Networking
Why and How do you use personal Facebook for professional networking?
1. Set your vanity URL
A vanity URL is basically your customized domain on Facebook. Instead of facebook.com/12345 you can get facebook.com/joeshmoe. Note that this new vanity URL will double as your Facebook email address, it will become joeshmoe (at) facebook.com.
2. Get a professional picture
As a rule I would say the picture should be related to what type of person you are, being an authentic representation of your personal brand. If you are on the summit of Kilimanjaro in your profile picture, you had better be into your mountaineering in other words.
3. Fill in professional details
You may have noticed that Facebook has ‘promoted’ professional information on personal profiles. The first text after your name is now about what you do for a living, perhaps because Facebook is gearing up to lock horns with its smaller professional rival LinkedIn.
Put your company’s name in the box and also try to state what you do (and not what you are). This means don’t use a title like ‘consultant’ when you could say “managing large scale IT projects in the public sector” – which is a great deal clearer. And don’t forget to put your schools and university on there as well as you can be found through these by old class mates (and that’s hopefully a good thing).
4. Add your Blog RSS
Nowadays every man/woman and his/her dog are blogging so I will assume you have a blog somewhere on the interwebs. This could be your own blog or one that you contribute to. To ensure that your friends and network see your updates you can plug in the Social RSS feed straight to your profile wall. This saves time having to share things manually and most people really enjoy reading your blog posts.
5. Useful status updates please
This could be an article about your industry or business in general or a quote from Richard Branson. You are really then showcasing what you read and where your interests lie; exactly what a potential customer or employer wants to see. Yes it could possibly bore your friends but they will forgive you for wanting to be a personal brand success.
6. Time to quit the games
I would advise you drop Farmville, Mafia Wars and any other games you are active in on Facebook. The fact that you have time to play games every day on Facebook reflects poorly on your brand, you don’t want a potential customer, employer, investor or partner to see this. Keep your games off Facebook to be safe.
7. Look into Groups and Pages
Facebook Groups have fewer commercial features than Facebook Pages, but they are still very useful especially for online communities. Use a Facebook group to bring people together in your field, become a valuable contributor to that community and promote yourself and your company. Facebook Groups let you share pictures, video and links just like a normal account but it’s all within the group. Another benefit of groups is that they allow you to email all group members very easily (this is not the case for Pages).
Facebook Pages are for brands, ranging from Coca Cola to Rolls-Royce and even Brand You. These pages are similar to your normal profile but slightly less personal and better suited for a public persona and indeed a job seeker. You get full access to analytics tools on your Page, allowing you to see what people click on and how they interact. Another benefit is that your page will rank high for your name in search engines like Bing and Google and you can use it for your professional career, keeping your personal profile locked down.
8. Use Facebook events
Facebook has a good events engine allowing you to write up and invite people. This means you can put on an industry event, how about a networking evening relevant to your field? Open it up to the public and you will find that new people join up and help out with the organization of things. By running events you will be positioned as a leader in your field which is obviously handy for your personal brand success. Check out Facebook Events for more.
Source: http://theundercoverrecruiter.com/how-use-facebook-professional-networking-10-useful-tips/