Social Network Knowhow: Keeping It Clean (on Facebook)

Facebook always feels a bit challenging to me. Their rules are published nowhere you can find easily and most are pretty indecipherable. Often you won't know you've broken one, until you get slapped. Yet, it is the largest social network globally and you certainly don't want to ignore it. Now, if you are using it strictly for family and friends and catching up with old flames and older relatives, stop reading now. This isn't for you. On the other hand, when you want to move business forward, keeping your friends clean on Facebook does matter.

The biggest task you can tackle is to get all of your friends into appropriate lists. This will give you awesome leverage when you create an event and want to invite a selected group. Without this, you are stuck going friend to friend and when you have several hundred or a couple of thousand, this is a major time zapper and ineffective. So do your work upfront. Before you accept anyone as a friend, check them out, which list can you tag them to (that you've created). Yes, you can put a friend on more than one list, great flexibility. The key is to get them onto at least one list that is relevant and pertinent.

Oh and while you are at it, when you are doing this, it is likely you are having to go to many of the profiles as you may not know the person well. Take a minute and write something warm and friendly on their wall. This will boost your visibility and show them you truly care. (You do care, don't you?)

I'm giving you an out. This whole idea may overwhelm you. You can establish criteria for friends to be tagged on specific lists and hand the task off to a VA (Virtual Assistant). You can also script (you'd be surprised how many do this and no one knows it) a series of messages that your VA can post on friends walls. While I encourage you to do this personally, I am well aware that you may be already stretched thin but do care and want your peeps to know that.

And one more thing, when you go through your friends, you are likely to find that you may have been a bit careless (unless you are perfect, and you might be!) and accepted some folks that you are no longer certain you want to be friends with for a number of reasons. It is okay to unfriend them, they won't be notified. You have a 5000 friend limit and if that matters then this is what you'll need to do. You can also invite peeps to be a fan on your fan page (you do have a fan page don't you?) There is no limit to the number of fans.

Social networking can be fun; it can also be a lot of work and time. I share time saving tips to drive your business forward. Next week is LinkedIN, and it will be on my blog!