Use Your Facebook Timeline Profile for Your Career

I spoke to Brian Carter about how professionals can use the new Facebook timeline to advance their careers. Brian offers social media training to B2C and B2B businesses of all sizes and he’s been an internet marketing consultant and trainer for 11 years. He is the co-author of Facebook Marketing, and author of The Like Economy. In this interview, Brian discusses the Facebook timeline privacy settings, how the new timeline pages will affect businesses, the best way to measure Facebook ROI, and more.

How will the Facebook timeline affect professional users? Should they hide their profiles?

I see the Timeline, especially the big new “cover” photo as a big plus for professionals. People certainly can connect to you in a bland way over on LinkedIn, but when they come to Facebook they expect a little more personality and creativity. They want to know who you are. They’re looking for a way to connect emotionally. I use mine to show me speaking, since I’m promoting myself as an expert speaker and trainer.

It’s very important to learn the privacy settings so that if you “allow subscribers” you’re only posting publicly the things you want everyone in the world to see. And you can create friend lists to post more personal things to your best friends and family. But some people make their profiles TOO private, and I can’t see anything about them, even when they’ve requested me as a friend. Sometimes you request a friendship when you’re in the getting-to-know you stage and you need some kind of professional-but-colorful way for them to learn something about you that will make them want to accept your friendship.

How will it affect businesses when it’s rolled out for fan pages?

Facebook hasn’t said exactly what the next evolution of brand pages will look like- only that they’re thinking about it. It’s not clear yet if there will be a historical timeline approach. I’m not sure that makes sense for all businesses, or if they’d even want to show some parts of their history. But we’re all hoping that the brand pages begin to look as exciting as the Timeline profiles do now. The folks doing graphics for brands would love to have more options.

What are some Facebook marketing strategies that worked a few years ago that are no longer effective?

It’s less and less acceptable to just push out content without thinking about how it will be received. The threshold for what’s interesting enough has risen, because there is more and more noise (more people and more pages posting). That means it has become even more important for page admins to understand what leads people to like and comment on posts. I think the new “reach” metric has surprised some brands about how few of their fans they’re reaching. They may need new, more targeted fans to combine with interesting content and calls to action like “Click like if…” and “Comment below about…” if they want greater reach.

How do you measure success in Facebook? What is the answer to the dreaded ROI question?

You measure success according to your goals. If it’s sales, you measure true ROI. I’ve seen numerous companies measure this and succeed with Facebook profitability (my clients and clients of JB Chicago, aimClear and Upward Wave, to name a few). Also, I’ve seen multi-touchpoint analytics evidence from Buddy Media and aimClear that the awareness and interest initially generated by Facebook is often attributed entirely to search engines. If you want to answer sophisticated questions like, “How does Facebook marketing impact my sales?” then you need to install sophisticated analytics.

How have you used Facebook to grow your brand?

I’ve used Facebook pages to some degree, but as a professional, the networking I do in Facebook groups has actually led to more business opportunities for me. I also post blog posts in some of these groups and on Twitter. My social networking relationships plus the quality of the posts leads to greater exposure. Results vary by post, so you have to keep writing! I’ve used Facebook ads for my new book, “The Like Economy”, which has led to 4.5 million ad views for just over $500. Again, branding can’t always be tracked, and there’s no way to track book sales accurately on Amazon, but my opportunities to get paid speaking and doing services for companies have increased since I started advertising.