I’ll  bet that when you are posting on Facebook  you’re not thinking about the millions of people who are also logged into Facebook. You know what its like you get caught up messaging your friends whilst updating your wall, or skimming through the Friendfeed. BUT you need to remember that amongst the many millions caught up in the Facebook phenomenon some are potential employers, business partners, real friends,work colleagues and more.

If you want to make sure that your Facebook account isn’t going to come back to haunt you, here are 5 Costly Facebook Mistakes  that you should avoid. 

1. Keep it Clean

Your uploaded picture should be neutral if not professional. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the picture is going to be boring, but keep provocative and cartoony pictures tucked away where the world cannot see them. Remember, as an employee or future employee you are carrying the name of whatever company you work for. Provocative pictures never look good, especially when you can run the risk of future clients seeing your profile as well. A rule of thumb is that provocative pictures are for private viewing only.

2. Good Manners Never Hurt Anyone
The wall on Facebook, can be used to openly display any thoughts, articles, or comments you may want to share. As tempting as what it may be don’t make the mistake of putting everything and anything on your wall. Remember common courtesy should considered. So…Don’t make plans with people through wall posts. Save personal plans for personal emails or phone calls. If you’ve been invited to an event and plan to go, send an email or text message straight to the person that invited you instead of announcing your plans and confirmation on your wall. Once again it pays to have good manners you because you never know who may be watching. 

3. To Share Or Not To Share – That Is The Question!
If you choose to make your profile visible to everyone, then it is imperative that you make safe choices. For instance, sharing personal information such as an interest in Sci Fi movies, Eating Pizza and Cats is okay. However, showing personal addresses, names of children or children’s pictures may not be a good idea, because you never know who is viewing your profile or even worse still why they are viewing your profile.

4. Guilty By Association 
Facebook is a Social Site and the theory is that your friends are like minded people who are  a reflection of yourself. So you need to be aware of what pictures your friends are posting particularly if you are one of the star attractions. If  your friends are posting pictures that can be considered ‘too sexy’ then it’s possible that employers will view you as a spitting image of your friends. While it is impossible to prevent all friends from posting pictures of their choice, it is possible to prevent who is allowed to see a person’s list of friends. Take advantage of the privacy settings that Facebook offers.

5. Two Is Twice As Much Fun
If you having difficulty in keeping your profile on Facebook professional at all times then the option of having two profiles is for you. Many people have two profiles keeping one profile strictly for personal friends and the other strictly for professional business networking and coworkers. A great way to use two profiles is to make sure everything on your personal profile is private, while your professional profile can remain public. 

However you use Facebook its important to realise that 20% of companies admit to checking social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace in order to verify potential employees, and 24% of employees are hired based on their social networking site. So the next time you apply for a job, remember to check your Facebook account for any ticking bombs, because your future job could depend on it.

We hope this post has been useful. If you liked it share it with your friends or leave a comment. 

Share

Hide Sites

Wouldn’t it be great if someone could demystify the most popular Social Medias and tell you how and when to use it. Yep sounds like a great idea to me.  In fact this idea sounded so great that we at Social Traffic Espionage decided to just DO IT!

We gathered all the information you could possible wish to know about the popular social media sites and transformed this information into what we believe is the ultimate guide to Social Media  “The Social Traffic Intelligence Manuscript“.

It’s pages are jam packed with must have information. It reveals the basics of the most popular Social Medias, exposes their strengths and weakness’s, explains how you might use social media to generate FREE social traffic, market your product, promote your business or to just make a difference in the world by supporting causes like  saving the whales.

BUT WAIT!!! There is more… The ”Social Traffic Intelligence Manuscript” is FREE. Interested? You can grab your copy of the  ”Social Traffic Intelligence Manuscript”  by simply clicking here.

Share

Hide Sites

How do you share these great articles?  Facebook makes it easy… Just follow these  simple directions below and you will have your friends waiting on the edge of their seats  for your next article.

1. Click The Facebook Icon
You see  it here,  you see it there  – “The Facebook Icon”.  Most articles online  have a Facebook icon nearby.  Simply click on the icon and you will be automatically directed to sign into your Facebook account.  Once you have signed in just follow the prompts and a link to the article will appear.

2. Use A Note
Included in  the  row of icons under the ‘what’s on your mind?’ text box, there  is a link icon that looks like a note.  If you place the mouse over this icon the word link pops up.  Simply  highlight and copy the article  link you want to share, and then  click on the little link  icon.   Paste your link into the additional box that pops up  under the ‘what’s on your mind?” text box.  Click the attach button, complete the security check  and hit the share button.
    
3)The Direct Approach – Post It On A Friends Page 
Visit your friend’s  Facebook page.  Simply  highlight and copy the article  link you want to share, and then  click on the link  icon ( remember it looks like a little note).  Paste your link into the additional box that pops up  under the ‘what’s on your mind?” text box.  Click the attach button, complete the security check and hit the share button.

One more tip before we go. It’s  Facebook etiquette to write a comment in the ‘what’s on your mind?” text box that accompanies your link.

If you like this post share it with your friends,  or add a comment.

Share

Hide Sites

If you are an Internet marketer you will want to use FREE traffic for your business. This means that you will want to use Social Media. If there is one disadvantage to using Social Media it is that it can take lots and lots of time if you don’t know how to use it properly.

So how do you use Social Media efficiently? The first fact you need to come to grips with is that you can’t market on every Social Media site – there just isn’t enough time or hours in the day. 

If you want to market your product or business  using Social Media you need an efficient  time optimisation strategy.  Therefore it would make a whole lot of sense to include Facebook, twitter and LinkedIn  in your  time optimisation strategy.  Why? Because it’s only logical to make use of the 3 most popular Social Media sites;  Facebook, twitter and LinkedIn. 

How much time should you spend using Social Media? The answer to this depends on your circumstances. Generally there is a relationship between how long marketers have been using Social Media and their weekly time commitment. Usually people just beginning with Social Media, spend about an  average of  two hours per week. However, those who have been using Social Media for a number of months spend about an  average  of 10 hours per week or a bit more than 1 hour a day.

What is the reason for the time difference between Social Media newbies and experts? It’s our opinion that the time spent is related to the people’s experiences. Those who are just starting are unsure of this Social Media buzz – does it really work? They are yet to taste success, but once they have made a sale or start to have success they realise the importance of Social Media and spend more time doing it.

Share

Hide Sites

Over the last day or so these improvements have been gradually added to homepages.  Initial feedback from users is favourable and although Facebook will attribute this to the changes they have made  - perhaps it is also partly due to Facebook users  feeling less shellshocked second time around.

What Do You Think?
Now that Facebook Version 2 is live, its time for Facebook users to give their feedback. They certainly weren’t shy in providing feedback for Facebook Version 1. Whats  your opinion?

Share

Hide Sites

The new site will allow friends posts’ to be streamlined in real time. Changes you make will be updated instantly on your friends’ pages. This  streaming feature is representative of current communications trends. Forget about home pages these are now called profiles. 

Guess what? Users will now have more control over what they see, for instance users can create their own filters. Some of the filters available are applications such as Photos. The new Facebook design is cleaner with content arranged in a format of three columns, with  the navigation tool on the left hand side. 

Wait there is more, the facebook enquiry used to “What are you doing right now?” and now it will be  “Whats on your mind?”.  For those of you who have more than 5000 friends feel free to keep signing up because Facebook is now unlimited.

It is clear that the types of changes included in the new  Facebook design are engineered in a way to combat the rising popularity of  twitter.  It is obvious that Facebook sees twitter as a strong competitor in the social media world.

Overall Facebooks redesign is aimed at bringing more personalised and timely information to its users.

Share

Hide Sites