There is a lot of hype surrounding social media as a great way to brand a business, person, idea, or whatever. I completely agree that it is an extremely low cost method that one can leverage to get a brand out there on a shoe-string budget. I definitely push the idea to new businesses and very much enjoy social media in general.

But when it comes down to marketing your business, product, or idea online, make sure you stick to the fundamentals. That is, Building your assets.

What do I mean?

Think of the difference between an opt-in mailing list of 2000 people, all who have agreed whole-heartedly to receive news and specials on your products and services, vs 2000 people following you on twitter, or the 2000 friends you may have on facebook. The latter is something you do not own, and do not ultimately control. What would happen to your business or brand if your social media accounts were shutdown?

Your opt-in list is an asset, your social media account is not.

What can you do?

Store data – it’s so important. Other than a trusted brand, in my opinion, data is the most valuable asset a marketer can have. Build your customer relationship management database and make sure you track and use your website visitor behaviour. These are two great starting points for any business on a shoe-string budget.

Social media is great to leverage in order to drive traffic to your site or perk interest in your service or products, but unless you do something with those visitors and potential customers you are merely wasting your time.

Using Facebook as a networking tool, whether it be for prospecting or finding potential job options is very beneficial. It connects you with many people you may not have time or the resources to connect with otherwise. However, at the same time you don’t necessarily want your employer or co-worker to know what you did last weekend; and what happens if a friend “tags” you in a not-so-flattering picture?

So how do you let people find you on facebook and provide valuable information to your friends all while maintaining a good level of privacy? I recently had this conversation with a friend that actually sparked this discussion. I have come up with some recommendations to get the most use out of facebook while protecting your privacy. Take them as you will, and do provide feedback if you want to discuss.

1. Firstly, limit your profile. You don’t want everyone with an email address to find out all about you. Unfortunately a lot of people stop here thinking their privacy is safe.

2. Remove your public friend listing. It’s one thing to limit your profile, but if I am trying to gather more information on you and your friends are available for me to search through, I can find a friend that doesn’t have their profile limited and search for photos and information on you that way. On this note, make the only thing available on your public listing your name, network, and picture. Have the only option to contact you to send you a message or add you as a friend.

3. Choose profile pictures wisely. A professional picture, a nice family photo, etc. Something you’d want the world to see you in. If you have past inappropriate profile pictures in your “profile picture” album, remove them from that album.

4. Manage your photos. Choose who sees your tagged pictures. I recommend changing your photo settings to allow no one to see your tagged pictures. You can allow groups of people, such as family and close friends to see your tagged images if you wish, but for the most part you don’t want everyone seeing the 1487 pictures you might have of you and your friends.

5. Minimize clutter, and add relevant information. Remove the “what porn star am I” application and clean up your profile. This part can be customized depending on the amount of information you feel comfortable providing. But if you’re using it for networking you may want to increase the amount of information. I have added the “write something about yourself”, my contact information including phone, email, and address. A few quotes, interests, groups, etc. are okay just try to remember to minimize clutter.

6. Use groupings. You can limit your profile based on groups of friend you create. For example, if you don’t wish your co-workers to see certain information, you can limit that in the privacy settings by creating a group for your co-workers.

7. Use status updates. I know they can get annoying, so don’t update them every couple hours. But if you’re attending a networking event or giving a speech somewhere update your status to let people know. Who knows, maybe someone you didn’t really know is attending the same event and makes contact.

8. Add friends. Add as many people as you can. Make new connections. Introduce yourself to friends of friends. Use the “People you may know” tool to see who can be added to your friends. The more people you have contact with, the larger your network can grow.

That pretty much wraps up my recommendations. Take it as you will, but I think it’s a good start to successfully networking with Facebook while maintaining a good level of privacy. If you have any other recommendations or problems with my reasoning feel free to let me know. Cheers to Chris Kolmatycki for the discussion on this topic and sparking the interest for it to be written.