'Hello...' I said quietly.
'I know what you did, Billinghay,' came the reply in a slightly high pitched American voice. 'Put it right.'
This threatening and somewhat terrifying phone call from Mark Zuckerberg left me with no option but to write this today. The following is a list of 10 things you should be doing on Facebook in 2013. You can thank me, if you like, but you'd be better off aiming your gratitude towards basic human fear instead.
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| Sorry Mark, I'm on it. |
1. Update your page.
Pretty much every other week Facebook introduce an update to their platform. Most of these will happen without you even knowing but some involve you actually pressing buttons yourselves. One of these was when Facebook introduced new profile pages offering you cover photo and timeline options. You'd think everyone would have got to grips with this idea by now but an alarming amount of people haven't. This looks slack and we don't like slack.
2. Manage your timeline.
If you're an individual then your timeline will be automatically filled with everything you have ever done. While this is quite interesting at first (oh my God did I really used to speak like that?!?) it becomes a lot more unnerving when you realise all your friends can see this too. Delete stuff, hide stuff, move stuff. If you're a branded page then your timeline won't be automatic and you should fill it with wonderful things that tell a story of your company. Coca Cola have done this really well and so can you, with a bit of time.
3. Create more exiting content.
Just talking about what you do is nice but it won't create fantastic engagement figures. Create content that your fans can talk about, make things that your audience can click on and laugh about. Do something different that makes your brand stand out a little bit.
4. STOP SHOUTING.
Every time you shout the words LIKE or COMMENT on a Facebook update a small kitten dies. Stop doing it. Also unacceptable is putting 'like' and 'comment' in quotation marks. Kittens don't die when you do this but they do get seriously ill.
5. Know who you are.
At the top right of your Facebook page you will see the profile picture of the user currently signed on. Make sure you're posting as that person and not, say, as a disgruntled employee accidentally posting as the company they work for. Bad community manager, bad!
6. Don't be tricked.
Whenever someone says that Facebook are about to charge, steal your copyright privileges or have sex with your wife behind your back, that's a lie. Don't warn your friends or fans about it without first doing some research. I'd recommend looking here, I'm pretty smooth.
7. Spelling.
No seriously, their, they're and there mean different things.
8. Cats.
There was a time when pictures of cats with big white lettering over the top of them saying something cute and misspelled was funny. That time is not now. Don't share those pictures, don't try and make your own and don't try and shove a brand message into one of them because it will fail and you will be roundly punished in social media hell.
9. Moderate your comments.
When you update your brand's Facebook status you want people to interact with it. I imagine you're hoping for a few 'Lol!'s and the occasional 'This is brilliant I will share it with all my friends.' But occasionally you will get someone who doesn't like your Facebook status. In fact they dislike it so much they will say something rude and unbecoming that you probably don't want to appear on your page. If you don't deal with this quickly you might find other people join in and pretty soon what started out as an innocent update will have turned into a Heineken dog fighting fiasco. No-one wants that, least of all the dogs.
10. Reply to people.
If someone posts something on your page asking about a product or God forbid making a complaint, it's probably a good idea for you to answer them. Twenty minutes is about the maximum amount of time a comment should be left before you respond during working hours and if you leave it any longer the customer could feel all forgotten about and sad. Even if the reply is just 'We'll look into it for you and let you know,' that at least puts their mind at ease a little and makes them think you care. Everyone wants to be cared about.
There are other things people should be aware of, for example please stop inviting me to Friday nights at Lola Lo's, I don't have that many friends and so would just be spending the night alone at the bar weeping into another cocktail I can't really afford, but that list should leave you pretty much covered for now.
Is that all alright, Zuck?