I admit it. I’m completely on board with Twitter, but can’t close the deal with Facebook.
That may be because I dismissed Facebook at an earlier stage in its evolution, and didn’t reconnect in time to “grow up” with this social media steamroller. Now it’s now, however, and I’m trying to get with the program.
So I went in search of some really basic help in (a) understanding the world of Facebook and (b) using Facebook effectively as a business tool. It seems like there is less lore available for Facebook than for Twitter—but that may just be my imagination. Anyway, here are the best resources I found in my first round of looking:
- A nice presentation from Sinuate Media, available on SlideShare. Only the first half is about Facebook (the second half is about blogging), but a couple of slides in the presentation were really helpful to me. One shows a Facebook home page, the other a Facebook profile page—and both have neat labels showing what’s on each part of the page. (Seriously, I need this level of explanation.) There’s also a useful summary of the difference between groups and fan pages, along with tips on making pages dynamic, using privacy settings, and advertising on Facebook
- While at SlideShare, I discovered help from an unexpected source: the United States Navy. Facebook Basics for Navy Commands begins with some smart questions about why and whether to utilize Facebook, follows with step-by-step instructions, and includes a useful glossary. (It’s really a document, not a presentation, therefore hard to read on the SlideShare page. Click the Download tab to get a printable PDF version.)
- It really helps me to see ideas in action, so I was glad to find 10 Examples of Facebook Fan Pages, a presentation from Social Media B2B. See what Dell, Sodexo, Forrester, Gartner, and other companies are doing with the Facebook platform.
- Although this presentation goes way beyond the basics, Fancy Facebook Fan Pages – A Step By Step Guide is worth a look, if only to get an idea of how much can be done with Facebook. From Vanity URLs to Video Apps, this detailed guide by Ineternet strategist Olaf Nitz shows how to take Facebook to the max. (There are 153 slides, mostly graphics with little text, and the presentation is not available for download. So kick it up to full screen and watch a few slides at a time.)
As you may have guessed, I never got past SlideShare–but these resources have actually put me on a better footing with Facebook. I’ll let you know when I’ve tried some hands-on experimentation.
Cynthia Giles has followed a serpentine career path from academia to publishing to marketing and design to information technology and corporate communications. There’s plenty of detail about this journey at www.cynthiagiles.com, but briefly--the common theme has been ideas, and how to present them effectively. Along the way, she became an accidental expert on data warehousing and business intelligence, and for the past ten years she has combined corporate contracting with an independent consulting practice that focuses on marketing strategy for smaller businesses and non-profits.
Having spent quite a bit of time looking for work, and anywhere from two weeks to two years inside a wide variety of American companies—she has given much thought to what works (and what doesn’t) when it comes to creating a great employment fit.
