Everyone has seen him/her many times on Facebook.  He’s the one breaking all of the unwritten, unspoken rules of Facebook etiquette.

Perhaps he just didn’t pay attention in class.

In the first article in this series, we covered why Facebook can be a goldmine for you for building relationships, attracting new customers and new business partners.

We went into a few simple Facebook Do’s.

Now it’s time for the Facebook Don’ts.

Don’t spam people’s walls – I wrote an article a few months ago that I called Social Media Date Rape…because that’s what these people are like.  They become your friend and before establishing any value or building any sort of relationship they plaster their link to their business on your wall.

Get off my F’ing wall, man.  I have lots of friends on Facebook and I do a lot of business through my site, so my profile is like one of my stores, essentially.  Would you walk into someone’s place of business and hang a banner for your business on their wall.

Of course not, it’s absurd. Don’t be that guy!

But social media miscreants do it all the time.  Like I said, get off my F’ing wall.

This goes for groups too.  If you haven’t communicated with the group administrator and built a relationship or found out what the group rules are, then you shouldn’t post anything promotional.  Just use your head and be in integrity.

Don’t insta pitch people in chat/email – It’s really the same as above, but somehow people think that if they are sending you an email or a chat window, it’s somehow okay.  Again people, build relationships.  Stop being so short sighted.

Don’t use crazy pictures as your profile photo – I covered this a bit in Part I, but wanted to expand on it here.  Here’s a short list of how to have no business friends.

Now, these are all friends of mine, but they need some help optimizing their Facebook profile.  If you have any of these as your profile photo, well, I am just sayin…

Logo Man

I know this guy is promoting his business, but people do business with people.  Build a relationship and trust in YOU as the voice of the business.

Mr. or Mrs. No Face

I know we are all busy, but if you can’t take the time to even upload a picture, why would I want to take the time to accept your friend request?  Red is a good look though, right?

The Cartoon Guy

I went to high school with Che and I doubt he is using Facebook for business, but he isn’t the only one that does this.  People everywhere do it and wonder why they aren’t building their friends list.  I mean, everyone likes snoopy, right?

The Under-ager

Hey, I love my son with every fiber in my body, but you know where pictures of Brennan go…in an album, not as my profile picture.  Maybe I am wrong.  Maybe this is this girl’s profile.  Kids are techno-wizzes these days!

The Pet Guy

Scott is a new friend of mine and I told him I was going to use this image of his dog, Jack. But seriously Scott, give Jack a nice bone and put him in a nice album that he can call home and get your personal photo back up.

There you have it, a few nuggets for you.  Stay away from this Facebook don’ts and you’ll be just fine.

If you haven’t read Part I of this article, go check out the Facebook Do’s.

The answer is yes, you can.  You can build a massive business with Facebook while growing friends and not alienating people.  You can do all of those things if you use Facebook properly.

Let’s start by talking about why you would want to use Facebook to attract people to your business.  I remember just 2 years ago when I was telling a friend how I was using Facebook to build relationships and grow my business he said, “Facebook, what are you 12?”

The climate has changed a bit since then, hasn’t it?

Here is the breakdown of why Facebook is one of the most phenomenal marketing arenas in the world.

1. Market - there are over 400 million users (growing by 300,000+ per day)
2. Extremely targeted – people tell you what they are interested in
3. Clusters – like-minded people gather in groups and through fan pages
4. Organically Viral – everything anyone does shows to all of their friends in their news feed
5. Exposure – the average user spends 55 minutes a day online and has 130 friends
6. Connection based – what I mean by that is Facebook is set up for people to reach out to each other.  People WANT to connect and share information.  This is the basis of all social media.

As a marketer, those bullets above should make you drool.  They represent a marketers dream come true.  It’s one place that you could literally drive all of your business from.

Now that you know WHY you should be using Facebook, let’s talk about HOW you should be…and while we are here, let’s also talk about how NOT to use Facebook.

Facebook being the 800-pound gorilla of social media platforms, it follows the same intelligent guidelines as others, but as we know, people aren’t always intelligent.  The sheer potential for marketers outlined above is enough to make the less tactful and principled marketers come out of the woodwork.

Don’t be one of those people.  It will cost you in the long run.

THE FACEBOOK DO’S

1. Relationships – Set your intention and goals when starting your Facebook campaign that you are there to build long-term, mutually beneficial relationships with people.  You are there to connect, to provide value in the marketplace and actually get to know people.

Facebook is completely transparent.  If your goals are not congruent, marred with self-serving actions or inconsistent…people will know.  Just be smart and be real.  In today’s world of social media, good news and bad news travels very fast.

2. Optimize your profile – if you truly want to use your profile for business, then you need to make it reflect your brand.  This doesn’t mean that you need to remove all of the personal information, quite the contrary, but you do need to be conscious of it.

If there are photos of you from Mardi Gras “getting your beads on,” you may want to think twice about that.  If you are constantly sending pillow fights, horoscope info, pixie dust and fairy godmother apps to people, you may want to shift the use of your time.

Sit down and spend some time crafting your message.  What do you want people to know about you and your business.  You need to connect people to you as a person and you as a business leader.

3. Profile Photo – I see this so much it needs it’s own bullet point.  If you really want to build relationships based on trust and mutual respect, you need a good picture where people can clearly see your face.

This is the number one reason people accept friend requests.   Get a good, professional photo.  At the very least, get a really clear, well lit one.

I know you love your kids, but don’t use them as your profile pic unless you are in it.  (more on this later)

4. Share relevant and purposeful content – yes, occasionally we will care if you just dropped the kids off at school or that you just got out of the shower, but we don’t need a play by play of stuff that is meaningless

5. Strategically grow your friends list – there are two ways to go about growing the number of friends you have on Facebook…randomly or strategically.  Since we are talking about business, let’s choose strategically.  Random is generally not a good strategy for business.

Decide what your interests are and what niche your business is in then seek out Influencers in those markets.  Find groups that are of interest, join the group and reach out to the administrators and officers of that group to build relationship with them.

6. Join the Conversation – Social media is, after all, about being social.  Go engage with other people and comment on their stuff.  “Like” their post if you like it.  Forward their dialogue.  Help them, genuinely.  Be of service.

Recommend friends & invite people to groups.  Be that connector and facilitator of relationships and you will be rewarded time and again.

7. Broker Your Time – You may have heard Facebook referred to before as “Crackbook,” because of its addictive nature.  If the ‘average’ user spends 55 minutes a day on it, imagine what some people are doing.  You need to be very strategic (there’s that word again) with your time or you will find yourself sucked into an endless world of comments, pokes, applications and notifications.

By all means, if you also use Facebook to forward personal relationships, knock yourself out.  Just be clear about what you are doing so your business goals don’t get lost in a pillow fight.

I said I was going to get into Facebook Don’ts in this article, but it’s already long enough, so I broke it into another article.

For all of the (or at least some good ones) Facebook Don’ts, check out Part II.