Facebook has become such a big part of our lives both on a personal and professional level. I thought I would write a post on the tips that I use on my Facebook profile.
Vanity URL
If you are branding your personal profile timeline page or want just want a URL that’s a lot user to remember you can create a vanity URL. For instance my URL for people to reach my personal profile or timeline page is http://www.facebook.com/LawrenceASnow. That’s a lot easier to remember than this: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1407513363
You can also create a Vanity URL for your business or fan page.
Facebook Security
There has been continuous media coverage on the issue of security on Facebook. There are several selections you can make within the Facebook privacy settings to limit too much of your personal life getting public. To get to your privacy settings click the little down arrow on the far right of Facebook. Here are a few of my tips:
- Put your default privacy setting to Friends
- Next take a look at your settings under “How You Connect” and adjust the settings to where you feel comfortable. For me, I have it set so anyone can find me and for the rest of that section is either set to Friends or Friends of Friends.
- Next up, “How Tags Work”, and adjust the settings according to your comfort level. If you want friends to tag you or not, have the tags show in your timeline or not and whether or not friends can check you into places.
- The big one for me to check at least monthly is “Apps and Websites”. These are apps and websites that you give permission to access to your basic personal information. Right now I have 36 apps and websites that have my permission! Time to do some trimming! To remove an apps’ permissions click on Edit Settings, and on the next page click on the ‘x’ on the far right to remove it completely, or if it is an app that you need or enjoy using like Pinterest, click the edit link. Here you can opt out of some data that the app is getting from your profile. Also under the edit function be sure to check privacy and whether or not you want the information from these apps posted to your timeline. If you have as many apps as I do this will take a bit of time to go through each one to edit the settings, but it is well worth it.
- The last one I adjust is the “Blocked People and Apps.” If you look at my list you’ll see about 25 games listed. Just type in the name of the app or person you want to block and click block.
Separating your friends and business colleagues
Separating your friends from business clients on Facebook is relatively easy. If you have several business clients and you don’t want them to see pics from your “night out on the town” with your buddies, then I highly recommend setting up a friends list.
To set up a friends list click the Home button, which is located at the top right of Facebook, from the left side of the “home” page, hover of LISTS, and click the MORE link. From the following page you can now create your own lists and edit the ones that Facebook has created. Follow the steps to add your business clients to this list. Once complete your new list will now be listed on the left side with the other lists.
The important step here is when you post a status update, notice the little down arrow next to the POST button, by default it says PUBLIC. Click the arrow and select what list your update should go to.
Lastly, every once and a while you’ll get a status update that you just don’t want to see – like a request to join your buddy on Mafia Wars. This requires just a little bit of house cleaning. Hover your mouse over to the right of your buddy’s status update and click the down arrow that appears. Here you should have options to hide or block all requests from your buddy, which you probably don’t want to do, what you do want to do is block all requests from Mafia Wars.
Well there you go my friends, my Facebook tips to help you secure your account a little better.
What are some of your Facebook tips?
