Category: Social media

In the social media class I teach, I often have students who are learning how to use Facebook Pages for business but don’t use Facebook at all on a personal level. I always recommend that they experience Facebook as a regular user to gain a better understanding of how and why their audiences use it.

That got me thinking. How do you use Facebook on a personal level? If you’ve been on Facebook long enough, you’ll know that there are no rules. You probably have friends who use Facebook for:

• Announcing engagements, marriages, anniversaries and/or babies;
• Asking for sympathy or encouragement (“please send positive thoughts my way!”);
• Complaining, ranting or offering commentary (especially prevalent during political campaigns);
• Posting selfies, selfies and more selfies;
• Showing off their projects, cars or body (see previous bullet point);
• Posting photos of their feet (and their feet are ugly);
• Publishing endless photos of their kids and pets;
• Sharing stories and memes from around the web (“hey, look what I found”);
• Using Facebook as Twitter (e.g. 20 posts in five min.);
• Using Facebook as LinkedIn (e.g. adding your non-friend clients as a friend)
• Friend-ing people they just met or met only one time (see previous bullet point);
• Sharing their workouts;
• Posting something with the sole purpose of acquiring likes and comments;
• Sharing the results of some random quiz (“which actor are you?”) they took;
• Keeping tabs on exes, friends, frenemies or crushes;
• Posting articles from their food blogs; and
• Selling products (e.g. makeup, health, green) from their new home-based business.

Keep doing what you’re doing! That’s what makes Facebook so unique, fun and popular (and also annoying, sad and addicting).