It’s Lucky Week 13 of the Big IDEA!

We’re diving into our discussion about the personal side of Facebook and Marketing using Social Media.

Facebook is the “big daddy” of Social Media. The social network has more than 1 billion people in its community (that’s one of every 7 people on the planet), and it’s growing every day. These people are from all walks of life, all demographics, from all over the world – they are husbands, fathers, wives, mothers, singles, teenagers – you name it!

We’ve already mentioned that Facebook really has two sides: the personal side and the business side. This week we’ll be talking specifically about the personal side of Facebook, which is the first area you should sign up to in the social network.

It’s really a step-by-step process. Facebook does a great job of holding your hand and walking you through the setup of your personal profile. Now, remember that term – personal profile – because it’s important to get the terminology of social networks down. That way we begin to think and speak like Internet marketers, and our audience, our community, will begin to understand these phrases as well. The better you can relate to a single type of language when speaking to your audience, the more they will connect with you.

In Facebook your presence is controlled mostly through what is called your Timeline. Once you’ve completed the initial setup steps that Facebook kindly walks you through you should be on your timeline page. If not, you can simply click on your name on the upper right of your screen and you will arrive at your Timeline. Facebook should’ve walked you through the process of selecting a cover photo, which is a wide image at the top of your Timeline, and the profile pic, which is essentially a picture of you. You can use an avatar, like a comic or a cartoon character in this place, but I encourage you to make this personal and upload a picture of yourself for your profile picture.

Your timeline is essentially your life on Facebook. It is a chronological listing of your posts on Facebook. Your posts are your entries made on your Timeline. It can also hold events or milestones that could include when you were born, birthdays, anniversaries, the start of your business, etc. You’ll note that one milestone is already present – it’s called “Joined Facebook”.

This timeline is your blank canvas for you to tell your story to your friends, your family, and your business community. The beautiful thing about Facebook is that they all allow you to section these people into different groups like the ones I just mentioned. You can actually choose to display what you post to everyone who is your Friend, or simply certain people or groups of friends. Friends, of course, is the designation given to people who follow each other’s personal profiles on Facebook. If you send a Friend request or if someone sends you a Friend request and the receiver accepts that request, you become Friends on Facebook. Again, you can have different types of Friends and categorize and display to them only certain information if you wish.

The key to interacting on Facebook is engagement. You want your audience, your Facebook friends, to be engaged and interact with your posts. You do that by telling stories through your posts that elicit or request engagement from your friends. And we’ll talk more about how to do that after we discuss the business side of Facebook next week.

There is one more aspect to your personal profile that you will want to understand. It’s called a News Feed. Facebook’s News Feed is where all of the stories (called posts) of your friends are displayed. Facebook takes the Timeline posts from each of your friends and puts them in an orderly display called your News Feed. You reach your News Feed by clicking the Facebook logo in the upper left while you are logged in as your Personal Profile.

This is where engagement comes in. Facebook has a series of algorithms that determine what you want to see the most in your News Feed – it basically evaluates your interaction with other people, your Friends, and determines how much you “like” them. Using this calculation, they create your News Feed and the most prominent items in your News Feed are the ones from Friends that you interact with the most.

For those of you who have been on Facebook awhile this is simply a refresher. If you are new to Facebook, however, this may be a bit overwhelming. I recognize that, but it should be treated not as something scary, but more like a playground! Take the tasks that I’m about to give you as an adventure.

Create a few posts on your timeline. Add a few photos. Use the search bar at the top next to the Facebook logo to type in your friend’s names and find them. Submit a Friend request by clicking the button you’ll see on their timeline that says “Send a Friend Request”. Once you’ve made a few friends, hop over to your News Feed (you’ll remember that you get to your News Feed by clicking the Facebook logo) and read some of your friend’s posts. Then create engagement - hop on the merry-go-round by clicking on Like to indicate that you like their post, adding a Comment which talks about your thoughts on their post, or click the Share button, which shares the content of their post with your Friends on your Timeline.

Have a bit of fun in Facebook this week, and we’ll talk about the business side of Facebook beginning in week 14 of the Big IDEA.

Kindest regards,

Greg