Taking Advantage of Facebook Lists

Facebook has been around for a while and people still think of it as a personal social network. Many people have both business and personal Facebook connections. How can they merge them for maximum effectiveness?

Customizing your Facebook profile

When you use Facebook’s List feature, it allows you to separate your personal “friends” from your professional “friends” and give levels of access to your connections as you choose. You can post unique content to each list on the same page and feel secure in the idea that the two sets of content will remain separate. With the Lists feature, you can move your friends around in as many ways as you choose. Remember that your Facebook friends can be on more than one list at a time.

Setting up your lists

Once you have set up your lists, you should personalize your profile, using the “Hide” option on Facebook’s posting feature. Facebook allows you to hide anything that you don’t choose to share with other people.

The personal list of your profile is a great place to keep people with whom you have an emotional connection of any sort and to continue to connect with them and get closer and closer. Just because your connections with those people are personal, doesn’t mean that shouldn’t feel comfortable sharing professional information and advice as well. That is a logical and normal part of the relationship. After all, you can’t separate yourself from your business entirely. You are one and the same to a great extent.

Your business list, on the other hand, should be considered an extension of your business. It is another way to connect with business associates in order to build (or maintain) relationships with the objective of providing them with useful and informative content that they can effectively apply to their own business. The content that you share should be of a professional nature.

There are several things that will be of interest to you regarding your personal and business lists:

• You are only allowed to have one personal profile. 
   
• On the personal profile, you must use your actual first and last name. Use of your business’s name is inappropriate. 
   
• When it comes to the business page, your privacy is protected because it is difficult for other people to figure out who owns your company. 

It is very important for you to identify whether the majority of your Facebook connections are on the personal side or on the professional side. Once you have identified that, you should try to use the Friend List feature for a couple of weeks.  Be honest with those friends whom you wish to move from one group to another. Make sure that when you do connect with them, you are doing it from your new and improved profile.

Conclusion

Make your list of connections the most effective that it can be for your business and your personal social networking experience. You will see how efficiently it works and how smoothly your interactions on Facebook will become.

We are pleased to provide you with the insightful comments contained herein. Please contact us at CompuKol Communications for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team and don’t forget to “like” our Facebook page.