Facebook only lets you have one account. There are people who have found ways to have more than one but if it does work for a while, they often get both accounts shut down. So it is really not worth the risk.
However if you are using Facebook to chat to your business contacts as well as keeping up with friends and family then this can be tricky. Think about the different sorts of conversations you have in a day. I bet chatting to your close family, old school friends and people who want to buy your latest product are all very different.
Now it has become much easier to manage this on Facebook. You can add your friends and family to various lists and thus direct messages to specific groups, or ignore a group if that is appropriate for that message.
The two standard lists are Close Friends and Acquaintances. I clicked through my list (and yes, you do have to manually click through everyone, but it is worth it) and selected who I would put on either of these lists. I generally divided them on how well I know them. There are friends who I am closer to than others and there are business colleagues who I have worked with over many years who I now consider close friends.
The important thing to know at this point is that your friends will not know whether you are listing them as a Close Friend or just an Acquaintance.
Smart Lists
Then we move on to the Smart Lists. Facebook say “You’ll see smart lists that create themselves and stay up-to-date based on profile info your friends have in common with you–like your work, school, family and city.”. So some are created for you already when you go into your account. And lists have been around for a while so you may have some already.
You can create new lists and you can add or remove friends from the lists that are there. When you add a friend to one of your smart lists, your friend will receive notification in case they want to add the fact they are on your smart list to their profile. They don’t have to do this if they don’t want to, but they will still be added to your smart list your end.
Where does all this get you?
Well it means that you can adjust your privacy settings based on your lists so you can decide who to post to. You can also choose at the time you post who you want to see what you are posting.
How?
Want to know more about how to do this? It was all in this week’s Newsletter – email me for a copy.
Comments, questions?
Feeling creative? 