100% free facebook tips and tricks
Facebook tips and trick part 2
15. Security from the outset
We talk more about security later, but some
people join Facebook simply to keep up with a
tiny group of friends – if you’re one of these
people, then you will want to ensure your
security is as tight as can be (see security and
privacy)
16. Finding friends, colleagues and ‘fan’
pages
Facebook has made it fairly easy to find people
and add them, but in the mix with the people you
can find are fan pages – which are like mini
profiles (we talk about these more in section)
and groups. It’s important to remember that
people, such as authors or local personalities
may have multiple listings in search results, so
you may need to contact them and ask which to
add. You also have to take one extra step to
make sure people can find you. You can
currently have 5,000 friends total.
17. Searches
Searching by name may bring back dozens of
results, so if you know the person well enough,
find out what email they use and add them via
that. Adding people via email is often easier
than searches too because it means you’re
certain you’ve got the right person, without
opening yourself up to unwanted attention. If
you add someone that isn’t actually the person
you wanted to add, they can see your profile.
18. Adding people via friends
If you’re a close knit group of friends, or a new
group that met through University or similar
pursuit, it’s normally ok to go through another
friend’s list and find those that you know, but
don’t abuse this – adding everyone from every
friend’s list can get you flagged as a spammer
by Facebook.
19.More than one profile?
Be careful not to create more than one
Facebook page – it’s against their TOS and can
lead to confusion when people add you. It is
possible to create a main account and make the
rest of your ‘accounts’ as pages, but again be
careful – Facebook has a policy about fake
pages, fake names or abusing that facility.
20. Fan pages too much for you?
You can hide fan page (and app, and even
‘friend’ updates) from view easily by setting your
feed up (we talk more about this in the feed
management section). Hiding fan pages, even
temporarily, can let you get your Facebook
reading back under control, and let you decide
whether you want to follow them long term.
21.Removing friends, or pages
Removing friends is easy – you just go into your
friends list and click the x beside their name.
You can find your friend list by looking at the left
column of your main feed based Facebook
page. Or you can go to ‘Account’ and then ‘edit
Friends’
22. Using friends lists to organize your
reading
Facebook introduced a concept called ‘friends
lists’ recently, allowing people to sort their
friends into groups, sorting them onto groups of
your choosing. Have workmates, best friends,
limited profile – the choice is yours. You can
also edit en masse by selecting ‘Account’ then
‘edit friends’ – your whole list will appear there
with drop down arrow lists, including your pages.
Simply filter them onto a list you’re comfortable
with and then you can control your feed.
23. Been Blocked?
Facebook is hard to contact in case of problems,
but you can sometimes email them at whatever
published email contact they currently have, and
ask them to review your case – if you’ve done
nothing wrong you should be reinstated. If you
were hacked, you should contact support
urgently and follow their instructions to regain
control and become unblocked.
24. Got badge?
One of Facebook’s nicest widgets is the ability
to create badges and display them on your
webpage or site. If you’ve got a reasonably
public profile, you can use these easily – if your
profile is highly protected and privacy locked,
you may want to consider whether you want to
use it at all.
25. Looking for more?
If you have just recently joined Facebook,
instead of searching for everyone by name, go
to another friend’s profile and find the people
you’re looking for by checking their ‘friends’ box,
on the left hand side, below information. Be
careful not to add too many people though – it
can be seen as spamming and may be picked
up by Facebook.
26. Security and privacy
There’s a lot of options in Facebook that you
have to pay attention to, especially if you don’t
want to put your information in public. There are
options to protect everything that you have on
Facebook, creating a stripped out, bare public
profile, but you DO need to change your
settings, it’s not automatic on creation.
27. Use fine grained controls
don’t want your family accessing your photos –
lock them out. Want to only allow reading
access to your status updates to people closest
to you? You can do that too (though remember,
apps use your default posting, which is your
overall status posting setting). Go to ‘Account’
then ‘privacy settings and explore your options
there.
28.The tightest locks
If you put everything in your security to ‘friends’
and remove yourself from search engine results,
and then start using Facebook, you’ll have to
add people, and they’ll never be able to do it
themselves. If you don’t want people knowing
you’re on Facebook, this is an ideal solution.
29. Know your settings!
Understanding what the different settings mean
for privacy and posting is what makes or breaks
your Facebook usage. There are four settings –
‘Everyone’, ‘Friends of friends’, friends only and
custom. Friends of friends means that any
information you share on your profile can be
visible by anyone that has friend any of your
friends, opening your profile up to a lot more
exposure.
30. Your name, date of birth, address and
other information
Keeping as much of your information private as
you can means that you can protect yourself
against identity fraud – this also means not
adding random people and practicing safe login
and logout practices. Facebook is rife with
mistakes that have opened people up to identity
fraud, but knowing your way around security
settings will stop this.
31. Privacy – profile information
In ‘Account’, Privacy Settings, you can choose
to set your different parts of your profile and
information to one of several settings - you can
also customize them so that only your own lists
of friends get to see certain things. This extra
layer of security is incredibly powerful and worth
the time it takes to set up.
32. Being harassed by a colleague that you
just don’t want to add?
Sometimes people don’t take no for an answer –
if you find that someone is continually asking
you for an ‘add’ go to their profile page, scroll
down to the bottom and then hit ‘Report/Block
this person’. Blocking them will stop any
unwanted advances – they won’t be able to see
you at all (or you, them)
33.Apps getting you down?
Did an app you added suddenly change its
posting policies? Are you finding that some
apps are more invasive than you wanted? Go to
‘Account’, then ‘Application settings’. There, you
can remove any you no longer want to use,
change posting policies (in some cases) and
more. Since Facebook changed how apps
notify people, their ‘notification’ feeds have been
a lot less cluttered, but notifications now appear
in the left side bar, which confuses some
people.
34. Don’t let Google see you
If Google using what little of your profile is
visible after you’ve adjusted your security
settings to your perfect level of privacy makes
you nervous, you can tell all search engines that
you don’t want them to view your profile by
going to ‘Account, privacy settings, search and
search engines’ and unchecking the box beside
‘public search engine’. If you’ve got good
security settings and are happy for your name
and photo to appear, have a look at the preview
before checking it. There is very little on the
average profile, including no updates.
35. Hacked?
Sometimes, people lose control of their
Facebook account – this could be because of a
virus, or worse. You can regain control by
following the instructions by following
Facebook’s own guidelines. It’s important to do
a virus scan as soon as you discover you’ve
been hacked – just in case – do that before
returning to the site to reclaim your profile.
36. Photos and videos – don’t appear where
you don’t want to
Along with all other privacy settings – be
especially careful about your movie and photo
settings. It’s important that you keep your video
and photo settings as private as you can – if
you’re tagged in either, it displays them to the
‘world’ at large based on your settings. If you
lock your video and photo options to minimum,
friends only, you can be sure that embarrassing
items will be kept to just your circle, rather than
any Google Cache.
37. The best phone app?
There is no one ‘best’ app for Facebook on each
mobile platform, so look around and see if you
can find a highly recommended one –
sometimes phones come with bundled apps, or
built in API access – which, if you’re a social
animal your phone can be a lifesaver. Be aware
that most apps are limited, as are most phone
based browsers.
38. Tweetdeck?
Tweetdeck is a twitter poster that has expanded
to take in other places like Facebook, and
comes highly recommended on any PC or
laptop. It has a tiny memory footprint and gives
you unparalleled access to a lot of feeds at
once. Beware its API call on twitter though (at
150 an hour). Facebook currently has no
limitations.
39. Automatic posting?
Some people use automatic posting to allow
them to post information at set times, though
Facebook’s TOS seems to be a little grey about
this. Being careful and only posting relevant
information will allow you to connect and
network in a way it was designed to allow.
40. Facebook connect
Facebook connect is a handy extension of the
Facebook login and API, tying various things
back to your profile, or allowing you to interact
with other sites, or programs using your
Facebook credentials. This can be a good and
a bad thing – if the interaction causes constant
posting to your feed, people may find it
annoying, but it also means you’ve got a
centralized login.
41. Lifestreaming
Lifestreaming allows you to pull all of your feeds
into one place and Facebook offers several
widgets based on what you need for your site
– go to Facebook’s widget page - or search the
internet for information on how to use your feeds
in interesting ways offsite.
42. Posting updates
The main basis of Facebook is the ability to post
short (420 character) updates – you can tag
friends in these by going @ (name) or simply tell
people what you’re up to. Some people take
part in mini games in these too – the choice is
only limited by character length.
43. Auto subscribing
Commenting or liking someone’s status or notes
or anything else in their feed will automatically
‘subscribe’ you to notifications about any future
activity. You can reply to this however, from
your email, which means you don’t need to log
into the site constantly.
44. The notification bar
At the top of the page, there is a blue bar with
four icons – this is your quick overview of any
activity aimed at you. This includes anything
you’ve subscribed to by participating in it.
45. Your newsfeed
Your news feed comes with several options –
you can read the most ‘important’ stuff (based
on Facebook’s algorithm), or the most recent
posts. Missing friends? Scroll to the bottom
and click ‘edit options’. Put 5000 in the bottom
box – it’ll remove all limitations on your feed.