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Follow-up to Michael Port’s Call Yesterday

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Yesterday I had the honor of joining Michael Port and hundreds of his friends on an hour-long teleseminar. Michael recently joined Facebook and was letting his contacts know about it. My friend, Mike Murray, introduced us, which led to the call. It was a blast!

I have to admit, though, I was a little nervous. I’ve been doing these types of calls about LinkedIn for a while now, but this was my first Facebook-only call. I just wasn’t sure what questions would be asked. I felt great about the call, though. I’m really impressed with the caliber of people who are associated with Michael Port.

I needed to do a quick follow-up, though, as there was a part of the call that we never got to! I got an e-mail from someone on the call who basically said “hey, in the e-mail it said we’d cover no-no’s, but we never got to them! What are the no-no’s?” Great question, great follow-up, here is what I had listed on my notes:

Gotchas – things you should not do

No offensive pictures - do I even have ot mention this one?  Apparently I do.  Keep it clean, professional, on-brand, and consider what your first impression is going to be.

Keep away from politics, religion, etc. - again, I shouldn’t have to mention this one.  And it’s a little ironic since Jesse is the creator of a few religious applications.  Two distinct thoughts here: first, this environment is much more casual, and more open to sharing lifestyle and belief things - so it’s more okay to do it on Facebook than it is on LinkedIn.  Second, having said that, again you have the opportunity to strengthen your brand and impact a visitor’s first impression.  If you are representing a business, a brand, or want to maintain a more pristine professional image, it’s probably best to stay away from stuff that’s going to help someone prejudge you.

Consider your signal-to-noise ratio – during the call Michael asked me to critique his profile page.  I thought I was going to find a number of applications that would distract the visitor, but I was pleasantly surprised that his profile page was pretty clean. I’m not trying to be a wet blanket and say “don’t have fun,” but realize that people aren’t likely to spend a bunch of time on your profile, if you only get 10 seconds to capture their attention, do you really want werewolves, pirates and other cutsie applications fighting for their attention?

Do not over communicate – realize what you are sending out to Page Fans and Group Members, and what could be sent to e-mail addresses.  Educating others on their preferences/settings, so they don’t get everything via e-mail, might be a good move.  But the last thing you want is to be considered an obnoxious spammer!

Do not live in a Facebook-myopic world – Sure, it’s great, and it’s fun.  But it should be a *part* of your comprehensive marketing  (or, online) strategy, to include LinkedIn, twitter, blog(s), article writing, webinars, videos, etc.  Michael Port’s Internet properties are a great example of this – videos, blogs, books, FB profile, etc.

I hope that helps!  There were a ton of other questions that came in via e-mail, which we’ll turn into future blog posts.