When it comes to social networking, the elephant in the living room is definitely Facebook. According the Facebook, they have over 400 million members and 50% of those log into the site everyday. This is phenomenal and Facebook cannot be ignored.

In fact, let’s review a few more statistics about Facebook as it relates to business or marketing:

• More than 3 million active Pages on Facebook
• More than 1.5 million local businesses have active Pages on Facebook
• More than 20 million people become fans of Pages each day
• Pages have created more than 5.3 billion fans

This will be our focus. In the Learning Module all our attention will be on Facebook.

I see five main components to the Facebook environment:

1. Profiles
2. Groups
3. Pages
4. Events
5. Advertising

We will look at each of these in turn.

Getting Started

Establishing a Facebook account.

Facebook users may have Personal Accounts or Business Accounts, but you cannot have both. If you already have a Facebook account, then you cannot add a business account. Please be aware that managing multiple accounts is a serious violation of Facebook’s Terms of Use. If Facebook determines that an individual has more than one account, they reserve the right to terminate all of the accounts.

The only reason to establish a business account is if (a) you don’t already have a Facebook account and (b) you only want to use the site to administer Pages and their ad campaigns. There are limitations to a business account. Namely, you will not be able to view the profiles of users on the site or other content on the site that does not live on the Pages they administer. In addition, business accounts cannot be found in search and cannot send or receive friend requests.

My recommendation is to stick with a personal Facebook account; you can use personal accounts to administer Pages and ad campaigns. I manage many fan pages and multiple ad campaigns with my personal Facebook account.

According to Facebook, “fans of any of the Pages you administer will not have visibility or access to your personal account or profile. Any actions that you take as a Page administrator on your Page will show the Page’s name as the actor and not your personal name.”

If you haven’t done so already, create a Facebook account and then read Great Wall of Facebook: The Social Network’s Plan to Dominate the Internet – and Keep Google Out.

Facebook Profiles

This is how you present yourself, as an individual, on Facebook. The profile can be completely open and public or it can be completely private. The profile can also have variations in between depending on the friend settings you establish. On Facebook, when a person connects with your profile it becomes a mutual connection (unlike Twitter, which can be a 1-way connection). Even though the connection on Facebook must be mutual, the level of privacy can be set by you on a friend-by-friend basis if you desire. On Facebook, the established protocol is that we represent ourselves honestly – it is not for fictitious personas.

Ideally, when you establish your Facebook Profile you will complete as much of the information about yourself as possible. However, this is not required and you should read through the Privacy documentation to understand how Facebook manages and shares your data. Including a picture in the profile, in my opinion, is critical.

In my experience, to use Facebook most effectively as part of a social media strategy it is best to understand how to use friend lists. Read all the documentation on Friends: Friend Lists and Limited Profile to understand how it works. The benefit is that I can add anyone as a friend to my Facebook profile and then assign them into a Friends Lists to control how they can interact (or not!) with my profile.

You may wish to establish a Facebook Username to personalize your Facebook account. For example, you can find me at http://facebook.com/kenleyneufeld. Learn more about Facebook Username. More about this later when you discuss Facebook Pages.

Here are a few additional reading items related to Facebook Profiles:

• How to Keep Your Facebook Updates Private
• Twitter to Facebook
• Status Tagging
• Getting Rid of Annoying Facebook Notifications
• Integrate Facebook with your Blog
• Use Facebook for Professional Networking

Once you have a firm grasp of the Facebook Profile, then you are ready to launch into the next category.

Facebook Groups

Facebook Groups are meant to foster group discussion around a particular topic. For example, we could establish a Facebook Group for the students in this class. In general, I have steered clear of Facebook groups because it has certain limitations when it comes to marketing or branding. For example, messaging your group members is only available for groups with 5,000 people or fewer. If you use groups, you might want to read Managing Groups on Facebook.

Facebook does continue to tweak the Groups function and make improvements. Please read the Facebook FAQ for Facebook Groups (be sure to click Expand All for easy reading).

Create a Group

Facebook Pages

According to Facebook,

Pages are for organizations, businesses, celebrities, and bands to broadcast great information to fans in an official, public manner. Like profiles, they can be enhanced with applications that help the entity communicate with and engage their fans, and capture new audiences virally through their fans’ recommendations to their friends.

You can create and manage a Facebook Page for your organization from your personal account. You can create a Page here. Please note that only the official representative of an organization, business, celebrity, or band is permitted to create a Page.

With Facebook Pages, people who interact with the account are called “Fans” which is different from “Friends” on the Facebook Profile.  When a person becomes a fan of your page, they can receive updates on their wall and through the Facebook messaging tool. Though you use your personal account to manage and create pages, there is no method for fans to connect the Page with your personal Profile.

This is a good thing, but can also be frustrating if you want to interact with the fans as yourself instead of the organization, business, or celebrity. For example, I ghost write for a celebrity on his Facebook Page. When I write a comment or update a status, it appears to come from the celebrity. However, from time to time I’d like to comment as myself. This is not currently possible with Facebook Pages.

Another thing about Facebook Pages is that you can have multiple administrators who can comment, post status updates, or create events. This can help spread the work around but it may muddy the voice of the page – depends on the circumstances and needs of the organization, business, or celebrity.

Facebook Pages do not have the limitation that Facebook Groups have in terms of communicating with the fan base. It is an amazing opportunity to message all your fans, even being able to filter by gender, age, or geographic region. Because the demographic information is collected, some of the aggregate data is made available to page administrators.

If you create and use Facebook Pages, it is important that you remember to cultivate your garden. You must remember to login, interact, and respond to fans on a regular basis.

Reading Resources on Facebook Pages:

• Facebook FAQ on Pages (be sure to click Expand All for easy reading).
• Facebook Pages v. Facebook Groups: What’s the Difference
• Make Facebook Your Company Newsroom
• 5 Elements of a Successful Fan Page
• Build Your Personal Brand on Facebook
• 5 Essential Apps For Your Nonprofit’s Facebook Page
• 10 Successful Facebook Business Pages
• How to Develop a Facebook Page that Attracts Millions of Fans

Advanced Topics

• Integrate Facebook with your Blog
• Apps for Doing Business on Facebook

You should be ready to get started now. Create Page Here.

Events