How to Use Facebook: 5 Tips For Better Social Networking
Facebook is a social networking site that is enormously popular, but it can be a frustrating user experience. The design of Facebook leaves a lot to be desired and there are almost too many choices for things to do on Facebook. Also some of the more popular Facebook activities are trivial instead of useful - throwing sheep is an oft-quoted example.
Having said that, there's no doubt that Facebook is a powerful social networking tool. So how can you best utilize it and find the good apps? In this post we aim to find out. We'll be focusing specifically on social activities, rather than the many other potential uses of Facebook (work, brand management, etc).
Tip 1: Update Your Status Regularly
This is a simple thing to do to keep your Facebook profile active. Right at the top of the page there is a place where you can "write something." Usually a comment about what you're doing or thinking. Once a day, or even once every few days, is enough. But update it enough to keep your page interesting.
Tip 2. Use Groups (a.k.a. Lists in Facebook Terminology)
Groups are a core feature of social networking on the Web. To effectively use Facebook, we recommend you set up some groups so that you can filter content. One person who does this very well is our own Marshall Kirkpatrick. Marshall says that he generally scans his Facebook homepage first, then clicks to his groups for family and old friends from school. He noted that "this way most of my time spent on Facebook isn't re-reading the same things I've already read on Twitter."
There is a bit of a trick to setting this groups feature up. Facebook calls this feature "lists," probably to differentiate them from its other Groups feature (which have been usurped by 'Pages' now). Confused? Get used to it, Facebook navigation is awful.
To set lists up for your Facebook account, go to your Facebook homepage and click the "more" link on the left-hand sidebar. You will see a link entitled "Create new list" at the bottom - click on that to create a new group.
Tip 3: Add Your Content From Other Sources (Carefully...)
In this day and age, you are likely creating content in more than a few places on the Web. This ranges from the extreme cases (early adopters who have personal RSS feeds coming out their ears), to those who may just use YouTube and a couple of other niche social websites.
Many early adopters use FriendFeed to aggregate their 'lifestream' of content from multiple sources. Facebook just bought FriendFeed, so expect to see it integrated into Facebook over time. As of now, if you have more than a few content sources and they aren't necessarily the well-known ones like YouTube or Last.fm, then you'll need to use FriendFeed or an equivalent lifestreaming product to aggregate those feeds. But if you find FriendFeed just a bit too geeky (and many people do), then you can adequately enrich your Facebook profile with external content.
One thing we'd caution, which this author took too long to notice: don't pipe your FriendFeed content into Facebook if you aggregate a lot of content into FriendFeed! It quickly overpowers your Wall and will likely annoy the friends you have who also subscribe to your FriendFeed.
To add external content to Facebook, on your Wall page click the 'Options' link on the top right. Then click 'Settings.'
You can then choose to "import stories" to your Facebook wall from a select number of sites: Flickr, Digg, YouTube and others.
You can add content from other external sources to Facebook by clicking the 'application settings page' link further down the page.
Tip 4: Brighten Up Your Profile With Photos and Videos
This almost goes without saying, but adding multimedia makes your Facebook profile interesting and attractive.
If instead of Facebook you usually use a specialist photo site (like Flickr) or video site (like Vimeo), then you'll need to search around for ways to export your files. I use Flickr and didn't find a satisfactory way to export photos from Flickr to Facebook's Photo albums. But via my Twitter network I managed to discovered a plug-in for iPhoto, which allows Mac users to bulk export from iPhoto to Facebook.
Tip 5: Search Out the Best Facebook Apps
Ever since Facebook became a development platform back in May 2007, thousands of apps have been built to add to your Facebook page. As noted in the introduction, these range from trivial (e.g. sheep throwing) to very useful. The best tip here is to find apps that complement your interests.
Our advice is to search the directory for keywords of interest to you. The quality of apps varies greatly and often there are errors (at least I came across them several times when researching this article). When you find an app you like, you can add it to your profile. I added an Art app recently, for example.
You can browse a user's apps by clicking the oddly-named 'Boxes' tab on their profile page.
Tell Us How You Use Facebook!
We hope this post inspires you to spruce up your Facebook page a bit. For more tips, check out Facebook's own Influencers page.
Let us know in the comments what tips you have, or what you use Facebook for every day!
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Man... I LOVE Facebook. Perfect way to keep those friends on the backburner, that you may want in the future, but don't want to actually call them to hang out ever. Passive wall comments are so convenient for keeping a friendly networking, online exclusive, relationship with someone!
What you basically saying here is use Facebook, because if you are not using it so you are not doing any social networking. Well, I did not need to read this post in order to find that out.
I need to change my policy toward my Facebook account. Your tips are geeky.
great post, ncie tips and tricks. about the status update point i do wana add that be careful not to flood your friends profile with status updates. Its a big NO to update fb status every 2 hours :)
awsome post.. although i do not like following all these tips but some are really worth while. esp the photo and video sharing stuff
Friendfeed activity aggregated through Facebook is the content mainly visible on my profile. I attempt to use Facebook Connect to comment and pull that activity to the newsfeed but that can be inconsitant at times. I rate Facebook Connect though and hope more sites/services embrace the functionality/login..
Those are good tips. I'm just waiting for that rumored addition of "Fans" to regular FaceBook accounts so we can effectively communicate differently to people we actually know from people that added us because they've heard of us.
Groups/Lists are good for now, to filter the incoming, but we need to be able to filter the OUTGOING by lists or we need that "Fan" status.
I hide every new quiz and stupid application from my stream. Is there any possibility to hide all quizzes?
Using groups is really helpful otherwise the news-feed is a total chaos. Integrating friendfeed presents a small problem though- many of my activities appear twice if I have integrated other applications with FB.
Facebook is an excellent way to communicate without getting too personal, if you go about it correctly. Something I'd suggest for every Professional who is also a Facebook user is to check the "Photos Of You" option under your multimedia, this is often overlooked by profile users but the first thing outsiders look for when they visit your site. If you're a socially active person online and offline and you don't do some recon every now and then something embaressing may slip. It happened to a co worker of mine and they ended up out of a job. The key thing to remember is Facebook is total transperancy, keep that in mind or you may find yourself in an awkward situation.
The silly quiz & app status updates are becoming a huge problem for facebook. I have literally hidden hundreds of these, and find it tiresome that I have to do this nearly every day.
Zuckerberg, I am not interested in reading trivial "Which celebrity do you most look like?", or "Dave has built his farm, what do you think?" pointless updates.
Please can we have an option to hide all?
Be careful how you use Facebook - here are the 5 Ways that Facebook can get your Fired - http://buzzmarketingfortech.blogspot.com/2009/08/five-ways-facebook-can-get-you-fired.html
I wanna squish Sams cheeks!! (his face, pervs) lol
Thanks. Good suggestions.
If you're constantly plugged in and monitoring facebook & twitter then an application like tweetdeck is a huge timesaver.
thanks for the tips! i'll be careful especially how i import content into Facebook! yikes!
Practical advice Richard.
I say be unique, be you. Being yourself is the best way to become an effective social networker. Accentuate your individuality with the content that you add. All the right people will find you when you are simply you.
I think that commenting on other people status or picture is a must.
It is a social network you must be social.
I also find groups I like and pages, I become active inside these groups and get more friends with my kinf of taste.
For example here is a nice page I am a fan of
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/pages/SimilarWeb-A-great-tool-for-your-browser/
Be very careful about using Facebook and the third party applications. Here at Sophos, we are seeing a rise in malware, spam and phishing scams on there. See:
http://www.sophos.com/blogs/sophoslabs/v/post/6057
for the most recent attempt.
Another tip is to ensure your privacy settings are locked down. A couple of websites have some great advice:
http://www.sophos.com/security/best-practice/facebook-profile.html
http://www.sophos.com/pressoffice/news/articles/2007/10/facebook-network.html
http://mashable.com/2009/04/28/facebook-privacy-settings/
http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/02/facebook-privacy/
Facebook is a great way to stay in touch, but be safe doing so.
Beth Jones, SophosLabs
Add Your Content From Other Sources (Carefully...) This is good advice too often overlooked. It's easy to find you have a big unintelligible mess.
My shutterfly page allows easy sharing of albums to FB
Top Internet Marketing, Social Media and Online Business Books: http://htxt.it/ghrb
Now that I have groups, do I need to update my profile on each group or will that do that automatically. If I post something meant only for one group of people, will all my friends see it?
Great article that helps to explain facebook because it is very good at confusing it's users and changing on a dime. I do use the add your own content from other sources! It really allows you to share from multiple sites and it saves you time!
Thanks for sharing this article with us! I posted on my wall!
Dude - there's 349 messages in your inbox.
Social Networking consider an effective way to market and promote business online. But the online person who know how to utilize social networking only survive. Great tips indeed. Thanks
So, is that what Boxes means? Ahh, what is the deal w/ Facebooks nav usability? Man.
hi, i really enjoy reading your blog, can you tell how subscribe to your blog rss. thanks in advance
Great tips! FaceBook can be its own world, so navigation appreciated.
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well written! there are a number of ways in which you can keep you facebook profile in "lights" i see it as a social networking house, so as i decorate my house so do i decorate my facebook prof :)
Very informative and helpful tips especially for those who join facebook recently. Thanks
social networking does take some real effort. Building loyal blog readers takes effort. Continual effort. I’ve seen the results of this personally. I got bogged down by the numbers game a few months ago and went on a huge kick to boost my traffic stats and such. Sure enough, I worked it hard and my numbers did bump – temporarily. However, just as soon as analog life got hectic again and I could no longer sustain that level of effort, my numbers dwindled.
Don't forget that social media is a two-way street. You can't expect to achieve huge results if you don't reciprocate back what others initiate in the form of conversation, blog posts, or forum commentary. Conversing with other like-minded people creates awareness and prolongs your buzz, much like the snowball effect as it spreads further and further.
She found Simon's held his fist so tightly. She opened the fist with all her strength. It was a links of london------the wedding necklace. He had told her that he would give her a surprise on the wedding. She knew they hadn't enough money for an expensive links of london jewelry. But he still got one for her, how considerate he was. She put that necklace on. From long ago, she had regarded him as her husband no matter whether there was a links of london Necklaces.
When you get a business card in a meeting or conference, what do you do with it?
* Stick it in your Rolodex?
* Shove it in your drawer?
* Use it to level up a rickety table at your café?
If you want to make the most of that connection, you’ll immediately send that person an invitation to your network. That way they’ll keep up to date with your professional movements so down the track when you reach out to them, they won’t go, “Helen who?”.
Social networking can sometimes seem like a long and unproductive road to walk if you’re trying to measure ROI in the usual manner. Maybe you’re wondering where and when your next social media sale will come from? Here’s a quick list of social networking tips to help you along that road.
Do an online search for the top social networking sites specific to your market, region or industry and only focus on those sites. Ignore the others, they don’t matter unless they can directly connect you with new contacts in your target market. For example: If you don’t target teenagers, music, entertainment or fashion markets, then you don’t need a MySpace.
Facebook is a social utility that helps people better understand the world around them.But unplanned activity on Facebook can damage your reputation on Facebook.Learn some basics tips to wisely plan your work on it..
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Hello,
I enjoyed reading your artcile so I will put a reference to it through my blog.
Regards,
Chris
i came across this list article with some interesting uses for facebook apps and pages to create a "community". maybe it will spark some ideas for you. scroll down to the bottom of the article for the app ideas:
http://www.lawfirms.com/facebook-sex-offender-apps.html
I am extremely new to using Facebook and have a simple question. When someone sends me a message to goes to my e-mail in-box, how can I respond to them so that it's private to that individual and not everyone else in Facebook?
Also how do I see all these e-mail message from my Facebook account so I can respond to each of them in a private manner?
I use Facebook for personal contacts only. I created a fan page on facebook for my business. I have a picture of me, but choose to use my business name as my profile name. Thoughts?
I have heard that some people have replaced their e-mail accounts with Facebook.
I wonder how could Facebook achieve the functionality of e-mail in a one to one communication.
Has anybody give up his/her e-mail account to use Facebook exclusively?
facebook is the best friends-connect tool . and also promote your business .
clearly I'm not smart enough to use these seemingly-valuable tips.
yours truly,
facebook dummy
OK- I created the groups from my friends- that was a GREAT tip. But now I can't see how to go ever back thru my list of friends and add more people to my existing groups. It looks like a "one shot" opportunity when you create a group.(I'm sure it isn't, but that's how it looks to me now.) And I don't see how to add people whose comments roll across my facebook page to an existing group I've created. I'd really like to file and sort ALL of them!
I sure wish there were places to read up about all this stuff. (And,yes I did try the facebook "help" pages.Whoa! How useless!)
Your tips are great.... but, man, I need about 50 more of them!
Thanks!
The scary part of Facebook is that it can get you fired. Many employers are now searching Facebook for employee profiles and watching what they post. And according to the legal expert on NPR, it is legal for an employer to fire an employee using this info.