“You’re completely f—ing nuts,” he said. “You can’t get anything from Facebook but a sheep thrown at you.” He muttered something else under his breath that I didn’t catch.
“No. YOU can’t get anything out of Facebook because you have a time management problem. Facebook, by far, isn’t my favorite place online. But if you can’t get any business use out of Facebook, then that’s on you. It’s a social tool like any other, with a self-targeted visitor list that controls its own opt-in level.”
I was going to keep arguing with the man but I had things to do. Now that I’m done, I’d like to tell you what I wouldn’t tell him – 5 Fun and Free Ways to Benefit from Having a Facebook profile.
- Import Your Blog Posts, or Social Feeds, Then Tag the Imported Posts
Make sure you already have asserted your own copyright and that you read their T’s and C’s.Another thing Jeff Pulver mentioned to me in Facebook is that your audience in Facebook and in the Blogosphere may be different, so this isn’t for everyone. Once they’re imported, if you want someone specific to see them, or if they’re about a person you’re connected to, you can use their name as a tag. It’s much easier to get their direction attention that way because it can then pop into their news feed. There are a couple of other ways to do this that help you extend beyond just the people you know directly that I talk about in the book, but there’s not enough space to go into it here.
- Get to Know Clients, Colleagues and Mentors Better
LinkedIn is a great way to professionally network with a specific goal in mind.
But if you want to socialize with people, with no particular agenda in mind, Facebook is better. You can unobtrusively learn about your online pals, and use the little tidbits to make small talk, which can lead to conversation, which can lead to phone calls and other offline encounters. Â It’ll remind you of birthdays, hint at possible common interest – or tell you them blatantly if your friend has decided to fill their profile out. And you and the other person each control exactly how much you can get to know each other.
- Participate in Groups
Emphasis on participation. That means you can share links in the posted items section, if your group has one, write on the wall (kind of like a grown-up guestbook in the official Facebook version), or join the discussion board conversations. People start to see your name come up in conversations and on discussion boards, and they click on your profile. They’ll poke you if they want to know more, or from your profile, surf to your site. You can even start your own group.
- Upload videos
The kind that seem to go over best are short, simple videos with just you, a plain or simple background (white wall or you at your desk), followed by screencasts. They can be up to 15 minutes long, and up to 300MB. It’s free, and it automatically translates from their allowed format into a format viewable by all browsers, at a high quality.
- Share Links
When you share a link on your profile, your friends can get a notification of this, and they can also easily share it with their friends. Big deal right? But if you have 100 friends who average about 100 friends, it can be as if you emailed a link to 10,000 friends. Just like with email, not everyone will pay attention to it, and of those who do, not all of them will act on that information. But for the price of free, without spam? Can’t be beat.
If that weren’t enough, you can share links in Groups now on Facebook. So that means if you are an active participant in 20 groups of over 1000 people, you have added a potential 20K to your audience. Hint: Link sharing works better when you’re being helpful and have a track record of being an open, sharing person.
There you go. The next time someone tells you that Facebook can’t help your business, tell them to shut the hell up and talk about things they know about. I’ve started business relationships on Facebook that have led to a month’s worth of income as a direct result, not one but four times. I get traffic, engaging traffic from there daily even when my feed isn’t working properly (again! Someone help me!), and I’m closer to some very powerful JV partners that has laid the groundwork for the biggest product launch I’m ever going to have.
Try it for yourself. Then decide.
