FaceBook – Love It!

The cold hard truth, is I Love FaceBook. Our relationship was not always so mushy. I started off with a healthy respect for FaceBook and an absolute fear of “wasting” too much time on it. I sat there with 35 friends for about a year. I wanted nothing to do with the poke or the super poke and the idea of being reminded of the past was underwhelming. Then one day, it happened. What happened? It. I found someone or someone found me that I had not talked with in forever, and I was surprised and thrilled. The reconnection was a brief flurry of messages and then we went our respective ways popping up occasionally as an update.

Realizing that there are a lot of people from the past that I really liked and had not kept up with, I loaded up my contact list from outlook and let FB parse both of my online email accounts. I was amazed at how many people were on FB. I started selectively adding friends and in a short period fo time crossed the hundred person mark. Something magical happened right around person 97. I started seeing more friends on FaceBook. Some sort of critical mass had been reached and I started seeing friends in pictures and wall posts. Suddenly, I felt like I was unfashionably late to the party of the year. I started adding more friends and suggesting friends to mutual friends. Then I had another game changing experience.

In August of 2008, we headed out to San Francisco. We had a play date in the park with a friend from high school and her daughter, who was right in between my kids. We had not seen each other in 18 years and that was crazy. A simple FaceBook wall post had put us back into conversation and hanging out surreal. This is a classic case of social networking bring people together in the real world. But how does that help me sell my “XYZ” you ask? FaceBook is social, unlike LinkedIn which is professional, you tell me. This is where the game really changes.

Looking at my friends profiles, I see the schools they went to, the places they have worked and their favorite books, movies and hobbies. More than a resume, we see how we live, work and play together. Looking thru my friends I see how much people have evolved since we spent hours every week hanging out at school, listening to every record by obscure artists, or even getting lunch at work. People I knew really well, I get to meet again and enjoy how much they have grown. Show me the money, you say! Building and maintaining relationships is key to our mutual survival. You do not need to see money, you need to see life and take an active role in participating in this social arena. What you do with your relationships is up to you. You have the opportunity to build bridges or rekindle old friendships. To me, FaceBook is for people you know really well, used to know really well, or want to know really well. That is why I Love FaceBook!

Top 10 Habits of Highly Effective FaceBookers

1. Register and fill out your profile. This should take you at least an hour. Put in the details, they are important. Add your profile Picture, make sure people can recognize you.
2. Go to your privacy settings in the top right. Adjust your settings so you are comfortable. I am reasonably paranoid and suggest having your profile visible only by friends and your pictures by friends of friends. That said, some people choose to keep their profile public.
3. Upload your contacts and add your friends you see are already on FaceBook. Inviting all of your friends to join a social network is very 2006. If you can’t find some people you want on, email them individually from FaceBook with an invite to join. Search your schools and organizations you are a part of. Remember people may have 2 email addresses so the automated system may not be effective. When I am bored, I look thru the year before me, my year and the year after me for high school and college.
4. When you find friends that are not connected to mutual friends, be a bridge builder and “suggest friends” to them. This is a small step towards building your social capital or good old karma. The friend Finder feature is great on FaceBook. It looks at your friends, friends, and makes suggestions as to who you may know. I like to do this once a month.
5. As your friends list grows, build lists in your news feed to manage your contacts. I made lists by School, Organization, Job, and a few locations. This covered 90% of my friends.
6. At the bottom of your home page adjust your news feed settings. You can control what kind of news hits your feed (more status updates, less relationship news, whatever floats your boat).
7. Check-in on FaceBook at least twice a day. Post a status update, comment on a picture or simply “Like” something. Active Participation in the community is a key habit to develop. As you participate in the community more people will find you and your network will grow proportionally. Post links to websites and articles you find interesting. A lot of sites have social sharing features built in. The best practice is to add the FaceBook Bookmarklet. you drag and drop this feature onto the book mark bar on your browser. This lets you share web content on FaceBook by clicking on the Bookmarklet on any page you navigate to that is worth sharing.
8. Post pictures and videos and tag people in them. There are over 10 billion photos on FaceBook and more than 100,000 videos averaging 1 minute being added every day. Media on FaceBook rules! Tagging people in the content builds out your network while enabling people to enjoy your content.
9. Join Groups and become Fans of your favorite celebrities and/or businesses. You will find these can be great sources of information and a great area to participate in discussion.
10. Be yourself, find the proper balance for you and keep it real. I encourage transparency. Live your life and share it. You will find FaceBook more valuable and interesting if it is an honest representation of who you are.