Anyone with a brand presence on Facebook knows it takes skill and energy to keep up with the never-ending comments. Here’s how to do it swiftly and effectively.

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Web surfers who log into third-party sites with Facebook Connect spend an average of 50 percent more time on those sites, and view twice as many pages.

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Facebook recently announced it would begin approving new open graph actions submitted by developers — like is an action, and so are share and listen with.

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The Internet is littered with content related to Facebook and privacy, but we doubt there’s anything as downright creepy, yet well-produced, as Take This Lollipop.
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Zygna’s newest game, Adventure World, enjoys an explosion in growth that knocks The Sims Social from the top spot in our weekly ranking of the fastest growing applications on Facebook.

Facebook’s Fastest Growing Applications

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The social TV field has a new entrant in Ooyala Social, which promises high-definition-quality video on the Facebook platform.

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We all want to express our individual selves, be it in person or online.  Here are 7 guidelines to establishing your very own personal brand on Facebook.

1. Be True To Yourself

Posts and photos that illustrate your well-rounded life offer others an instant glimpse into your own personal brand.

However, you don’t have to use the social platform as a tell-all.  Just as it is in real life, a little information well said goes a very long way. Don’t shout out everything you’re doing.  After all, most social media users are discussing life, not walking into a crowded room and shouting out their life story.

Also, your virtual and real lives should be in sync.  If you’re a jokester in real life, follow true on Facebook; established friends need to recognize you, too.

2. Develop A Following

Reach out to your existing circle of friends by liking what they do. It shows support and usually, they’ll return the favor. If they’re really following you, a pattern will emerge weaving together your activities, photos, slogans and other content that sharpens their perception of you.

It’s a good way to develop friendships that have languished for a while and develop a support system in case you have to look for a job or need a reference.

3. Keep Your Friend Numbers In Line

The number of friends should represent  what you want your personal brand to say. If you’re interested in a very high number, you’re showing a propensity to gather a crowd, but can you manage them all and stay close?

A recent study cited by GoodMobilePhones of 1,500 users showed that 60 percent of users don’t know one fifth of the contacts listed as friends. Conversely, maintaining a reasonable number of friends says you’re interested in quality relationships and that you’ll take the time to appreciate what each has to offer.

4. Refresh Your profile

Usee a profile picture that really represents who and what you are.  This is the first thing visitors see when they visit your page and it also shows up in Google searches, so make sure it’s a good one… and good means different things to different folks.

Refresh often through new posts, stories and photos. Stick to a specific schedule on posting and change it up by using pictures that are unexpected, funny and different from the same old, “here we are at Thanksgiving dinner.” Give visitors a chance to stick around.

Remember, when they’re on your page, it’s as though they’re in your home or place of business.  You want them to feel welcome.

5. Get Out There… Or Not

Make a decision as to how much time you’ll spend hooked into the social grid.  It’s somewhat impossible to simply go away these days, but if you decide upfront how available you’ll be to everyone, it will dictate how much time you spend on your Facebook presence.

Whether you’re a professional out of work or just making your presence known, the social media sector is moving forward, with or without you.  It’s interesting to note here that potential employers and graduate schools utilize social media as a means to evaluate you.

According to one study, up to 15 percent of business and law schools use some or all of your social media criteria to determine whether they let you in as a student.

University of Maryland researchers were able to predict a person’s score on a personality test within 10 percentage points, based simply on activities, quotes, music and what political organizations they admired.

6. Don’t Be Manic

Some people post so many daily activities that you begin to wonder if they’re living a 27-hour day rather than the 24 other mere mortals have to spend. It’s not a laundry list of what you’re doing. Social media butterflies carry the same unbearable lightness of being that real life social butterflies do.

7. Protect Your Personal Brand From Bullies

If and when you see negative posts on your page, stay calm and don’t give the bullies the attention they’re craving. 

Deal with it on Facebook just like you would in person — with a clear head and no buy-in to the negativity game. Make a decision to either confront the individual or remove the post. Either method is right, if it’s right for you.

Remember, you’re leaving a life-long trail, so blaze one that makes you proud, but is intriguing enough for others to follow.

Readers, do you have any other suggestions on how to build a personal brand on Facebook?

We advocate using Facebook in moderation. But if your usage of the site is causing you grief or conflict, Dan Peguine and Siavosh Arasteh might have a solution for you — as soon as they can get it to work on themselves, that is.

The duo boast an online rehabilitation program that aims to help people reduce their Facebook usage within two weeks. In case you’re confused about the definition of rehab like these founders seem to be,v here’s a link to it.

Yes, the founders Peguine and Arasteh are still trying to reduce their own use of Facebook. They only just started on July 25 — is that why they still have profiles on the site?

Like they told Megan O’Neill of SocialTimes:

We decided it was time to become healthier in our Facebook consumption and do more interesting things with our time.  For the next two weeks we have decided to log on to Facebook no more than twice a day (whether mobile or desktop). We started a public spreadsheet to record our logins and invite our friends to join.

Good luck with that, guys. Actually, they’ve gotten a lot of response from their so-called Facebook Rehab project and moved it to the domain name FaceAnonymous.com. The homepage there declares that it is prelaunch. Of course it is.

Now even the founders of the original 12-step group racked up a lot more than a week of abstinence before proceeding to publish anything, although said organization predated the Internet by a good seven decades. (Have you noticed I didn’t spell out the name of the organization the duo’s URL invokes? That’s very deliberate. See items 10 through 12 in this embedded link.)

And there’s one of the ironies inherent in these two using the word “Anonymous” in their URL: they are not abstaining from using Facebook, nor practicing anything even remotely resembling the oldest and most effective system for overcoming addiction. They can’t even refrain from using Facebook’s Connect application programming interface to power the site.

Of course, you might say that the very nature of a blog like AllFacebook.com might make it inherently biased against anything that purports to “rehabilitate” a Facebook addiction. Fair enough, but we’ve documented this phenomenon before, and more importantly, have enough experience with real rehabilitative phenomena to call something phony when we see it.

When people have asked me whether any particular mutual friend has an addiction, I respond with the questions: Has that person lost a job, relationship or friends because of using the substance in question? Is he or she feeling pain or conflict because of their use?

Yes, those questions are shorthand for the 12 that are formally used to diagnose an addiction. Neither set appears on any of the materials advanced by FaceAnonymous, nor in what the two founders told O’Neill of SocialTimes.

For what it’s worth, there are already many pages and groups on Facebook proclaiming themselves to be resources for people who feel that they’re addicted to the social network. We tip our virtual hats to all of you and offer this bit of advice: Perhaps you want to use the word “overuse” instead of addiction, because the successful treatment for the latter is complete abstention.

Readers, what do you think about the notion of so-called Facebook Addiction Disorder.

As Father’s Day nears, increasing numbers of Facebook users are uploading photos of their dads and making them the main profile image.
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The programmers at Facebook have had a busy year, with a slew of new features and upgrades implemented across the site. The past four weeks alone have seen the launch of a new send button, and recent updates to deals and questions. The flurry of activity so far this year would make any Facebook observer wonder what to look for down the road.
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