Social Media Marketing

Creating a Great Facebook Profile

If your LinkedIn profile is your professional side, then Facebook is your personal side. Regularly using your profile on Facebook through status updates, friending other people, becoming Fans of Pages and joining Groups are ways to round out your social media profile.

Facebook is the dominant social networking web site for connecting with friends and family online. With over 350 million members as of January, 2010, its audience continues to grow and demonstrate high levels of activity.

With LinkedIn, you are optimizing your profile to be found by people searching for you online. In contrast, Facebook offers more customizable security and privacy functions to tailor your degree of visibility to the world.

This post is longer than normal because we have a lot to cover, and it’s best to do it all at one time. This unit will focus on how to create a great profile and keep it fresh with Status Updates.

1. Profile Basics

Signing Up
Start by signing up at www.facebook.com with your first and last name, your email address and a password. Facebook also requires your gender, and birth date. Don’t worry about showing your age – this can be hidden later in the process but it’s used to reveal age-appropriate content only.

Even though there may be other people on Facebook with your name, your email address, birth date and location will keep you unique among the listings.

Facebook will then present two oddly shaped words (called CAPTCHA) that you must type into the box below them. These are a deterrent to email spammers trying to create bogus accounts on the site.

2. Add Friends

Adding friends to increase your network is at the heart of Facebook.

After you successfully enter the CAPTCHA words, Facebook walks you through four steps in setting up your profile.

The first two steps include adding and finding friends already on Facebook.

In Step 1, Facebook will suggest people you may already know. Part of the sign up process includes providing access to your email address book. This is so that Facebook can scan it (and find who you know on the site).

At this stage, it also scans for your email address among the users who have already submitted their address book. Think of it as a reverse-lookup.

If you see a person you know, and want to connect with that person, click the link “Add as a friend” below their name. A request will be sent to the person to approve or ignore your request. You will receive many of these requests as you begin to be found, and people want to connect with you.

These users will not know that they were suggested to you so it is OK if you choose to forgo adding them to your network for now. You can click “Skip” next to the “Continue” button if you prefer to bypass this step.

In Step 2, Facebook will ask to access your email address book to scan for email addresses of members already on the site. This is a quick way to find people you know.

If you are using an online email service such as Google’s Gmail or Yahoo’s mail, this is a quick and easy scan.

If you are using email that is stored on your computer, such as Outlook, then this tool will not work since Facebook is trying to access your email history on a service’s computer system – not your personal machine.

Click “Skip this Step” if your email provider is not an online service.

3. Completing Your Profile

In Step 3, you may add your high school and college information as a way to find classmates from schools you attended.

You may also enter the name of a company where you work now or in the past to find colleagues.

Facebook will then use these pieces of information to suggest yet more people you may know. Review the suggestions and add the ones you know and want as connections. There is no rule of thumb on how many friends you should or should not have. Having too few means you are either new or not very active, and having too many could mean you’re spending too much time online.

Likewise, avoid friending people you have only met once and briefly. While that is acceptable on LinkedIn, reflecting how business and professional relationships are more cut and dry, in personal life this action assumes a stronger degree of connection than the other person may feel. Unless you explicitly ask to friend the person on Facebook, it is not a smart tactic.
The same goes for friends of friends. If you look through your friends’ list of friends and see someone you want to meet, ask for an introduction. Do not friend the person on the assumption that it is welcome. This can be viewed as “stalkerish” behavior.

4. Adding Your Photo

Using your photo online helps other people find you. It also is an opportunity to reveal yourself in a very human way.

Facebook lets you upload your photo from your computer or you can use your computer’s camera to take a quick snapshot.

Make sure your photo is clear and your face is visible. You can post group photos and artistic shots in your Photo section later. For now, focus on being identifiable.

You can reuse your LinkedIn profile photo if you like.

Don’t forget to smile!

5. Rounding Out Your Profile

Now that you have the basics, it’s time to build a full profile.

Facebook presents a page where you can add friends, update your profile, and modify your privacy settings.

Let’s start by clicking on “View and edit your profile.”

Basic Information
We will focus on your Basic Information window in the middle to start.

You can choose to reveal your gender in your profile, and your birth date. Whether you do this or not is a personal choice. There is no benefit or loss with either choice.

For “Current City” list where you now live. This greatly improves your chances of being found by others. Do the same for “Hometown” for the same reason.

Most people add their family to their Facebook network. If you are worried about some family members seeing what you may post, don’t be. There are ways to carefully reveal who can see what in your profile. We’ll get to those in the next stage.

For “Relationship Status” select the right one for you. For “Interested In” select the right one for you as well. And “Looking For” is the same.

Why are these three included? While you don’t have to answer these if you prefer not to, your answers create opportunities to connect with similar people. Also, advertisers use this demographic data to target relevant ads in Facebook to you.

For “Political Views” and “Religious Views” you may want to opt out of answering. I suggest this because nothing elicits more high-strung emotions and arguments than politics and religion. If your network is pretty homogenous and like-thinking, or you are adamant in your positions, then answering these makes sense.

I caution against it because you never know who believes what, and friendships are lost over divisive issues. At the least, give this some thought before answering since you can update your profile at any time.

Click “Save Changes” when done.

Personal Information
Click the triangle pointing to “Personal Information” to open the window.

In each of the categories, you are given a free-form text box to enter as much as you wish. Separate items by commas. As in other parts of your profile, these entries are used to target information to you that matches your interests.

Enter as much or as little as you wish.

Click “Save Changes” when done.

Contact Information
Due to concerns over identity theft and general privacy, I recommend you enter only the information you feel is necessary.

If you like to use instant messenger programs like Yahoo Instant Messenger or Google’s GTalk, you can add your handle for the different systems.

Facebook has an integrated chat feature so you may prefer using it than your regular instant messenger program.

Adding your City/Town and ZIP codes are safe ones – these make it easier for people to find you to add to their networks.

Adding a link to your own web site is a smart entry, so be sure to include it if you have one.

Contact Information: Privacy Settings
Notice those little padlock icons to the right of each entry?

Click the downward pointing triangle for options of who can see each piece of information.

Facebook’s privacy settings recognize you will have different degrees of connection to people. Depending on the information, you may want only those people you add as friends to have access to it. You may be comfortable with that information being accessible to friends of friends (second degree connections). If you want, you can open the information up to “everyone” which makes it viewable in search engine results.

How private versus open you want to be is a decision for each individual. I recommend considering the piece of information you are sharing, and how readily available you want it to be. As mentioned above, you can change these settings at any time. Regardless of your decision, be sure to review the settings for each item and select the one appropriate for you.

Education and Work
Last you may add the schools you attended to find classmates and employers to find present or former colleagues.

Not everyone is comfortable with friending a coworker on Facebook because we retain a distinct sense of difference between our work lives and our personal lives. Do not be offended if a coworker seemingly never accepts a friend request – and do not pester people to accept them. This is rude and unnecessary. We are not seeking to see who can have the most people sign our yearbooks before the semester ends and we all leave for summer.

This is also an example of why revealing your political leanings or religious views can be a source of friction, and worth consideration before publication.

Sometimes the people we have fond memories of are also people who have moved on to different phases of life. That means not everyone wants to keep in touch with those they used to know. This reflects how we grow and change over time.

While it is nice to catch up and say hello once in a while, keeping up to date on a regular basis through Facebook status updates is probably too much contact with these individuals.

We have to take this into consideration when reconnecting with people from our past. Not everyone wants to reconnect – respect that boundary and do not take it personally.

All of our relationships and friendships have varying degrees of intimacy. What you share with your best friend now is not what you shared with your best friend in high school, probably. Unless your best friend from then is still your best friend today!

Finalize Your Privacy Settings
While the default privacy settings are probably a safe bet for a majority of people, I recommend you visit these periodically.

As social media becomes more and more prominent in our lives and a key way for people to learn about us, we have to practice more control over what is shared about our lives. Celebrities and politicians have had publicists and public relations experts to manage these flows of information. Now, you need to exercise some of the same judgments in your life.

Let’s review what Facebook’s Privacy settings do.

Click on the Account tab in the upper right, and go down to Privacy Settings.

Each part of your profile has an independent privacy setting. You can choose the level of privacy by category by clicking on the button on the right. You can choose from:
• Everyone
• Friends of Friends
• Only Friends
• Customize

The first three are self-explanatory. Let’s look at Customize further.

By creating a Customized privacy setting, you can strategically filter out who can and cannot see that category’s contents.

The first section allows you to choose who can see the content:
• Friends of Friends
• Only Friends
• Specify People
• Only Me

By choosing the first option, your second-degree connections can see information about you. This is typically suitable for your hometown or where you live now, and other basics.

Choosing “Only Friends” constrains the information further to only people you have a one-to-one connection with. Selecting “Specify People” reduces the content to be viewable ONLY by those you approve to see it. The last option of “Only Me” is for the most private information. What’s the point of posting information on a social network that nobody can see? The content may be information you want to share with others one by one or on an as-needed basis, with the ability to withdraw permission at will.
Using these options wisely lets you share information selectively with your network and avoid potential conflict, too.

For example, if you support one view on a controversial view but you are unsure if your neighbors or certain friends think the same way, it is safer to limit your postings on that topic (whether “for” or “against”) to a list of only those who agree with you.

Though we hold our First Amendment right to free speech dearly, we do not always exercise the best restraint when dealing with others who oppose our views.

Consider these settings as tools to use wisely to keep in the peace. Your option is to avoid making controversial statements online.

Remember, too, that potential employers research you online. If they see your postings, and feel concerned by them, you may have forfeited an opportunity without ever knowing why you didn’t that get that interview.

Face Face Face / Give Me Face

Paint that profile with the best palette in shades of You. Some blue for in the cloud moments, a little red when you feel randy, and some white to show your purity, too. What’s in your Profile? Who has the best Profile you know? Spread the love in the Comments section for a response.