Whether you’re going for a new job, hoping to boost your online presence, or simply seeking to make new connections, Facebook can be as popular for CIOs and IT professionals as it is for teenagers.
Here CBR gives you five ways to make the most of your social network account.
Be professional
That picture of you with the pint sloshing around in your hand while you’re wearing those garish red shorts on their annual holiday outing? Don’t let it get on Facebook.
While LinkedIn is the place most prospective employers might check you out first, Facebook is number two on their list – and you don’t want them seeing you as anything less than professional. The secret is to present yourself in exactly the same manner across Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.
Be yourself – but be the work version of yourself. That means professional pictures, not snaps from drunken parties.
Put out useful status updates
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The overarching rule for using all social media is to share. Has your company done something cool recently? Tell people about it! Just read a news article about the latest malware threat to businesses? Let friends know! And don’t forget to link to the story (especially if it’s ours).
Don’t spam people with work stuff, but make your job relevant to your life – after all, it’s what you spend eight hours a day doing.
Don’t neglect your personal info
While LinkedIn can act as a virtual CV, there’s lots of room to flesh out your professional history on Facebook, as well. Share what you’ve done at some of your companies, it’ll look impressive when head hunters come looking.
Also, by filling out these sort of things you have the option of becoming part of the network of, say, your university’s alumni. That’s a great chance to boost your list of friends and make your online contacts more relevant to what you do: they’re likely to get more from your status updates if they share similar interests.
Be careful what you share
That said, you will of course have personal acquaintances on there, as well as family and, of course, the neighbours. So it’s important to check your privacy settings to make sure you’re in control of what is seen by whom. Decide who gets to see what and you can even, maybe, put the odd party picture online…
Choosing ‘custom’ in your privacy settings grants you the power of hiding and showing your content to different groups of people.
Categorise your friends
To do this, you’ll need to create lists of friends: Clicking on the ‘More’ tab next to ‘Friends’ on your homepage allows you to categorise friends as personal or professional, so you can separate your lifelong buddies from that engineer you met at your last conference.
