10 Facebook Do’s & Don’ts for Personal and Marketing

There is a vast number of do’s and don’ts on Facebook for both personal and business. However, these are ten common ones I’ve selected to present at the San Diego Social Media Club on September 15th, 2011! 🙂

1.    DO: Decide how you wish to use your personal profile:

a.    Personal: Close IRL friends and family only?
b.    Personal and some business – turn on subscribe?
c.    Business with some personal – turn on subscribe.

2.    DO: Completely familiarize yourself with Facebook’s privacy settings, including:

a.    Default sharing
b.    Tagging
c.    Instant personalization
d.    Authorizing apps
e.    Blocking

3.    DO: Set up a Facebook fan page for your business. Even with the new subscriber option for public profiles, fan pages are still highly useful. You can add custom apps and glean deep analytics about your page and fans.

4.    DO: Use additional analytics tools to improve your Facebook posts. Check out Crowdbooster.com, Pagelever.com, Socialbakers.com, Fangager.com, and Twentyfeet.com.

5.    DO: Add the Facebook Like button and Like Box to your website and blog.

a.    Facebook’s social plugins: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/
b.    I use this WordPress plugin: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/really-simple-facebook-twitter-share-buttons/

6.    DON’T: Tag friends in photos or videos unless they are actually in the photo/video. Equally, don’t use Notes to tag multiple friends to get their attention. Perhaps this tactic works for some folks; but it typically comes across as spammy and inappropriate.

7.    DON’T: Send emails to multiple recipients as a way to get their attention. There are very few situations where this practice does not come across as spammy. As a rule of thumb, use multiple recipient emails a) to communicate with a small group of people who know one another, or b) to introduce a small group of people. Small may be ten or less.

8.    DON’T: Add friends to Facebook Groups without their permission. Instead, contact potential group members privately and see if they would like to be added.

9.    DON’T: Run a contest unless it complies with Facebook’s Promotion Guidelines. The #1 rule to with which you must comply is using a third party app such as Strutta, Wildfireapp, Votigo, Offerpop, etc. Or, you may use your own content on an iFrame app. Promotions include contests, competitions, sweepstakes, and drawings. If in doubt, the litmus test is will one or more winners be selected? If so, the rules apply. If you’re just giving away a gift to all your fans, then that’s a giveaway and isn’t affected by the rules. See this post for more on promotions.

10.    DON’T: Overly automate content publication to your fan page. If you set up all your tweets and blog posts to auto publish to your fan page wall, and you rarely visit your page to post manually and interact with your fans, your page will just look like a one-way broadcast channel and may not be that effective. Instead, set up your blog posts to import via the Networked Blogs app and also the Notes app; but uncheck the post to wall setting. Then, share your blog posts manually. And, make it a habit to check your fan page daily to respond to fans. See this post for seven ways to increase your News Feed visibility.