I often poll my Facebook community to see what issues they’re facing regards their use of Facebook, particularly marketing on Facebook. Following are a couple of related questions along with several suggested solutions:

Hilary asks, “I have a personal Facebook page and a ‘Fan’ page, which I prefer to call an author page. Not all of my ‘Fans’ are friends. Not all of my friends are ‘fans.’ Some are both. But there are some things I want everyone to know, which means my friends/fans get a double dose of me. How to get around this? I don’t want to be inundating people with my stuff, but I do want to get the message across.”

Sally asks, “I have the same question as Hilary. I have three Facebook pages, one personal and two for different books I have written. Each of the books has a different demographic, but some people are friends on all three. Love your thoughts on options.”

Since Facebook “Fan” Pages have significantly grown in popularity over the past couple of years, small business owners and personal brands face the dilemma of how to share content on multiple places without duplication. In other words, as Hilary and Sally indicate above, if a Facebook user is friends with you on your personal profile and also joins your business page (or even multiple business pages if you have more than one), any time you post the same update, around the same time, on both your profile and page(s) you may be creating a double entry in that person’s News Feed. What can then happen is your friends/fans start to hide your updates in their News Feed:

When you mouseoever any post in your News Feed, there is a little “X” in the top right corner of that post. For friends, the options are Hide this post and Hide all by [Name] and Mark as spam. For fan pages, however, there is also the option to Unlike Page, which is a relatively new addition to the options. This is not good news for fan page Admins!

So, ideally, you want to create a good balance of business content – with some personal content – that is spaced out and relevant to both your friends and fans so they’re more likely to engage. Getting your friends/fans to comment and like is the name of the game – the more your friends/fans interact with your content, the more EdgeRank (News Feed optimization) you’ll get. It’s a Catch 22: the more popular your posts are, they more popular they become.

5 solutions to avoid duplication, hides, and unlikes in the News Feed

1. Space out the timing of your content across multiple social profiles

My top suggestion is: never post the exact same content at the exact same time on multiple social profiles. Rather, you can get maximum mileage out of the same content by spacing out the timing across multiple locations. Guy Kawasaki is a master at this – he has no qualms about repeating the same content at various times throughout the day, week, month.

Many marketers have been taught to fully automate their content dissemination and set up pre-scheduled updates using tools such as HootSuite. Whilst I’m a mega fan and daily user of HootSuite and pre-scheduling, the danger lies in over-automation.

For instance, some business owners may schedule identical content to post onto their Facebook personal profile + one or more Facebook fan pages + one or more Twitter accounts + their LinkedIn profile, etc. Or, they sync their Twitter account to every other social profile and just auto-stream the same content. Granted, the likelihood of anyone in your network seeing every update across every social profile is rather slim. However, when it comes to Facebook alone, the chances of your audience seeing multiple updates are much higher because of the way the News Feed works.

Making this one shift to spacing out the timing of your updates could make all the difference. Any of your Facebook friends – who are also connected to your Facebook business page – are far less likely to hide your content (or unlike your page).

2. Focus on your fan page for business content, profile for personal content

Another suggestion is to begin to reduce the amount of business/marketing/promotional content that you share on your personal profile. Instead, try sharing more personal updates that you’re comfortable with. Hobbies, travel, and family are three of the big topics people love to bond over! Plus, try posting inspirational quotes, more photos and videos, your opinion on certain matters, etc. You’ll find that you don’t need to update your personal profile as often. One or two thoughtful updates per day can create great mileage and keep you top of mind among your Facebook friends.

Plus, one of the primary uses of a personal profile is to GIVE to others. It’s your personal profile that allows you to navigate around the whole of Facebook, browse your News Feed, and surf the web at large clicking the Like button, adding comments, giving support, being someone who’s helpful and supportive with no agenda.

You’ll also want to mention your Facebook fan page from time to time on your personal profile – in a status update, or post the link, or @ tag your page. This will let your friends know that you have a separate business community on Facebook. You could also share the direct link to a post to spark engagement. Every post on Facebook has a unique URL: it’s the timestamp just like on Twitter.

With your fan page, given that pages can have unlimited fans, they get indexed on Google, and they’ll increasingly get more EdgeRank in the News Feeds as your fan base grows and engages, it just makes more sense to “start the way you mean to go on.” Imagine a year from now your fan page has 100,000 fans or even a million fans with high engagement?! Will it matter that your same business-related content also gets seen by a few friends who are not connected to your fan page? (As and when your page becomes that popular, more of your friends will likely want to participate on your fan page anyway.)

Be sure to include personal updates from time to time on your business page too. Let people in, show you’re human! On his fan page for his new book, Enchantment, Guy Kawasaki does a wonderful job of sharing quality business content along with sharing nuggets and photos from his travels and ventures. He also repeatedly replies to his fans’ comments which is absolutely key!

Check out this post with five examples of personal brand fan pages – quite the lineup with Mark Zuckerberg himself, Lady GaGa. and yours truly!

3. Make use of Friend Lists for publishing content

Regardless of how many Facebook friends you have, you may significantly enhance your experience and that of your friends by making full use of Friend Lists. For a tutorial on how to create Friend Lists, see this post (Step 2). By segmenting your friends, you can then determine which friends see what content, post by post! You can set your default publishing, then adapt per post by clicking the little padlock that appears just under the publisher (place where you post your content).

Here’s what Mike Stelzner had to say about Friend Lists in this post:

I wanted to use Facebook for business and my personal friends wanted nothing to do with my business. Facebook was fun for personal reasons, but I struggled with the business side of things…

…My turning point came when Mari Smith introduced me to two little features that rocked my world: friend lists and privacy settings.

Facebook allows you to set up an unlimited number of lists.  But it gets better.  You can decide precisely what people in lists can and cannot see with a few privacy settings.

You may find that this solution provides you with the best flexibility and allows you to continue building your network of friends up to the 5,000 limit if you wish.

4. Downsize your personal profile for true friends/family only

If you’re one of the very small percent of Facebook users who has chosen to “max out” their friends and you have close to 5,000 – or at least several thousand – you may want to revisit how you’re using your personal profile. Several buddies of mine chose the downsize route and unfriended all but family members and personal friends they actually know in favor of focusing on their fan page for business.

How many “friends” can we really keep up with? The average Facebook user actually has a mere 130 friends. So, the Dunbar 150 still prevails:

Dunbar’s number is a theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. These are relationships in which an individual knows who each person is, and how each person relates to every other person. Source: Wikipedia.

If you do choose to restrict your personal profile for only true friends and family, you’ll want to also adjust your privacy settings significantly to make yourself almost invisible to anyone that doesn’t know you already. Go to Account > Privacy Settings > under Connecting on Facebook at the top, click View Settings then adjust each one to “Friends Only,” or click Customize and you may even want some set to “Only Me:”

You may find that your Facebook experience dramatically improves by choosing to downsize your personal profile and utilize it the way Facebook actually intended for us to use it – to stay connected to the people we know.

5. What works for me – my “Golden Rolodex”

Though I briefly entertain the idea of downsizing my own personal profile from time to time, the approach that’s worked best for me is #1 and #2 above: spacing out duplicate posts and focusing primarily on my fan page for business.

I intentionally grew my network of friends close to the 5,000 limit a couple years ago and continue to monitor and adjust as needed. I like to keep a “buffer” for adding new friends I meet at events and such like. I also watch my News Feed for any content and/or style that simply doesn’t resonate with me, shared by people I don’t really know, and I quietly unfriend them.

Over time, my network of friends represents what I like to call my “Golden Rolodex” – that is, these are people I genuinely wish to continue nurturing my relationship with – and they may or may not be actual clients or prospective customers at any given time. They are a mix of industry experts; people I admire; people whose blogs and ezines I read; my peers – seminar leaders, authors, speakers; people I’d like to get to know; colleagues and business partners; personal friends and family members. I used to control who sees what with Friend Lists, but now prefer to just publish everything to everyone. I never share anything that private anyway!

At the end of the day, I honestly think there are as many ways to use Facebook as there are members on the site. It’s up to you – find what works for you by experimenting over time and observing styles that resonate with you.

I trust you found this post valuable and gained some perspective and ideas on how to manage a personal profile and one or more fan pages on Facebook. Let me know what you implement in the comments below. Do you have a different strategy not mentioned here? What works well for you? Share below, I’d love to hear from you!

Recommended reading:

• Facebook 101 for Business: Your Complete Guide [socialmediaexaminer.com]
• Facebook Marketing: How To Balance Personal and Professional [marismith.com]
• The Mystery of The Facebook News Feed: How to Optimize The Hidden Jewel of Facebook [likeable.com]
• Facebook News Feed Settings: Random Or Not, Biggest Secrets Revealed [thedailybeast.com]
• Facebook EdgeRank and News Feed Optimization? [dcincome.com]
• Anatomy of a Facebook Post: Vitrue’s Data Behind Effective Social Media Marketing [vitrue.com]
• Facebook Marketing: An Hour A Day [amazon.com]

For some time, the “Facebook Phonebook” feature has caused quite a bit of confusion (and, in some cases, panic!). A viral message has been going around alerting friends that there is a security threat, when in fact, the Facebook Phonebook is a feature that every user on Facebook gets as part of our personal profile.

However, there could well be cause for concern if you’re not aware of how your own privacy settings affect your phone number/contact information, and it’s possible you may have inadvertently loaded all your mobile phone contacts to Facebook.

This video tutorial helps to dispel all the “urban legends” out there and clear up any confusion.

Your Facebook Phonebook consists of:

1. ALL your friends who have their Privacy Settings set to reveal their contact info [at least their phone number(s)] to their friends, PLUS
2. ANY contacts from your cell phone IF you have synced your mobile phone address book on the Facebook mobile app.

The part I personally find disconcerting is the fact the contacts you have in your own mobile phone will become “subject to Facebook’s Privacy Policy” should you choose to use the sync feature on the Facebook mobile app.

Controlling how and what you share

From Facebook’s Privacy Explanation page:

Facebook is about sharing. Our privacy controls give you the power to decide what and how much you share.

Indeed, YOU have the power. Of all social networks, Facebook has the most granular privacy settings. The sad part is, most members are blissfully unaware of exactly what private information and posts they are revealing to their friends and to the world at large every single day. (Just visit OpenBook and look up a few searches – it’s heartbreaking to see what gets shared. OpenBook only shows updates from profiles set to be viewed by Everyone).

Regards your Facebook Phonebook privacy settings, here’s the relevant excerpt from Facebook’s Privacy Policy (highlights added by me):

Exporting Information. You (and those you make your information available to) may use tools like RSS feeds, mobile phone address book applications, or copy and paste functions, to capture, export (and in some cases, import) information from Facebook, including your information and information about you.  For example, if you share your phone number with your friends, they may use third party applications to sync that information with the address book on their mobile phone.

How to remove your mobile contacts from Facebook

Navigate to your Phonebook by clicking on Account at the top right of any page when logged into Facebook > then click Edit Friends > then look to the top left column and click Phonebook. On that page, you’ll see a blurb on the top right with a small link to “visit this page.” See screenshot below.

NOTE: you may find that the link is temperamental and does not open right way; you may need to come back to it, hit refresh, try again. It seems to be intermittent whether it works or not, which is rather disconcerting.

It used to be that once your mobile phone contacts were synced with Facebook, you couldn’t delete them. A slew of groups sprung up like “Facebook stole my phonebook” and, fortunately, the option does now exist to remove any contacts you may have unknowingly uploaded to Facebook as explained above.

How to unsync your mobile phonebook

If you’ve never synced your mobile phone contacts with Facebook, this won’t apply to you.

Even though ONLY you can actually see and access your Facebook Phonebook, in my opinion, it’s best *not* to sync your mobile phone contacts for the best security and privacy purposes. Besides, even the idea that personal contacts of mine are susceptible to Facebook’s Privacy Policy gives me cause for concern.

Plus, when I’m teaching an online class via webinar, for example, I would not want to accidentally expose my super PRIVATE rolodex of cell phone numbers because they happened to be sitting in my Facebook Phonebook.

There will be different instructions for other mobile devices through which you access the Facebook mobile app. Following are screenshots from the iPhone app:

1) Tap the Friends icon

2) Tap the Sync button

3) Make sure your Syncing button is in the OFF position

If you DO choose to sync contacts, you’ll be shown this warning before proceeding further:

By the way, if you have questions for Facebook about their Privacy Policy, you’ll need to use this form. (For a directory of over 120 Facebook contact forms, see this post.)

How do you feel about this issue of the Facebook Phonebook and synced mobile phone contacts? Do leave your comments/questions about this topic below. And/or come write on my Facebook wall at http://facebook.com/marismith.

Recommended reading:

• ALERT: Facebook Phonebook Is Not A Security Threat
• Is your private phone number on Facebook? Probably. And so are your friends’ [The Guardian - very important read]
• Privacy Fail: How Facebook Steals Your Friends Phone Numbers
• Tom Scott’s “Evil” site – scary but informative.

A Facebook friend recently mentioned she was intentionally responding to new Facebook friend requests late at night as she didn’t want to clog up her friends’ feeds. Thing is, there’s a setting in your Facebook Privacy to control exactly what gets published on your Facebook Wall and your friends’ News Feeds.

I have my settings tweaked so that when I add a new friend this is not published on my Wall or friends’ News Feeds. One of the main reasons was, like my girlfriend, I didn’t want to clog up my friends’ feeds.

But, also, what I found was that some folks would watch my feed and see who I was becoming friends with, then reach out to them and infer we had a much deeper connection than was so. Such is the nature of Facebook friends — it could be someone brand new you’ve just added or someone you’ve known all your life.

In any case, there are a few settings you may not be aware of either when it comes to what content you choose to publish on your Wall and, by default, out into your friends’ News Feeds.

How to edit your News Feed and Wall settings:

On the top blue navigation bar, mouseover Settings > then click on Privacy Settings > then click on News Feed and Wall as shown in the screenshot below:

On the next screen, check or uncheck the settings as you wish. The screenshot below is exactly how I have my settings:

Add a friend

If you have the “Add a friend” setting checked on your News Feed and Wall privacy section, your Wall could look like this when you confirm friend requests en masse:

Plus, this activity may show up in all your friends’ News Feeds. There could be very strategic reasons to leave this setting checked as maybe you want people to see how many friends you’re adding, or who they are. But my preference is to have it private for reasons mentioned above.

I’ve been at the 5,000 Facebook friend limit since fall 2008 but I do monitor my News Feed very closely to ensure the people in my inner circle are a match for my style and vice versa. (By the way, if ever you remove a friend, no notifications go out at all. I know this is a concern for many folks!)

Show Wall posts or not?

If you also use Facebook for personal purposes and want to keep personal separate from business, you might want to give thought to this Wall setting. In other words, if you prefer to have the Wall posts you write only show up on that friend’s Wall and not be published out into the News Feed of all your friends, uncheck the top setting. (There is a much more granular way to control your Publisher settings which I’ll write about in a separate post).

I tend to be totally open and use Facebook for strategic professional networking 99% of the time. Every action creates visibility so I’m happy for all Wall posts to go into all friends’ feeds.

One thing to consider though is when you’re wishing your friends a happy birthday. Whether it’s you or an assistant that writes birthday greetings, you might want to be aware that every Wall post may go out into your friends’ News Feed assuming the “Show Wall posts” setting is checked. If you have a lot of friends and all you write is “Happy Birthday” on your friends’ Walls one after the other, frankly, I think it looks automated and impersonal. Instead, I suggest mixing up the birthday greetings and perhaps even spacing them out a bit.

Change relationship status

Again, it’s a personal choice. But, for me, I recently went through a personal transition as I wrote about here and I didn’t want to broadcast that news via Facebook. This setting may be irrelevant to most people – but it’s certainly one you should be aware of.

Here’s what your friends might see in their Highlights section on their Home Page, unless the setting is unchecked:

Let me know if you found this post useful and how you like to have your News Feed and Wall settings in the Comments section below. Have you taken advantage of the really granular publishing and privacy settings? What’s your biggest question(s) about these settings?

Privacy is a major concern for many people using social networks. Choosing how much of your personal life to spill into your work life through social networks is up to each individual.

In the context of how transparent to be on Facebook and Twitter, back in February 2008, I wrote about these three areas of life: personal, professional, and private. Today, for a specific reason, I am choosing to move the personal | private line:

When is it appropriate to share more?

For so many of us, our personal lives become inextricably linked with our professional lives. Who we are is our business, our business is us.

However, I always maintain we must still have a private life and choose only to share those things we are truly comfortable with: (1) being on the front page of the New York Times, (2) found in a Google search, and/or (3) proud for our children/grandchildren to see in years to come.

So, when is it appropriate to reveal more? …When your private life doesn’t feel completely congruent with your life in the public eye.

That’s where I’m at right now, and so this may be the most personally transparent blog post I’ve written to date.

I believe in authentic communication and I’ve recently undergone such massive transition in my personal life that it just doesn’t feel right not to share myself more openly with my community at large. One of the main reasons I’m inspired to write this post is to share with you my commitment to authentic, heart-centered relationships – on both a personal and professional level.

Over the past several months, I realize many of my network perceive I’m still living in a motor home traveling the country with my husband, Ty. I was. Up until about September of last year when we returned to Southern California after an 18-month tour of the entire western US and Canada.

My personal journey…

Ty and I met in 1999 not long after I came to San Diego from Scotland, and we married in 2001. We enjoyed many wonderful experiences together, most certainly our mobile lifestyle. But we discovered differences over the years in our outlooks, goals and aspirations. After we returned from our travels, we gave much thought to the future of our relationship.

As I continued to work on myself and grow personally, stepping more fully into my inner power, strength and light, my business success became greater and greater… and I began to see that Ty and I were simply traveling different paths.

Once it became clear our marriage no longer served either of us, Ty and I separated earlier this year and last month we divorced. We put effort into a responsible and caring separation, and we are amicable about the transition.

This has not been an easy choice for me, but it feels like a true choice for Freedom. Since I had experienced divorce with my parents as a young child, I was reluctant to travel that road again. Even though I’ve done a lot of personal and professional development on myself, I still had non-supportive beliefs and patterns impacting my choices.  I kept telling myself I was committed to a new standard of marriage. Now, I’ve realized I’m committed to a new standard of relating regardless of the form of the relationship.

Publishing personal changes on social network profiles

While I’ve been going through this transition over the past few months I kept wondering how I’d manage to change my relationship status on Facebook – and other social networking profiles – from married to single. (I did edit my privacy settings so the relationship change wouldn’t just suddenly go out in the News Feed of all my friends.)

Not only that, but I wondered how my network would respond to this news and, though I’ve shared with many close friends, I just wasn’t sure how to share en masse… or even if I needed to. But any time someone would tweet or write me through Facebook about my mobile lifestyle or husband, I didn’t know how to respond. So, that’s why I’ve chosen to write this post.

Given the very nature of social media and the times we are in right now, I just know it’s more in alignment with my truth and integrity to share this part of my journey with you now.

Resources that made a huge difference

I’m deeply grateful to Esperanza Universal, Master Spiritual Teacher at the S.O.U.L. Institute who leads profound spiritual transformational programs – her work has helped immensely to deepen my relationship with myself and bring out the higher meaning in my transition. Do check out Esperanza’s Web site to learn more about her signature program Mastering Your Life. (I’ll see you there in September as I’ll be attending again!)

Along with Esperanza’s work, Ty and I were fortunate to have the support of Peaceful Divorce Expert, Belinda Rachman. She’s an exceptional mediator who specializes in “divorce-in-a-day,” based in Carlsbad, California.

There are also a few books that I’ve found most helpful not only in my marital transition but in embracing my success at a whole new level:

• The Big Leap – by Gay Hendricks. Incredible book about how we all have an “upper limit” of success, happiness, joy, love, finances and unconsciously sabotage ourselves when we reach that limit until we know how to breakthrough.
• The Secret Code of Success – by Noah St. John. Excellent book that shows how our fear of success is greater than our fear of failure and teaches specific steps on how to overcome this challenge. Great companion to The Big Leap!
• Spiritual Divorce - Debbie Ford. A book I bought years ago but was afraid to read. If you know anyone contemplating divorce, this is a superb book.
• How Do I Tell The Kids – Rosalind Sedacca. A beautiful storybook for couples with children; Roz’s book touched me deeply as an adult child of divorce, even though I don’t have children myself.

Letting our light shine!

I’ve always resonated with these beautiful, inspiring words by Marianne Williamson from her book A Return To Love, and they have helped me greatly most recently to really let my light shine:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness
that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves,
Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.

Your playing small
does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking
so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.

We are all meant to shine,
as children do.
We were born to make manifest
the glory of God that is within us.

It’s not just in some of us;
it’s in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine,
we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear,
our presence automatically liberates others.”

Another gem from Marianne (I saw go by on Twitter recently): “Every change is a challenge to become who we really are.”

How has this impacted you?

My hope for you in reading this post is to feel inspired to live into YOUR deepest truth more fully. To know how powerful beyond measure you are and to step up and play a bigger game in life and business. The world needs you!

I’d love to hear your thoughts – please share how this post impacted you in the comments below.