7 ACTIONABLE STEPS IN USING FACEBOOK FOR PERSONAL BRANDING

Introduction

Facebook has today become a haven for the meeting and connecting people from the same or different walks of life. This networking site has over 200 million active users. This makes it the best personal, product and corporate branding hub. Every brand present on Facebook has the same facilities, the ability to make a page for itself, share resources, add multimedia, and do much more. You can leverage this platform using your page to engage with your followers and your friends. You will be searched on this social media vehicle by potential dates, managers, and teachers so you should represent yourself judiciously on this site. This article will give the 7 actionable steps in using Facebook for personal branding.

Seven actionable steps to use Facebook for your personal branding

1. Know your audience

As our personal and professional lives are converging more and more, you will have to decide with whom you wish to connect on Facebook. Do you wish to network with family and friends on Facebook or do you want to connect with people who could help you get a job? These are questions you need to ask yourself before you mindlessly go on adding new friends to your Facebook profile.

2. Decide on your branding strategy

Depending on who you are in your personal and professional life, whom you know and who are your family members, you would like to create your own personal brand. Before you do this, you need to decide what you would like to be portrayed as, on the social media site, Facebook. Would you want to be portrayed as an entrepreneur or an employee? Your branding can help shape your followers’ perceptions of you.

3. Set your privacy settings

Depending on your Facebook goals, you may hide portions of your profile from outsiders and only let family view them. Alternatively, you can make your entire profile public, for the world to see. The latter could be visible to you if you are wanting to become more visible in your industry. This will result in your name ranking high in a search. It would be better to put the tagging feature off for both photos and pictures so that you get more control of your profile.

4. Fill out your profile completely

Facebook is a great platform on which you can paint a great picture of who you are. In other words, it will help you portray yourself as you would like to be known to the outside world. Therefore, while you fill up your profile section, try to include your education and work information. This will help you connect with your ex-colleagues or your school mates. This will go a long way in helping you secure a good job.

5. Import contacts to grow your network

Each month make a practice of going through the process of importing all your contacts from your email id and your instant messenger accounts to your Facebook or LinkedIn profiles. This will allow you to grow your social profile as you are meeting new people through other channels. If you have your own blog, connect it with Facebook. This will help you bring your friends on your blog and you can engage in social interaction with them on your blog and send it on Facebook.

6. Update your status

Regularly update your status on Facebook, depending on who you are and what you do for a living. You can post a single message to a large audience. You can always update your status with fresh mentions of what you are engaged with daily. Depending on what you do, you would like to keep your people informed about what you are up to or to push your content towards them or both.

7. Start a group or a page

Facebook groups have fewer features than Facebook pages. Nevertheless, you can create groups to bring people in your industry together. You can become a valuable member of that group and market your blog on the Facebook site. Facebook groups also let you share videos, photos, links and help you start discussions. You can also start a page and post regular updates of your daily activities on that page to let your people know what you are up to.

Conclusion

With these seven simple rules of using Facebook for your personal branding, you will make your role as the pillar of your community, stronger. You will also attract wanted attention and accumulate influence. If you pay more attention to details, you can be even more successful than the most successful Facebook marketers.