Facebook as Your Business Partner: Tread the Water Carefully

I’m not going to call out any of my Facebook friends by name, but I am going to relay a story about how I egged one of them on.

His status update on Sunday morning was something to the effect of, “has 25 reasons to not post one of those ’25 random things about me’ notes. ” So I challenged him to come up with 25 reasons not to follow the rest of us sheep into exposing our inner selves.

And he came up with the 25 reasons within an hour why he wasn’t going to fall for the latest version of a Facebook chain letter. I was amused, but also enlightened.

Marketers are starting to rely on Facebook as a business tool, and forgetting that it’s still a place to have fun.

It’s something I should have also realized a few weeks ago, when another friend’s status update was, “is tired of all this status update spam – leave me alone!”

I’d felt that way for a while with my old buddy from high school who uses his status update at least twice a week to push his book. And the friends who use status updates to plug their blog. And I actually unfriended someone who at least five times a day would change his status update to reflect what he just posted on his Web site.

I opted in with these people on Facebook because I was their friend, not their business partner.

Yeah, I guess I can be considered a hypocrite. I launched the Chief Marketer Network’s page on Facebook (and I’ll plug the URL here). And it’s brought together about 600 marketers who can network with each other.
But I’m not using my status update to push the Chief Marketer page. There are two different things I could do – and recommend – to spread your marketing word on Facebook without alienating your friends.

• Share on Facebook: See a tiny Facebook icon on a Web site you like? Click it, and you’ll have the option to put that URL on your Facebook page. If you don’t see that icon, you can add an application that will let you do it through your Web browser.
• Start a fan page: That’s the latest craze, especially with the success of news organizations like the New York Times and FOX News during the 2008 Presidential Election. If someone becomes your fan – instead of your friend – they are opting in to your business world.