Facebook recently surpassed 300 million registered users, meaning it’s becoming increasingly vital to your online and offline social graph. Whether you use Facebook primarily for your personal life, business purposes or both, this list of tips will help you gauge how well you’re already using Facebook’s tools and perhaps offer advice on how to make a little better use of them.
1. Tag other people in status updates
This feature was released earlier this week and is not well understood by the majority of Facebook users. For those of us that are savvy to Twitter, it’s a pretty simple transition as it functions the same way. You call someone out or speak directly to them by typing the @ symbol and then their name in your status update or on someone else’s wall. Facebook has programmed the feature to not only tag them, but also link to the said person’s Facebook page. Once you’ve posted your tag, anyone who sees the status update will see your friends name posted as a hyperlink and have the option of navigating to his or her page.
2. Block people on chat
This feature wasn’t available when Facebook chat launched. As a woman, my initial experience was not always good when up late working - lonely dudes would pop-up to say “hello,” looking to find out what I was “up to tonight.” Creepy. Thankfully FB has finally provided the option to prohibit this from happening. To block people from chat, you have to organize them under one group which you can then choose to be inactive in chat. Be careful though, if they’re filed under another group as well (i.e. “work friends” and “block from chat”),they will still show up in chat under the group that you haven’t blocked!
3. Create a “top friends” list, without an app
That’s right, just like MySpace, you can easily separate your top friends from the rest so everyone can see who your favorite people are, without using an external app! It is a new feature that was introduced when Facebook unveiled their new layout. To edit your top friends, view your own profile and click the “edit” button in the friends section. Type the names of your friends who you want to be permanently highlighted on your friends list and they will remain there until you remove or replace them.
4. Login with your username
Another newly introduced feature, Facebook makes it easier to login by giving you the option of entering your username instead of your email. The ease of this option is especially noticeable when logging in from a mobile device where typing can be time consuming and awkward. Don’t have a username yet? Go to facebook.com/username and pick your vanity URL!
5. Edit the tabs on your profile
Just click the “+” button in your tabs section to choose which applications you’d like easier navigation to. This feature makes it simple to promote a cause that’s important to you or encourage people to join you on YoVille. Oh no, did I really just give advice on how to further promote YoVille?
6. Publicize your event without sending annoying messages
Easy to do, just change the time on your event and everyone on the list will get a notification of the time change in the bottom right hand corner of their homepage. This is a very subtle way to remind people about your event!
7. Select multiple people at a time for Facebook event invites
By default, Facebook doesn’t allow you to invite your whole friends list to your event, obviously as a measure to reduce spam. You can get around this, however, if you take the time to organize all of your friends into specific groups - Facebook does allow you to select all in a given group or network for quick inviting!
8. Restrict your wall activity
If you’re spending too much time looking at your own wall or tired of friends posting inappropriate comments that family and co-workers can see, you can disable wall posts from specific people to keep your reputation, and perhaps sanity, in tact.
9. Use your friend groups to easily send messages
Compose a message on Facebook and easily send to all your friends by typing their names in the ”To” line. The big downside is that you can’t blind carbon copy (bcc) anyone, and anyone who responds will send their message to the whole group. Be cautious when sending group messages and be sure everyone on list would benefit from getting updates and responses from other group members. Otherwise it’s best and more respectful to take the time to send individual messages.
10. Changing Your Privacy Settings
For those of us who use Facebook regularly, we probably know how to do this, but I still run into a lot of people who don’t. If you don’t want the boss to know what you’re “really” doing at work, lump him into a group titled “work friends” and tweak that group’s settings from viewing your status updates and anything else you don’t want them to see. Facebook privacy settings are incredibly specific - you can personalize each list to see, or not see, pretty much anything on your profile, giving you total control over your personal brand.
Did you find any of these tips helpful? And what other ways do you make Facebook’s tools work for you and your company?
Veronica Reynolds is the Community Manager at WooMe.com, the world’s largest live introductions platform where people meet live in chat sessions via webcam around any shared interest for fun, to hook up, or for pure entertainment. Veronica loves social media and is online a lot so hit her up on WooMe or Twitter to say hello.
My favorite lesser known feature is that you can get e-mail updates with the b-day’s for that week.
It seems to me that a lot of people don’t realize that someone else tagging you in a pic won’t necessarily ruin your life. You can detag which also PREVENTS someone from retagging you in the same photo, and you can also (and seemingly lesser known) filter who sees your tagged photos the same way you can filter ANY album.
It is amazing how powerful this website has become in such a short period of time. I like how much more freedom FB has given fan pages.
Mistype from first paragraph. Isn’t it 300 Million instead of 3 million?
Facebook is great an all until it doesn’t work- for days on end- no place to lodge a complaint, no number to call. Just an annoying phrase:Account Temporarily Unavailable.
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A few DAYS have gone by with this message and I am no longer a facebook fan!
facebook toolbar for external links is taking conversation away from the original source to facebook, what is everyone say good or bad for blogs?
As for the chat thing, I do not mind if girls block me on FB chat, but i would not be happy if a male friends do that.
btw very good post Veronica.
It would be great to know some of the lesser known features for fan pages that would help page admins better promote and use the fan pages. As a page admin, I find it difficult to figure out how to do some of the things that are easy to do on my personal page.
Does FB have a means to focus only on a particular interest like football or travel? Or can you only do this by forming a specific Group?
Justin that’s a great tip thanks for adding!
thanks Gaith, and TC that’s a really good idea… sounds like a fun one to put together as well ^_^
Lee, you can form a group or a facebook dedicated to a hobby. Pages are neat bc you can send relevant information into the newsfeed. I follow Elliott Smith and his fan page sends updates to my stream about compilation releases and tribute tours that I find interesting.
Even though Facebook has been acting difficult lately it still provides great connections to people. I plan on using the @ to build even more relationships and touch more lives. I love it when things get EASIER! Thanks for the post Veronica!
Veronica-
I’m curious as to why you accept friend requests from random creepy dudes in the first place. Why not just ignore them and save hassle? You don’t have to accept every friend request. I don’t.
Unfortunately they’re not random. I think maybe some people get on late when they’re drinking or something? :/
I’ve been using Twitter but I did not know about the @ feature in facebook. Thanks. Its great to connect with people on a personal level
My favourite facebook feature is … being able to not go there any more! It’s total and utter rape - no use at all
My account has been unavailable for a day now and it is irritating because my husband can access his with no probem. I keep checking because I’m afraid there might be a virus involved and am not sure what to do about it.
Does anyone know of a way to report this problem?
I moved from Alberta to Manitoba and lost my telus Facebook and am lost without it. May be a dumb question but was wondering if anyone can help me?
Response to Beth: I use facebook all the time. And they have certain groups of profiles on different networks. They periodically update these networks one by one. (I know because I maintain client profiles and at times, one or two won’t work yet others will.) I know it doesn’t help too much, but in 24 hours it always comes right back. I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but it’s how facebook has always been (at least as long as I’ve used it). Sometimes when working on business pages, for some reason only one will not allow me to update certain apps too. It always bounces back, so I make sure I always give myself extra room to meet my deadlines!
Response to Betty: Try doing a search on “facebook lite”, and good luck.
Anyone knows how to select who will be able to see the update that composing at some moment?
I can already select that 1 group of friend always receive my updates, and other never receive it, but I’d like to overset the range of broadcast of my update, when I’m composing it, based on nature of its content!!
I’d like to share to everyone what I saw on TV right now, but not share with everyone what I did at work!!
Tks
Hi:
I want to add some new friends but don’t want a few specific people (a few specific existing friends) to be able to see those specific new friends. Is there a way to do that?
David, as far as I know, no there is no way to hide a list of specific friends from another list of specific friends.
Pablo - currently there are not categories of status updates, but that is a great idea that you should pass along to facebook via their forums.
Hello, new to this useful site. Need help. If i dont want to send my facebook page with the long link, please how can i change it to be as short as possile.
cheers.
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Fb WONT LET ME ON AND IVE WAITED A LONG TIME NOW AND IT ALSO WONT LET ME MAKE A NEW ACCOUNT SOMEBODY KNOW WHAT TO DO PLEASE HELP
ur idea is very nice….
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