Facebook All-in-One For Dummies, 2nd Edition (2014)
Book II. Connecting with Others
Chapter 10. Professional Networking
In This Chapter
Using Facebook for networking
Expanding your network
Building stronger engagement
Using business pages for networking
Expanding your reach in business isn’t easy — tons of meetings and a lot of effort are required to keep in touch with your contacts. The key is to be remembered by the people with whom you build a network, so that when they need your services — or know someone who does — they will deliver the business to you.
Facebook is not a replacement for face-to-face meetings, but it is a way for those meetings to reach further. In this chapter, we talk about how you can use Facebook as a tool that extends the reach of your networking and enhances business relationships. We also talk about some innovative ideas that can make you a networking power user.
Before You Begin Networking
Everyone is a little different in the way that they use Facebook. Some people are private and others are open. If people prefer not to add professional contacts to their friends list, don’t take it personally.
Also be conscious of what you say online. If you feel the need to be inappropriate (or otherwise have private content to share), filter who sees which updates.
Be conscious of the message you’re sending. Your message includes your profile photo, your other photos, the content of your Info page, your status updates, and even your friends’ responses.
Customizing your profile photo for networking
To put your best foot forward, consider the appearance of your personal timeline. The best place to start is your profile picture, which is perhaps the most important part of your timeline. Your profile photo identifies you and suggests who you are. You want to determine where you want to be between a professional appearance and a friendly personality. Figure 10-1 shows Brian’s profile picture. He wanted to present who he really was, straddling the lines of business and personal.
Figure 10-1: A professional yet casual profile photo.
Getting to know the space
After you have a profile picture, you have a little more work to do for a complete timeline. Consider the following areas:
· The cover photo: The cover photo is the image that covers the top of your timeline. Choose an image that represents you or that you think looks nice.
· The About section: Tell a bit about yourself. Be genuine, and be sure to share what you do for a living and why you love what you do.
· Work and Education in the About section: Make sure you fill in your work and education information. This section is one of the first places people look when learning about new connections.
· Contact Info in the About section: Here people can find out how to connect with you outside social media.
Anything beyond these areas is optional.
Using Facebook for Professional Networking
Several things are important when you’re using Facebook to network: being professional and being personal. These may sound contradictory, but they aren’t. In fact, they should complement each other. Facebook is all about making personal connections. People appreciate that you’re a real person with real things going on in your life. We think the best professionals to connect with are those who are regular people as well. When you let those two areas of your life — personal and professional — blend, you can make some good connections.
Most businesses are based on relationships. People are more likely to buy products and services from people they know, like, and trust, so one of your goals may be to connect with other professionals in your niche via Facebook. When you make connections on Facebook, you can share life experiences and have conversations; you can begin to get to know others and build trusting relationships.
The concern some may have is how to connect with business contacts on Facebook without seeming overzealous. We have some ideas about how you can approach your professional networking on Facebook.
Most networking starts with some sort of meeting. If you’re looking to expand your network, have a cup of coffee with someone every now and then. Talking with someone face-to-face almost always helps strengthen a relationship. After you’ve met with someone you’d like to connect with on Facebook, send the person a personal message, such as “Hey, Tom, great getting together for coffee! Thought I would go ahead and connect on Facebook,” and then send them a friend request. Remember, though, that not everyone likes to mix professional and personal lives, so don’t be offended if Tom replies, “I enjoyed coffee too, but I like to keep my Facebook for family and friends. Why don’t you connect with me on my business page?” Remember that Facebook is a personal space and everyone uses it differently. Tom may need to know you better in person before he feels comfortable connecting with you on Facebook.
One effective old-school way to connect is to combine your Facebook status updates with offline messaging. For example, Andy Ellwood, cofounder of Bond, an application that allows you to send gifts and handwritten notes from your iPhone, invites viewers of his status updates to download the app and send their first notes for free by giving out a promo code, as shown in Figure 10-2.
Figure 10-2: Helping your network by offering value.
Offer value and quality to your network even if the offer is free. When you have the best interests of others in mind, you win.
When you connect with professional contacts on Facebook, be sure to continue the relationship by commenting on their Facebook updates. Connecting casually through some simple conversation keeps you at the top of a person's mind. Your conversations don’t have to be all about business. Just build the relationship! You can ask your contact if he or she would like to connect in person or on video chat just to catch up on what’s new. Or you may simply ask how you can be of service — helping your new friend make additional connections is a great way to build that relationship.
Having personal and professional conversations
It’s okay to engage in a conversation about everyday life, as well as more sensitive topics, as long as you have mutual respect and decency. Opportunities to connect with friends of friends can open up in these sorts of conversations. When two people join in a conversation in the post of a mutual friend, you’ve been virtually introduced, and this might be a great time to send a friend request if you think you might be good connections for one another.
Your professional contacts are regular people like you, and they have lives, families, friends, and experiences to share. It’s okay to talk business, and it’s okay to talk personal. Just don’t put energy into a strict outline. Be yourself and have a little fun.
Building connections with professional contacts
If you’d like to expand your personal timeline network to include professional peers, you can use your e-mail account’s Contact list to invite people to friend you on Facebook. You may like this option because it offers you the chance to connect with those people in a more casual environment.
Importing your e-mail Contact list is perhaps one of the easiest ways to quickly increase your network. All you have to do is upload the properly formatted list of your friends’ names and e-mail addresses, and they will automatically be sent an invitation to connect with you on Facebook.
Follow these steps to import your e-mail Contact list and send friend requests:
1. Click the silhouette icon at the top of the screen, as shown in Figure 10-3.
Figure 10-3: Your list of friend requests.
2. Click the Find Friends link, in the upper right.
The Friends page appears and displays the following:
· Any outstanding friend requests.
· The option to manage your friends lists.
· The option to import contacts from Skype, Gmail, Windows Live Messenger, iCloud, Outlook.com, and other e-mail clients.
· A list of people you may know but are not connected with yet.
· The option to search for friends by name, hometown, city, mutual friend, gender, and age.
3. In the Add Personal Contacts section (top right), click the source from which you would like to upload.
You see several options, as shown in Figure 10-4. When you select an option, you see further options on how to access contacts from that source and upload them to Facebook.
4. Follow the onscreen instructions to download or access a list of contacts to add as friends.
5. Click the Choose File button, select the file you just created, and then click Upload Contacts, as shown in Figure 10-5.
This step may vary, depending on your e-mail.
You’re alerted to how many people will be invited to join you on Facebook. Facebook recognizes e-mail addresses that are associated with an account on Facebook. Unrecognized e-mail addresses appear in a second list. You have the opportunity to invite these friends to join Facebook and connect with you.
6. Click Confirm to send the invitations.
Figure 10-4: Choose where you would like to find friends.
Figure 10-5: Upload the file to send an invitation to connect.
Some people set up Facebook with one e-mail address and conduct all their regular e-mail communications through another e-mail address. If someone’s e-mail appears in the list of people not found on Facebook, it doesn’t mean the person isn’t on Facebook. Try searching for that person by name or by another e-mail address. (See Book I, Chapter 2 for more about finding friends.)
Expanding Your Network
It’s easier than you think to increase your network on Facebook if you’re actively connecting with people. Keep in mind that if you’re randomly adding people but aren’t connecting with them, you aren’t likely to benefit from that network (and neither are they). The same is true if you’re collecting Likes but not nurturing your business page community.
Making meaningful connections is important. The following sections describe some ways to expand your network.
Providing exclusive content to friends and followers
One way to get more connected with your network via your business page is to provide exclusive content for your friends and followers. We’ve seen several businesses offer coupons, free e-books or chapters, and other value-add items to their new friends and followers.
These businesses use a third-party application (such as Heyo, North Social, ShortStack, or Wildfire) to create engaging pages and content and get visitors to Like the page, share the page and its content, or sign up for a newsletter or downloadable content by joining an e-mail list.
Establishing yourself as an authority
When you’re expanding your network, the kind of information you share has an effect on whether others want to connect with you (either via your personal timeline or your business page). People that share puddles of annoying updates often lose connections with people who are interested in the latest news, business ideas, or clean humor. Think about the people you’re trying to reach so that you can share the right kind of information to expand that audience.
If you provide great content, creating an incentive for people to connect with you on Facebook is easy. For example, a business consultant may provide daily expert advice on increasing the reach of a business. The great advice she offers people is an incentive to be her friend or follower on Facebook.
Rocking the boat
If you know your audience well enough, you may be able to introduce some moderated controversy into your status updates (either on your personal timeline or your business page, depending on your goals and your audience for each). For example, Nathan knew that if he built his social media audience, he could attract new business for his company. One of his core goals was to engage with his followers and friends on Facebook through controversial conversation about politics.
While you may think that this could be a turnoff, he looked at it in a different way. His predominantly professional audience considers politics an important topic of conversation. Mutual respect is shared with those who engage in such conversation, even if they’re on opposing sides.
If you decide to try this method, clearly define the rules with your audience. For instance, any comments with derogatory remarks or name-calling will be deleted. Establishing the guidelines for debate is especially important for your business page because it tends to come under closer scrutiny. Friends and followers don’t like to be censored, and if you delete their comments without clear reason, the backlash can be intense.
Building Stronger Engagement
Engagement is the key to nurturing any network. The more you can encourage people to talk back to you, share your content, or tell their friends about you, the stronger your Facebook community is — and the more people want to connect with you. Facebook uses an algorithm currently called the News Feed Algorithm that, in simple terms, keeps track of the personal timelines and business page you interact with most. You can read more about this algorithm in Book V, Chapter 3, but we wanted to mention it here because it has an effect on how you create and share content with your audiences.
Here are a few tips to use to build engagement with your fans and friends:
· Post something fun every now and then. The News Feed Algorithm promotes stories from people you show more interest in. If you Like and comment on someone’s stories regularly, you see more from that user in your news feed. If you think you have to be stiff just because you’re posting to your business page, we want to encourage you to loosen up! If you lighten the mood and share fun information, people will engage a bit more, which will help your business page updates show up in your friends’ and followers’ news feeds more often.
· Don’t share long status updates. The news feed is fast paced. Keeping your updates short ensures that you can capture the attention of your readers. Longer updates are commonly overlooked when people are scanning the news feed for the latest interesting news. For this reason, a short update is going to catch more attention than a long one. If you need to share more information, we suggest providing a link to a blog post.
· Share pictures, video, and links. Statistically, updates with pictures capture the most engagement because Facebook is visual. Couple that with the quickly moving news feed and it’s easy to see how a photo or video catches the eye more quickly than a text update. When you share a link, Facebook automatically pulls a picture from the page so viewers can see a preview of the link. This feature helps increase the chance that people will take notice and click through to see more.
· Comment on your friends’ posts. Building community means you have to be part of that community. Unless you’re a celebrity (if you are, congratulations and thanks for reading this book), you won’t always attract activity to your business page without taking the time to connect with others. If you want to gather more comments on your business page, be sure you’re taking the time to comment on other business pages (either as yourself or as your business — we explain how to do that in Book IV, Chapter 2). If you’re networking more with your personal timeline, commenting on a friend’s status update may prompt her to take a look at the stories you’re sharing. The truth is, if you want better engagement, go ahead and engage with people!
Networking via Your Business Page
If you want to network in a different way, you might want to promote a business page. (See Book IV for information on business pages.) Business pages allow you to promote your business while keeping your personal timeline separate. However, you don’t have to stick to business only! You can definitely let your personality shine through on your business page (and your customers will appreciate the effort). In this section, we discuss how you can introduce your business page to new and existing contacts.
Sharing a business page with a friend
It’s simple to share your business page with your current Facebook friends. Follow these steps:
1. Go to your business page's Admin panel at the top of your business page.
You need to be signed in under your personal account and visit your business page. You can't access this feature using Facebook as a business page.
2. Click the Build Audience button.
You must view the business page from your personal account; if you view it as the page administrator, you won't see the necessary options.
3. Choose Invite Friends.
The dialog box shown in Figure 10-6 appears, listing all your friends.
Figure 10-6: Select the friends you would like to invite.
4. Click Invite next to each friend you would like to ask to Like your business page and then click Close.
The default list shows all your friends. You can search based on certain criteria by clicking the Search All Friends list and choosing friends based on recent interactions with your business page, where your friends live, whether they’re in other Facebook groups you've joined, or your lists.
Another way to share your business page is to use the Share Page feature, which is available from your Admin panel (Build Audience⇒Share Page) or your business page (click the gear icon below your cover photo and choose Share from the list). With either method, the Share This Page dialog box appears (see Figure 10-7), and you can share your business page on your personal timeline, on a friend’s timeline, in a group, on a business page you manage, or via a private message. Choose where you want to share your business page, type a note in the text box, and then click Share Page.
Figure 10-7: Share a business page.
Inviting e-mail contacts to Like your business page
Facebook enables you to invite your e-mail contacts to Like your business page. Simply follow these steps:
1. Go to your business page's Admin panel.
The Admin panel navigation is located in the top-right corner of your business page.
2. Click Build Audience⇒Invite Email Contacts.
The Invite Email Contacts dialog box appears, similar to the one shown in Figure 10-8. Your screen may be different, depending on the e-mail apps you have installed, such as MailChimp or Constant Contact. Note: You can invite contacts also from Skype, Windows Live Messenger, iCloud, or a custom e-mail provider, and you can even upload a CSV from your computer.
Figure 10-8: Invite people via e-mail upload.
3. Click the Invite Contacts link next to the e-mail provider you want to use.
4. Follow the instructions provided.
Depending on which app or option you choose, the instructions will require you to log in to your account or upload a file.
An invitation to Like your business page will be sent to your contacts.