This is the first of a 5-part series about social media marketing using Facebook by guest blogger, Alexander Alaric .
One of the reasons people use Facebook for networking, especially for business, is because it is a protected environment.
Unfortunately, many new users get caught by the Facebook spam Nazis and get their accounts shut down. These guys mean well but unfortunately sometimes the “baby gets thrown out with the bathwater”.
Even seasoned Facebook users have had their accounts disabled and banned. Robert Scobleizer (a long-time and experienced Facebook user) wrote about how his account got shut down here. He later got it reinstated but why make yourself go through the hassle.
So, let's start out with some of the Facebook basics and avoid having your account shut down. Because after the effort it takes to build up 500, 1000, or more friends you want to protect your account and the time that you've put in.
There are some basic rules that you want to follow. When you are sending friend requests always include a personal message and only send the same message to 8-9 people before sending a different one. Realize this is a general guideline and Facebook changes their algorithm periodically. To be ultra safe at the start you may want to send only 5 of the same personal message each day.
I have successfully added 74 friends in a day (and know people who have done many more than that) but you must do it the right way and vary your messages to avoid problems.
This ‘message' field is available when you do a friend request. To be clear here's a pic of what I'm talking about :
They won't tell exactly what their filter is but right now it seems if you send 10 or more of the same messages on the same day it triggers one of their filters and you'll get an account warning. You get enough of those account warnings, seems to be between three and five, and your account will be disabled.
So the thing to remember is to vary your messages when you're sending friend requests. I recommend, and this is what I do, that whenever you're requesting a friend you include a personal message of how you know them or if you know one of their friends mention that name and what kind of business or reason you're contacting them.
Also when you are e-mailing people within Facebook, you must vary your message here as well. If you are coming out with some new product or some new cool website you want to set up an event to notify all your friends instead of attempting to e-mail them all individually because that will cause your account to get shut down.
Events are one of the Facebook applications that I'll discuss further later in this article series.
You now know some of the basics of the Facebook community and how to interact with people without getting your account shut down. Follow these basic guidelines and you'll have a good Facebook experience.
Basically, don't send the same friend request more than 10 times per day, and don't send the same email to your friends more than 10 times per day. I'm talking when you're doing cutting and pasting. These are guidelines that are working right now but to be ultra safe you could do only 5 of the same per day.
These guidelines are worth repeating because fb is very protective of their environment so play within their rules and everything's cool.
Now for another huge bugaboo…mass emails. You know the ones that are sent to you and 100 other email addresses in the ‘to field'
Here's an example:
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As you can see there are many email addresses that this was sent to and this makes people (especially Facebook people) angry. You'll often get angry messages back in response and even some hate messages. Also, many of those people may unfriend you and talk poison about you in the community. This can hurt your ability to make new friends.
It's just not worth it. So Stay away from this. The right way to do it is by using the Events application. Setup an event and invite all your friends to it through the events' invite function. That's the only way to do this correctly.
Email is a 1-to-1 communication and you should always think of it as you have a face-to-face conversation with someone sitting across the table from you or next to you on a couch or in a chair.
Next time I'll talk with you about powering up your networking using a huge time-saving tactic.
To discover more about Facebook and claim your free social media marketing bonuses click here.