We all know about Facebook. I have had a profile over there for some time. Only recently, though, have I begun to really use it to all it’s advantages. It is easy to write it off as just an easy way to kill time. However, when you really begin to use Facebook as a power user, there are benefits to be reaped.
In this post, I want to tell you a little bit about what I have discovered and started doing.
Why Use Facebook At All?
The answer to this question might first bump up against your own personality limitations, as hard as that might sound. Some people have serious issues with communication. They don’t feel comfortable dealing with other people. For those kinds of people, it might be hard to explain the benefits of a site like Facebook. And for those people, the only thing I can say is that it is to your disadvantage.
For somebody who understands the value of personal connections, Facebook can make sense. It is a way to connect with all kinds of people, whether you know them in real life or not. It provides a way to deal with other people on a personal level (as far as you’re willing to take that).
In life, the number of opportunities presented to you are going to be directly proportional to your personal social network. You’ve GOT to know people. Online, you can make these connections regardless of geography.
Facebook Basics
When you set up a profile, you will begin by setting up information about yourself. Where you work, where you went to school, some information about yourself, etc. When all is said and done, you’ll have a basic profile on Facebook.
After you create your basic profile, here are a few things I think are very important for you to do to get the most out of it:
- Upload a profile picture. There is nothing more impersonal than a profile with a placeholder graphic where the picture of the person should be. Upload a real picture of yourself as your profile picture.
- In the left column of your profile page, click the little edit button for the little info box right under the “Edit My Profile” link. You can put some basic information about yourself in this box so that people can get a more instant impression of who you are.
- Choose some other pictures of yourself and upload them as albums. The quantity of pictures you upload is up to you, but it is good to have more pictures up there than just your profile photo.
- Set up your profile badge. You can see mine above. It is something you can place on other sites that has a link to your Facebook profile.
Understanding “The Wall”
The Wall on Facebook is a term you’ve got to understand. It is basically a platform where people can publicly post messages for you. If somebody writes on your wall, then their message will appear on your profile. Anybody else who views their profile can also view that posted message on your wall. The important thing to realize is that it IS public. If you want to send somebody a private message on Facebook, you’ve got to use the “Compose New Message” option at the top and send a message to that person’s inbox.
It is recommended that you make routine use of the wall on your friends’ profiles. Not only are you then keeping up with your friends (which keeps the relationship alive), but it also exposes you to THEIR network of friends. And therein is how your network expands on Facebook.
Expanding Your Network
When you’re using Facebook, it is a lot more fun if you have friends. Obviously. So, how do you go about getting some friends?
- Search for people you know and add them as a friend. They will have to confirm their wish to be a friend before they will be.
- Using Facebook’s “Invite Your Friends” feature, you can have Facebook tap into your email account on Hotmail, AOL, Gmail or Yahoo, get your contact list and see who is using Facebook. Then, you can choose which of those people you want to send a friend request to.
- Using the Friend Finder, you can, again, have Facebook tap into your webmail account. But, even if you don’t use a web-based email account, you can have Facebook look for people based on uploading a contact file. You can upload contact files from Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Mail, Thunderbird and a number of other well-known email clients.
- Look for Facebook groups of interest to you and join them. Then you will see the list of other people who are members of that group. Since they must obviously share similar interests as you (on that thing, anyway), send them a friend request.
- As you gain more friends, actively participate with them. Make comments on their wall. Post comments in groups. Every time you post something on somebody else’s wall, you have the change to be exposed to THAT person’s social network as well.
The key to expanding your social network is to be proactive. Almost anybody you send a friend request to on Facebook is going to accept it. It is human nature.
TIP: As you gain more friend on Facebook, make use of the “lists” feature. This is a way for you to organize your friends into groups which make sense to you, such as work, family, friends, etc. To create a list, just click on Friends at the top of the site to view your friends list. Then, on the left side, click “Make a New List”. Assign a name to it. Then, you can start typing the names of your friends that you want to add to that group. Another benefit to lists is that you can send private messages to your friends en mass by simply addressing your message to one of your lists.
Power Features of Facebook
There are some additional ways to participate in the Facebook community besides having your personal profile:
- Start your own group. You can start a group on any subject you want and actively invite your friends to join in.
- Start a page for your site or business. You can, essentially, give a Facebook profile to your business, your website, whatever. You do this by creating a page. That page will have it’s own profile information, picture, wall, discussion boards – whatever you enable for it. And then you can seek out “fans” by getting people to sign up as a fan of your business, website, etc.
- Post videos. On your profile, you can either post videos to your profile that were created elsewhere or you can even record live video from your webcam and create videos on the fly. These videos then show up on your profile and all of your friends will be notified of your new video when they view their feed on the site.
- Use Notes. The Notes feature of your Facebook profile has the potential to be your own blog. You can write long-form content in the form of notes. Better yet, if you already operate a blog, you can automatically import your new blog content into your Facebook profile as new notes. This then puts your new posts out in front of all your Facebook friends.
Put Your Profile on Automatic
Facebook has the potential to become just another profile out there you have to separately maintain. If it becomes a drag, it isn’t much fun. But, if you are a user of Twitter or FriendFeed, you have an option. If you install the FriendFeed application to your Facebook profile, you can have all of your activity (anything piped into FriendFeed) automatically piped into your Facebook feed. Same if you install a Twitter application.
By installing one of these, then updating FriendFeed or Twitter will automatically update your Facebook profile. And this has the effect of making your Facebook profile look pretty busy even though you may not visit your profile too often.
Wrapping Up
Anybody with any promotional sensibilities at all is probably, by now, realizing the potential power of Facebook. I hope that’s the case. Even if you’re not thinking about promoting anything, Facebook can be used to expand your social network. And that’s insanely valuable in a world where, as they say. “it is all in who you know”.
Connect With Dave
That would be me. If you’re on Facebook, I invite you to connect with myself as well as to become a fan of PCMech. Here are those links:
Like what you read?
If so, please join over 28,000 people who receive our exclusive weekly newsletter and computer tips, and get FREE COPIES of 5 eBooks we created, as our gift to you for subscribing. Just enter your name and email below:
