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The Multifacet use of Facebook for Networking
You are missing up on a lot if you think that Facebook is solely for sharing some pretty pictures from your latest trip or vacation with your friends. Facebook can help you in multiple ways, even for professional networking.
Why use Facebook for Professional Networking?
This question might pop up into your mind as soon as you start reading this article and it has a very simple answer. Facebook has users from the entire world; it plays an amazing role in globalization as well as communication. With the possession of more than a billion users from every nook and corner of the world, it is bound to produce ripples in the B2C (Business to consumer) market. Moreover, it opens the doors to many advertising opportunities as well.
As Facebook modified the profile layouts slightly, the work information and education section got more real estate. This particular change gives a rise to a high possibility of finding career oriented or professional services on this social media networking website. With that, it ought to be mentioned here that most of the employers search their potential employees on Facebook or Google once they have got your resume.
With this website becoming an important part of so many people’s lives it was bound to play a part in professional networking as against simple socializing; whether he is a manager, employer, colleague, head-hunter or a job seeker. Just like LinkedIn, personal branding can be done on Facebook as well.
Coming to the real part of the story, how effectively can we use Facebook for Professional Networking? How to go about doing the modifications and changes that will enhance your profile and make it business-centric as against a social profile. Below are some suggestions that we provide which can be implemented in order to refine/modify your social profile for professional networking:
1. Set Your Vanity URL:
Yes, now you can have your vanity URL in just a few clicks on Facebook. You must have noticed how Facebook profile links appear as facebook.com/e2434h87394oij in the address bar of any browser. For branding yourself, you can get it changed to facebook.com/yourdesiredusername. Your desired username can be your name, your company’s name and also some associated numbers. It just doesn’t have to be taken by somebody else before you and should be available for grabs at the time you are creating it. This URL can double in as an email address like yourdesiredusername@Facebook.com where you’ll get your messages in the Facebook inbox.
2. Check your privacy settings:
Facebook has an endless number of possibilities for your posts’, pictures’, and videos’ visibility to your friend list. If you want to be friends with your manager, employer, employee or colleague and don’t want them to see your personal pictures or that of your family’s; you can always alter your privacy settings by deciding that who gets to see what and who doesn’t get to see what. There has been a pretty recent update on Facebook which allows individual settings for posts. Now, you can modify privacy settings for each post individually on Facebook.
3. Get a Professional Picture:
There are a lot of contradictions about this one, but nevertheless, it cannot be missed to be mentioned here. Your profile picture should not put off any head-hunter, company, and colleague. To cut it short, your display picture on Facebook better be passing that Granny test with flying colors. It doesn’t have to be exactly in a meeting or you wearing a suit, but it just shouldn’t be sending any harmful vibes to the professional look of your Facebook profile. You can surely use the same display picture like that on your LinkedIn profile. All you need to ensure that you look less sociable and more professional.
4. Fill in Professional Details:
Facebook has an unsaid rivalry with LinkedIn, and that makes sense of Facebook’s ever-growing concern for an appropriate section for your work details as well as your qualifications. You will have to fill up this box very smartly because what you write in this section just might be the dealmaker or breaker.
Don’t plainly write what you do, like for example “IT programmer”. Instead of this write something catchy and crisp, such as: “Handling large scale IT projects in the Private Sector”. Never omit the step where Facebook asks you to specify the institutions you have studied in because this would help schoolmates and college class fellows to stumble on your profile much more often as well as to recognize you in an instant.
5. if you have a separate blog, share those posts on Facebook too:
if you have a blog or if you publish content on the internet or even if there’s a blog that you contribute too by adding articles; please don’t forget to share the links those posts on your Facebook profile page as well. This will help keep people aware and well-updated of your current hobbies/work as well as point of view about a lot of things. If you want to save yourself the time to do this, try getting help from tools like Buffer and Hootsuite.
6. Useful Status Updates Please:
This might go a little harsh on a lot of people out there trying to become a branding success on Facebook, but trust me it bears a lot of importance. You will have to give up on status updates about hilarious baby moves or sharing posts about who should be the American Idol these kinds of posts do not contribute to your professional networking efforts. To keeping things clear, you will have to update useful and informative posts which reflect your aptitude, intellect, and business ideas because no one wants to put off an employer by a cat video that would make you look non-serious in his mind.
7. Time to Say NO to Games
Yes, your game scores coming on your Facebook profile or a post related to any new destination you unlocked on your Facebook game is going to eradicate the part where professional, and your Facebook profile meet. Also, don’t associate any other PC games with your Facebook account to keep it safe from unwanted and astounding posts.
8. Look Into Groups and Pages:
Professional Webbing on Facebook is incomplete without the use of Facebook groups and Facebook pages. You can choose to make any of the two for yourself because each of these has their advantages and drawbacks.
Facebook Groups
A Facebook group is just the perfect tool to share updates in between an online community. It’ll be the same as your Facebook profile but the posts shared and updated will be only accessible to a targeted audience. This feature enables the Facebook group owner or manager to email all the group members in a jiffy. However, Facebook groups are much less commercial and more sociable as against Facebook Pages.
Facebook Pages
A Facebook page gives you an analytical insight of the people who have liked your page by allowing you to have a clearer view of what people like on the page, which post got the most clicks and how are they interacting on each one of them. A Facebook page can be a brand as big as Coca-Cola or Ferrari, but you can make it for your brand as well no matter how new it is. Facebook pages show up higher than Facebook groups or Facebook profiles when searched on a search engine like Google or Bing.
9. Use Facebook events:
For your personal brand success, it is important for you to organize some events that reflect your leadership qualities. Event setting up is extremely easy on Facebook. As soon as you put up the event, you will find people interested in helping you out or showing up. This will increase your own professional experience and exposure related to your particular field.
10. Clean up your image:
Managing a Facebook profile in a professional manner doesn’t by any means deprive you of the right to share your photos or what you like. You are most welcome to do it, but just make it go through your mind a couple of times because you won’t want that professional vibes going straight into the personal image. Some extra effort in creating special filters and visibility settings can help you use Facebook more effectively and for social networking as well as professional networking.
