Facebook is one of the best new marketing tools for your business in decades, but it’s use as a business tool brings some connected problems. One of the most important is the issue of privacy. Facebook was developed as a tool for communication and relationship building among college students; it was not meant to be a business tool. Because of this, the structure of the system is geared toward personal use. Although Facebook makes frequent changes to the system, this fact remains and causes some extra concern on the part of the business user.
The internet, Facebook included, is a wonderful marketing tool and it is a permanent marketing tool. Once you have put information on the internet - whether it is your offer, description of your product or your opinion on controversial issues - it is out there forever. It can be searched and found by anyone with the interest and the time to do so. This is vitally important to know as a business owner. Especially if “you are your brand” as is usually the case for a coach, virtual assistant or other solopreneur. You must think about your presence online and stay on brand.
Staying on brand holds true on Facebook as well. Here it becomes increasingly complicated by the actions of others. Let me use an example. I have a group of seven or eight friends who were my best friends in high school. We have stayed loosely in touch and now all but one or two are on Facebook. It is totally unpredictable when one of these women will pop up with a comment that is racy, embarrassing or “high school immature” and post it prominently on another’s Facebook page. What do you think that does to someone’s brand or their professional image? Nothing good of course, but the interaction is typical for many friends on social media sites.
If you are using Facebook as a marketing tool, and you should, you must use some of the Facebook privacy features. Even if you are not using the site as a business tool, you may want to be aware of some of Facebook’s recent changes. Please start by reading Facebook’s privacy information. I recommend that you adjust your settings to keep your personal profile for the use of family and friends, then start a business “fan” page for your professional Facebook use. There are two main tools on Facebook that will help you do this. The first is the use of friends lists. The friends list function is available in the left hand column of your home page. It is worth the time to go through your connections and divide them into lists because then you can apply different privacy settings to each list. For example, I have set a list called “professional” for people that I do not want to see my personal information. If you need help developing your friends lists, try the directions of Facebook’s Help Center.
The second tool is the actual privacy settings within Facebook. Go to settings at the upper right of your home page, then to privacy settings and make sure everything is set accurately. Profile and contact information settings allow you to determine who can see info about you and what you post. Each category should be individually set and I recommend the use of the “customize” setting which lets you designate friend lists to include or not. Applications settings determines what information about you is available to those games and gifts that you see all the time. Search settings are very important because you may have shielded information on your profile or wall, but that information can still be readily found through Facebook’s powerful Search feature if you have not adjusted settings in this section. Go through each section carefully.
Facebook has made several privacy changes in the past week that should get your attention as a business owner. In an effort to make all of Facebook available to search engines on the internet, Facebook has done two things. First, all default privacy settings now on Facebook are set to “everyone”. That means unless you go and change the settings, all your information is available to anyone on Facebook AND anyone on the internet. Business owners take note – there are things on Facebook that DO NOT improve your business image! Secondly, Facebook has opened all of its site to indexing by the search engines in the past few days. Because Facebook is the second most popular U.S. site on the internet behind Google, this means that searches for you are likely to show Facebook results very high on the results page. As a business owner, you want to be doubly careful what those results are that show from Facebook. Get in there and update your settings soon!
Social Media Made Easy is a four week training class led by Janet Slack of Solopreneur.Biz. The class will help you set up your presence on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and teach you strategies and techniques for business use of social media. Learn more about Facebook privacy issues and key points for the other sites as well. Get more details of the class here.
