Facebook 2 - Expanding your network

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Networking on Facebook can be broken down into two initial steps:

1- Finding existing friends
2- Joining groups


Finding friends: Once you have your profile all nicely set up. Look for people that you already know from your past or present life that are on facebook. It doesn’t matter whether or not you think they fit your market segments - the bigger your network the better it will be. So, get down to some serious people hunting. Remember not to add people that you don’t already know or they may report you as spammers.

A few great ways to find your friends are:

1- get Facebook to check addresses from your email account to see if anyone has a Facebook profile. (this can be done automatically, in the “find friends” section)

2- search for people from your schools and colleges based on your years of graduation. (this can be done using the “more ways to find friends” option at the bottom)

3- search for activities that you have been involved with to see if there any Facebook groups for them. This could be anything from childhood spacecamps to college sketching classes.

4- search for people using the search bar with their names. Make sure you’ve got the right person before sending them invites.

5- finally, go to the profiles of your Facebook friends and look at their friends network to see if you know anyone there.

Joining Groups: Once you have exhausted your ways of adding people that you know, the next step is to find people that you want on your page. These could be your target markets, your perfect audiences, possible future evangalists. Anyone. The way to do this is by finding groups that these people are in and joining those groups first. After having an active presence in the group, you can invite them to be on your friends lists. The best way for this would be to get them to add you instead. Some tips:

1- Make sure you join several networks instead of restricing yourself to just a handful. These groups should be chosen based on your targeted markets. To look for groups, simply select the “groups” section on your homepage, or you can browse through the groups recently joined by your friends to get a head start. Find those groups that are already active and have something going on all the time.

2- After joining, get a feel for the group first. Never start to promote yourself. Take time to participate, answer questions, get help, give help and build reputation and credibility amongst the group members.

3- Based on how well you participate, the members of the groups may want to start following your blogs or add you to their friend networks etc. Once you have this kind of following, you can announce events, find people to test your products, find people who can promote your products for you, get opinions and feedbacks and get a chance to really understand how your market behaves.


| Marketing tools, Social Marketing

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