5 Facebook Surprises

You may know that I’m a peculiar fan of Facebook. I use it more than most people – but some of the ways I am on there are probably different than most. I do not think it’s a very good marketing tool, for instance. I find the more I poke around in the corners, the more interesting things I learn. Here are 5 ways that I experience Facecrack that might illuminate what’s going on on there and help guide you to a more improved experience. I also have a webinar that goes step by step through some of this – it’s a bit long, but I promise you’ll learn some things 🙂

1. Facebook is an incredible networking tool. If you want to find someone – I’d use LinkedIn (and that’s another article in the works), but if you want to connect friends who need to meet (you matchmaker, you!) – or coordinate something, Facebook works great. I use the chat area all the time – sometimes just looking at a friend who’s on-line will prompt me to remember that I needed to talk to them about X, Y, or Z. In a way, it mirrors email’s ability to connect people – but that visual of someone’s face I think elevates the interest we all have in connecting and makes it practicable and immediately possible. Try this sometime – start a chat with a few people on the sidebar at the same time. Who do you know that needs to meet someone else that you know and for what purpose? Introduce them. Go! Report back if you have any great results 🙂
2. Create lists. I talk about how to do this here, but I now want to add that the lists that you create can also be used for selectively sharing your posts. Once you’ve created a sub-list of your friends – this makes viewing your newsfeed a completely different experience. For one thing – you can now see everything that person(s) has posted rather than accept what Facebook’s algorithm feeds you. And, you can also use that list in the pull-down of (public, friends, etc.) who can see your post.  Example: you want to keep friends and family members separate? Create a list of just family – post things you want them to see and choose that list – and vice versa – want to share with just your friends – post to your Friends list (the one you create, not the “automatic” one that FB creates for you.
3. Play around with Facebook. When you start experimenting, you find things that are possible, and possibly useful that you would never find otherwise. For instance, regarding fan/business pages – which I think are about as useful as a yellow pages ad these days – you can make a post that reaches a certain demographic only, without paying anything extra. Just want to reach 45-year old women? Here’s how. (it turns out this is not available on all pages!)
   

   Step one: create post and use the pull-down arrow

   Step 2: choose your demograhic

4. Take a Facebook purification tool for a test sometime. I’m using something called Facebook Purity. The interface looks like this and it allows me to kill all advertising and do some other customization of my experience. There are a few tools out there – try one and see what you think. I love that I can set my newsfeed to most recent news, automatically.  I guess what I’m saying is – if you’re going to spend a bunch of time on FB, learn more of the ins and outs of it 🙂
   

   FB Purity, free tool super helpful! https://www.fbpurity.com/

5. Get some training on how to use Facebook well. It will make such a difference. I teach free classes on email marketing and social media on a fairly regular basis – and there are tons of resources out there, too – search Youtube – spend a little time – once you figure out how to get past some of the more frustrating aspects you’ll see a bit more of how useful FB can be.Some things to learn next: how to unfollow someone without unfriending them. Decide what you’re on FB for – just close-knit friends and family or everyone under the sun (I’ve gone for the latter). This makes a big difference in your experience.

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