647668
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