I was chatting to a colleague about Facebook the other day about etiquette for using Facebook and in particular when using Facebook for business.
Facebook is an extremely powerful tool for businesses but you need to use Facebook correctly. This is a list of things that should help you when using Facebook for business.
1. Disable all game application notifications
This is very important when you use your profile for business and personal use. Do you really want to bombard business associates every time you win a game of Mafia Wars or fed your animals on Farmville. It is unprofessional and clogs up people’s live feeds. So the best way to avoid this is to disable notifications in the applications. Even your personal friends will thank you for this one.
2. Don’t send too many page requests
This is becoming a problem on my Facebook profile. It is really important that if you are going to suggest fan pages to people that they be relevant and not very frequent.
There are a couple of people who are constantly sending me Facebook fan page requests. The majority of them are not even for their own business but for others. To be honest it really gets frustrating having to go through so many requests and declining them. It has gotten to the point where I am even considering removing these people as friends so I am no longer harassed by fan page requests.
3. Regular updates… but don’t go overboard
You need to keep in regular contact with your customers and clients so utilising the Facebook page can be very effective. You should be consistent with your updates and try to update everyone on a regular basis. That said do not go overboard and update your page 10 times a day. For the same reason as the applications it can become very frustrating when your live feed is constantly full of updates.
4. Make it personal
When adding new friends on Facebook why not personalise it. Tell the person who you are and why you want to add them. I never add someone (unless I know who they are) to my Facebook profile unless they give me a reason to. If you don’t add a personal message be prepared for people to ignore your request.
5. Do not sync your Twitter to Facebook
Generally people tweet a lot more than they update their Facebook page. It is accepted that on Twitter you will update your status a lot, but as already mentioned it is not on Facebook. I would advise against syncing your Twitter account to Facebook or you will clog up live feeds. A good tool that allows you to pick and choose which updates go to both Facebook and Twitter is Hoot Suite and I highly recommend it.