32 Ways to Use Facebook for Business

Facebook’s not just for keeping tabs on friends and filling out quizzes — it can also be used as a highly effective business tool. It’s great for marketing your products, landing gigs and connecting with your customers.


Here are 32 ways to use Facebook in your business.

Manage Your Profile

1. Fill out your profile completely to earn trust.
2. Establish a business account if you don’t already have one.
3. Stay out of trouble by reading the Facebook rules regarding business accounts.
4. Install appropriate applications to integrate feeds from your blog and other social media accounts into your Facebook profile. (Although you should be careful before integrating your Twitter feed into your Faceboook profile, as a stream of tweets can seem overwhelming to your contacts.)
5. Keep any personal parts of your profile private through Settings.
6. Create friends lists such as “Work,” “Family” and “Limited Profile” for finer-grained control over your profile privacy.
7. Post a professional or business casual photos of yourself to reinforce your brand.
8. Limit business contacts’ access to personal photos.
9. Post your newsletter subscription information and archives somewhere in your profile.
Connect and share with others
10. Obtain a Facebook vanity URL so that people can find you easily.
11. Add your Facebok URL to your email signature and any marketing collateral (business cards, etc.) so prospects can learn more about you.
12. Post business updates on your wall. Focus on business activities, such as “Working with ABC Company on web site redesign.”
13. Share useful articles and links to presentation and valuable resources that interest customers and prospects on your wall, to establish credibility.
14. Combine Facebook with other social media tools like Twitter. For example, when someone asks question on Twitter, you can respond in detail in a blog post and link to it from Facebook.
15. Before traveling, check contacts locations so you can meet with those in the city where you’re heading.
16. Research prospects before meeting or contacting them.
17. Upload your contacts from your email client to find more connections.
18. Use Find Friends for suggestions of other people you may know to expand your network even further.
19. Look for mutual contacts on your contacts’ friends lists.
20. Find experts in your field and invite them as a guest blogger on your blog or speaker at your event.
21. Market your products by posting discounts and package deals.
22. Share survey or research data to gain credibility.
23. Use Facebook Connect to add social networking features to your web site.
24. Suggest Friends to clients and colleagues — by helping them, you establish trust.
25. Buy Facebook ads to target your exact audience.
26. Read up on Facebook Beacon to see if it might be useful for you.
Use Network, Group and Fan Pages
27. Start a group or fan page for product, brand or business. Unless you or your business is already a household name, a group is usually the better choice.
28. Add basic information to the group or fan page such as links to company site, newsletter subscription information and newsletter archives.
29. Post upcoming events including webinars, conferences and other programs where you or someone from your company will be present.
30. Update your group or fan page on a regular basis with helpful information and answers to questions.
31. Join network, industry and alumni groups related to your business.
32. Use search to find groups and fan pages related to your business by industry, location and career

source: http://gigaom.com/collaboration/32-ways-to-use-facebook-for-business/

 

 

Ten anti-social effects of Facebook

There you have it – your own life exposed to the whole world on the internet. Your pictures, your personal info., your hobbies, your likes, your dislikes and then some….everything is out in the open and by your own choice. That is the power of your Facebook profile. Positive or negative – the impact of this powerful social tool is beyond you and your ‘friends’.

In a very short period, Facebook has become THE social networking site. On a good day, Facebook can get more hits than Google – the godfather of all websites. Facebook is a force to reckon with. If you are not familiar with Facebook, you are either very outdated or live in dark basement with no connection to the outside world, and no access to the internet.

Now that we have established that you are in fact connected to the internet, you are most likely a part of this Facebook phenomenon or fad – whatever you want to call it.
This should come as a no surprise to anyone, Facebook comes with its own side-effects, many of them not so social. Here are ten of the ugly aspects of FB usage, the antisocial effects of this social network:
1. Addictive: If you use Facebook regularly, you know exactly how this site can be addictive. Always updating your status, checking on others, bragging about yourself, or just mingling with strangers…. The Facebook puts a variety of powerful options on your fingertips and you are hooked – for hours and hours every day.
2. Intrusive on personal privacy: Many of us pay very little attention to all the information we put online, some of it quite personal. Where you live, your contact information, what you do, where you go…. You may be opening the doors for others to intrude on your life. Even with all the privacy settings, lots of so called ‘friends’ have access to your personal information, a lot more than you may want to.
3. ‘Friends’ may not be friends: It is very common for everybody to have 100s of FB friends now-a-days; it is a popularity statement after-all. Are the Facebook friends really your friends? If you are adding everyone you meet in your school or workplace or online, chances are that you have many strangers in your friends’ list. Some of them may be there just to watch you. In real life, that would be considered creepy!
4. A society of loners: FB has become a place to pass time if you have nothing better to do. Many FB users hide in their rooms and log onto FB, rather than socializing with actual friends and family. Those who don’t socialize in real life may prefer to add excessive friends on FB and feel ‘social’ online. In some cases, the online social networking tool could actually encourage you to be anti-social and loner in your real life.
5. A cheating tool: How you use internet and Facebook is up to you. The FB lets you connect with old friends, ex-bf/ex-gf or anyone else you may have had crush on in the past. One recent report has blamed FB for one in every five divorces, and nobody seems to be surprised.
6. Frequent and annoying status update: You can easily find some strange and useless status updates on FB, all the time. What you had for breakfast, what you dreamt last night, what was the score of your local team that no one has heard of, what color of shoes you are wearing….The status update is often over-done and meaningless. And, if you breakup with your gf/bf, you can announce ‘I am single again’ within seconds; many repeat this almost every week!
7. Useless groups, pages and advertisements: Like any other popular site, FB is bombarded with all kinds of promotions. Many love to advertise their favorite music bands, or their own band they just started in the garage that nobody cares about. Then, there are meaningless groups and pages on any topic you can think of. People get carried away and start to join groups and pages for no reason or rhyme.
8. ‘Chat’: And then there is the Facebook chat. You can chat about whatever you want with whoever you run into on FB. And, if the person you chat with does not know you very well, you can come across whichever way you like. You can make up stories; you can pretend to be a saint or a satan. And if you are not selective about adding only the friends you know, you could be chatting with a 50 year old dude from Singapore who disguises to be an 18 years old cheerleader from Texas.

9. Easy to lie and deceive: Nobody is watching you; nobody can see you; people can live their fantasies on FB. Anyone can make a fake profile with a fake picture and pretend to be whoever he/she wants. That is the ugly side of FB, you can never be certain about FB ‘friends’ you have never met in real life.

10. Your Employer or school may use FB against you: Many schools check on the students’ facebook accounts; your employer may do the same. Also, most of the schools and workplaces don’t want anyone to be wasting their productive time on the Facebook. What you say or what you share on FB may come back to bite you – sooner or later.

Like any good tool, it comes down to the actual user – how you use it. FB is a very useful and a very powerful social networking tool, but it can easily become a big waste of time if you get carried away with all your profile and online friendships. By end of the day, you are dealing with a virtual society – things are not always what they look like, especially if you have 100s of friends, or should be say 100s of ‘strangers as friends’.

source: http://www.theindiansabroad.com/

FACEBOOK WILL END ON MARCH 15th, 2012!

Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook will be shut down in March of 2012. Managing the site has become too stressful.
“Facebook has gotten out of control,” said Zuckerberg in a press conference outside his Palo Alto office, “and the stress of managing this company has ruined my life. I need to put an end to all the madness.”
Zuckerberg went on to explain that starting March 15th of next year, users will no longer be able to access their Facebook accounts.  That gives users (and Facebook addicts) a year to adjust to life without Facebook.
“After March 15th, 2012 the whole website shuts down,” said Avrat Humarthi, Vice President of Technical Affairs at Facebook. “So if you ever want to see your pictures again, I recommend you take them off the internet. You won’t be able to get them back after Facebook goes out of business.”
Zuckerberg said the decision to shut down Facebook was difficult, but that he does not think people will be upset.
“I personally don’t think it’s a big deal,” he said in a private phone interview. “And to be honest, I think it’s for the better. Without Facebook, people will have to go outside and make real friends. That’s always a good thing.”
Some Facebook users were furious upon hearing the shocking news.
“What am I going to do without Facebook?” said Denise Bradshaw, a high school student from Indiana. “My life revolves around it. I’m on Facebook at least 10 hours a day. Now what am I going to do with all that free time?”
However, parents across the country have been experiencing a long anticipated sense of relief.
“I’m glad the Facebook nightmare is over,” said Jon Guttari, a single parent from Detroit. “Now my teenager’s face won’t be glued to a computer screen all day. Maybe I can even have a conversation with her.”