I’ve been saying that I don’t really use Facebook, for several years now. I find it noisy and hectic. But I’ve decided to dive back in and I thought I’d talk you through why I’m making the jump back in.As we all know, Facebook is growing more quickly that anyone possibly imagined. When I interviewed Mark Zuckerberg at FOWA London 2008, they had 150 million users. He said they wanted to be the platform that the entire world uses to connect to one another. Now, just two years later, they have over 500 million, and I’d say he’s on his way to doing just that.
The active community on Facebook is just to vibrant and exciting to watch from the sidelines now. I’m going to jump back in and I’d strongly urge you to do the same. The opportunity to connect, encourage and be encouraged by your comrades in the web industry is just too much to ignore.
With that in mind, here are a couple things I’m going to start doing …
1. Update Your Page
I was impressed with how quickly Doctype have grown their Facebook page. They’ve basically been kicking our ass ;) so I asked Nick Pettit (one of the newest Carsonified Teamies) what their secret sauce was. Here’s what he suggested:
- Add a profile pic that is 200 pixels wide and 600 pixels high. This is the maximum size allowed and it really adds the wow factor to your page. Also, when people search in Facebook and your page comes up, you get a lot of screen space as your pic is bigger.
- Don’t auto update your Facebook status with Twitter or any other tool. I was doing this until recently and I’ve disconnected Twitter from Facebook now. When people see that it’s just a copy of a Twitter status update, it feels impersonal and not nice. Make the effort to update your status on the Page every day.
- Ask questions as a Status Update on the page and then tweet and invite to people to answer the question. Here’s an example.
2. Check In with Facebook Places
I’m going to start using Facebook’s Places Checkin as often as I can. It’s a great service and it’ll be a nice way to connect better with my Friends on Facebook.
The Facebook iPhone app is a great way to do this.
3. Get Active
The most important thing to do is log in every day and start clicking around. The more you update your status, interact with your friends on Facebook, ‘Like’ things and ask questions, the more you’ll be drawn into the community, and other people will take notice of what you’re doing.
The Takeaway
The community on Facebook is getting too big to ignore. If you want to succeed in the web industry, you need to jump in and get involved.