Using Facebook Effectively

Here are some basic first steps you can take in establishing your Facebook presence is to select a unique username unused by anyone else that is all one word and has no spaces or punctuation. Ideally, your personal or organizational or campaign brand should be reflected in your username to make it easy for searches within Facebook to find your presence.

Example: If your brand is Blue Wolf Den Mothers, your username should be bluewolfdenmothers.

The URL that Facebook will create for you will be based on your username, but your URL will also contain various codes and numbers that you cannot control. So, you will likely end up with a long URL that will not be able to be promoted in print or by word of mouth.

Use a Shortened URL

Each time that you promote your Facebook presence online (such as using Twitter) you should always rely upon a shortened URL so that you never have to use a long string of characters. Shortened URLs can be created easily and at no charge using http://bit.ly/ or http://tinyurl.com/ or in several other ways online.

Essential Ingredients for a Facebook Presence

Image: After you create your Facebook presence, you should next use or create an image that visually represents your personal or organizational or campaign brand. A picture of a person may not necessarily be the best visual representation. A simple, yet effective, visual representation of your brand would be to use what is known as a text treatment—letters and/or other text characters that are presented visually in an interesting manner. Bold or Italics are effective text treatments even if you are producing your visual representation without using any colors.

However, if you do use colors in your visual representation, you should take care that the colors go together well and look appealing together. For example, using a green background with red letters would not be a sensible choice since these colors clash when used together.

When producing your visual representation, you will want to end up with a square image in which all four sides are of equal dimensions. This is necessary because Facebook crops and shrinks images so that they appear as a square. You will want to avoid producing a visual representation that is rectangular in shape in which the width is greater than the height. After Facebook crops and shrinks the image, rectangular images will display only what is in the very center and the remainder of the image will not be visible when displayed.

The file size of your image must not exceed 4 MB or Facebook will not upload it. Facebook controls how your image is displayed, so it is best if you use a square image that is under 4 MB in size. Facebook crops and shrinks images, so you are not able to control how your image appears throughout Facebook other than to make it square.

Text Descriptions: Throughout Facebook, there are various places where you can enter text to describe why you have set up a presence there.

The “Wall” on Facebook is like a home page where there are opportunities for you to place text descriptions. Using your wall on Facebook to communicate is very easy. You type in characters in a text box to answer the question “What’s on your mind?” What you type appears on your wall on Facebook. You or someone will need to type in text in your wall or Facebook or it will remain blank, which is undesirable.

You can also insert text into “Boxes” on Facebook that you can positions in various places through the pages on Facebook that you control You will need to use text characters as economically as possible since Facebook sets limits on how many total characters can be used. You can easily modify any text that you place on Facebook, so getting the most effective use of our your text descriptions is just a matter of practice.

Photos: Beyond your square visual representation image, Facebook also allows for posting of additional images, which are called photos. Even though the name photos suggest that you need to post only photographs, on Facebook you can post any of the common digital image formats. The images that you post within the photos section on your Facebook presence should be related to the reasons why you established a presence there. Posting unrelated imagery will dilute the effectiveness of your Facebook presence.

Links: Of course, your Facebook presence should feature a link to your website. It is common practice to use Facebook as a way to generate traffic to websites. But, you should also link from your website to your Facebook presence because doing so suggests that you are savvy in the use of social media. Your Facebook presence also can present links to other websites than your own, but posting links that are unrelated to your reasons for having a Facebook presence will add unwanted clutter and also dilute your effectiveness on Facebook.

Applications: There are an ever increasing number of applications that can be used on your Facebook presence. You will need to weigh the benefits to you or your organization or campaign when choosing which applications you want to use on your Facebook presence. For instance, just because you can set up a message board on your Facebook presence does not mean that you should do so. You will need to evaluate whether you want to add applications that enable access by other Facebook users to post content on your Facebook presence.

One of the most desirable applications you can use on Facebook is RSS (Real Simple Syndication) because this enables you to pull in content from elsewhere online. One particularly effective use of RSS would be to pull in your Twitter feed so that it displays on your Facebook presence. Doing so would provide your Facebook presence with fresh content automatically and unattended.

You may want to establish a Twitter account that you can use as a source of your RSS feed into your Facebook presence. But, you can also use RSS to pull in content if you have a message board and blog. You should not pull in RSS feeds to your Facebook presence that are unrelated to you reasons for using Facebook because these will add unwanted clutter and also dilute your effectiveness on Facebook.

Fans and Friends

Social media tools commonly use software that automate interactions between people. This is often generically known as “friending” online. Facebook allows for one to become a friend of an individual and a fan of a celebrity, business, campaign, or organization. By whatever name, this is friending.

Your use of Facebook should be to bring together likeminded people or campaigns or organizations so that you can spread awareness about you and your campaign or organization. This automated friending using Facebook software is the number one reason for anyone to use Facebook. When you friend someone, you become connected through Facebook to them. This, in turn, connects you to all those who are connected to that someone. This connecting or networking of people via Facebook can quickly expand your connections to ever increasingly large numbers of other people. What you type on your wall on Facebook also appears on the Facebook presence of everyone to whom you are connected as a friend or fan. This is the second most important reason for one to use Facebook. Depending on the total size of your friend or fan base, what you type into your wall can get very widely distributed to many readers via Facebook. This use of your wall should become an ongoing responsibility for you or someone who represents you.

Note that any images that you post on your Facebook presence will also get distributed out to all who are your friends or fans. You can easily distribute images in this manner to promote yourself, your campaign, or your organization. Posting of images can be an ongoing maintenance responsibility should you choose to post images on a consistent basis.

The ongoing maintenance of a Facebook presence also will involve managing the friending function. Specifically, you or someone will need to log on to Facebook on a regular basis to friend others so that your network of connections will grow. One can unfriend someone as well. This simply involves disconnecting from someone by making a choice to disconnect using the Facebook software. The person who gets disconnected or unfriended is not notified by Facebook automatically, so you need not worry about seeming rude or ruthless if ever you choose to unfriend on Facebook.

Advertising

In the right sidebar on Facebook is advertising that is solely controlled by Facebook. In effect, your use of Facebook gives Facebook permission to place advertising on the right side of each page that you use on Facebook. You cannot control the content of this advertising. Note that Facebook will use text parsing to select what particular advertising will appear on the right side of your Facebook pages. For example, if you happen to use the word wolf anywhere in the text or tags on your Facebook presence, you can expect advertising may appear on the right side that contains that word such as from Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts. You should expect that there may be untended consequences of text parsing and an advertisement may appear on the right side of your Facebook page that you will not want associated with you or your reasons for using Facebook.

You can also pay to advertise your Facebook presence or your external website throughout Facebook. This use of paid advertising throughout Facebook is entirely optional. You can control how much money you spend on such Facebook advertising by limiting the exact dollar amount per day based on the number of clicks or impressions. If you choose the Facebook Pay for Clicks model, you will need to bid on how much you are willing to pay for each click on your ad. The amount you are charged will never exceed your daily budget. If you choose the Facebook Pay for Views model, you will need to bid on how much you are willing to pay for every thousand impressions of your ad. The amount you are charged will never exceed your daily budget. Note that paying for such advertising is an effective way to increase the number of Facebook friends or fans that you have. A higher number of Facebook friends or fans increases your reach for your messages and imagery.