A Profile is a digital representation of a Facebook user’s self. Profiles are a thing of pride for frequent
Facebook users—an extension of their personalities. Profiles are how users share things with their large
and very connected group of social connections. For marketers, the Profile is where it all begins.
To reach and engage these socially connected influencers, you must know what they do and enjoy on
the site. Remember, the most valuable Facebook users are the ones who provide a lot of information
and have vast connections. The average user has 130 friends; think about the potential of these superusers.
Their Profile upkeep requires time and energy to stay fresh, personal, and relevant to friends (and,
of course, to marketers like you).
In total, users spend over 70 billion minutes on Facebook per month. You need to appreciate the
dedication and openness it takes to create a complete Facebook Profile, because the owners of these
Profiles will be the ones that spend a few of those precious minutes helping you gain buzz, clicks, or
sales. The best way to understand and appreciate these Facebook users and their Profiles is to create
your own.
What Is a Facebook Profile?
A Facebook Profile is the way individual users represent themselves on the site. Typically it
contains information about the user’s interests, hobbies, school and work affiliations, and photos. It is
also connected to any Facebook Pages he likes, from a favorite football team to a preferred brand of
soda, as well as all the other Facebook users he identifies as friends.
Many users are quite open with their Profile information, and Facebook strongly encourages this.
Because the site is free, Facebook’s big moneymaking opportunity comes from charging marketers for
the right to use the personal data its users share; the more data users freely provide, the more potential
revenue for the site. Some users have expressed concern over privacy issues, particularly regarding
Facebook’s increasingly open view of “public” information on their site. Expanded privacy settings
have allowed many users to customize their information as “for friends only,” but most users, especially
younger generations, are happy to share every detail of their lives. They understand and appreciate that
this means a more personalized site experience and enjoy connecting with the brands they know and love.
Facebook Profiles for Business
Facebook’s original intention was to be a social network for college students, and at one time it required
an .edu email address for registration. Later, it expanded to grant membership to high school students,
and finally to people of all ages. However, keeping true to its origins as a service geared to connecting
individuals, Facebook has always maintained certain rules for brands and businesses.
One rule many marketers find frustrating is Facebook’s strong distinction between the types of users
and how it applies that distinction to Profiles. If you represent a brand or entity other than an individual
user, Facebook’s Terms of Service state that you must set up a Facebook Page to represent that brand,
business, or public persona, whatever it may be. This includes politicians, sports figures, and other
celebrities; even as individuals, they need a Page for their very recognizable self. These Pages offer
different choices that are specific to companies, such as business hours, and leave out more personal
details, such as hobbies and interests.
Still, Facebook Profiles are the building blocks of the site itself, and you’ll need to set one up before
you can do anything else on the site, including creating a Page of any kind. Profiles, and
the people they represent, are linked back to every action on Facebook so that someone can be held
accountable for each interaction and piece of content that appears on the site.
Facebook Profile Tabs
A Facebook Profile has three main tabs: Wall, Info, and Photos. Other applications (or apps)
can add more, but these are the basics that every Profile starts with.
Wall
The Wall tab is the standard landing Page for your Facebook Profile. This is where people can post
public messages to you or comment on posts (much like a blog). You can update your status from this
tab and view older status updates. Any applications you have authorized to post to your Wall will also
appear here, such as an RSS feed or tweets from Twitter.
Info
The Info tab is where all of your personal information—likes, interests, workplace, hometown, email
address, and so on—is displayed. Unlike the Wall, there is not much opportunity for interaction between
users here. While this tab is arguably the most beneficial and rich in information for Facebook marketers,
it is probably the least interesting to the average user.
Photos
The Photos tab has long been a Facebook staple. This tab houses every photo you have uploaded or
been tagged in. Each tag creates a link back to that user’s Profile. Note that only people, and therefore
Profiles, can be tagged in a photo, not brands or Pages.
Setting Up a Facebook Profile
Besides the fact that you need at least a bare-bones Profile to set up any marketing efforts on
Facebook, you can also use your Profile as a sort of sandbox for trying out different Facebook applications
and features. Creating your own Profile will help you understand Profiles from a user perspective.
You need to know what users see, do, like, and dislike on the site in order to know what works (and
what doesn’t) in the world of Facebook marketing.
Basic Information
A user must provide a name, birth date, and email address to sign up for the site; almost every other
piece of information is optional or can be hidden. Profile basics include the information that requires very
little thought to fill out: gender, birth date, hometown, and the like. Although compulsory, the birthday
and gender fields may be hidden from public viewing.
Bio and Quotations
The next section of a Facebook Profile requires a bit more thought. Users have adapted
the Bio and Favorite Quotations sections for various purposes. Some users take a straightforward
approach, giving a few brief sentences about themselves followed by song lyrics or movie quotes.
Others use that space for inside jokes, while yet another group treats it as space for a résumé.
How someone chooses to fill in these open-ended boxes reveals a lot: language, grammar, and depth
of information tell a story outside of the words themselves. Generally, the more a user shares, the more
active she is on the site. This makes active, openly sharing users good potential brand ambassadors.
Work and Education
As Facebook shifted its focus from exclusively college students to its current, much more diverse user
base, the Work and Education section expanded to accommodate these changes.
Predictive-type drop-down menus allow users to input as many schools as required, going all the
way back to high school, and to specify areas of concentration at universities or colleges.
Facebook uses this information to search for relevant alumni Pages within the site.
Users can also input work experience in much the same way, adding jobs in reverse chronological order
as Facebook attempts to match the companies they have worked for with existing Pages. These fields
are all some form of drop-down menu, with the exception of the Description box, in which users can
enter highlights of what the job entailed or the company’s purpose.
While job and education history may be of little interest to many retail brands, this section can be
especially helpful if you plan to use Facebook for recruiting purposes. As more and more people turn
to Facebook as a way to find new employees, this section may see an increase in emphasis and
functionality.
Likes and Interests
According to Facebook, a user’s likes and interests include activities, interests, music, books, movies,
and television shows. The ease of adding such types of interests through the Like button often makes
Likes and Interests the most robust section of a user’s Profile. In the past, users were able
to enter their likes and dislikes in a free-form manner via a text box. As part of Facebook’s recent push
to connect Profiles to Pages, users now indicate their preferences via the Like button and lists of Page
links; simply clicking the Like button on a Page creates a link on the user’s Profile. Each Page then
describes that interest, as well as a list of users who share that favorite film, show, or other interest. The
jury is still out on whether this shift to maximum connectivity helps or hurts Facebook, the average user,
or Page administrators and marketers.
Pages
The connectivity shift, however, did impact other aspects of a Profile for Page administrators. Pages that
were once displayed quite prominently on a user’s Profile are now hidden behind a Show Other Pages
link. Back when users still “fanned” a Page, those Pages enjoyed the honor of being the only section of
a Profile to contain images. Now that the interests section is linked to Pages, Pages that are liked but
not added to the interests section have been pushed back.
Facebook reasons that asking users to “like” a Page, as opposed to “fan” it, requires less of a connection
to the Page’s subject matter and increases interaction with the site. Yet while users may end up
liking more Pages with the new terminology, for a Page to receive prominence on a Profile requires a
higher level of dedication than ever before. Sure, you can click to show other Pages, but to have a Page
displayed front and center requires a committed assertion; a user must edit her Profile, type an interest,
and then connect to a Page.
Contact Information
Last, and probably least for most marketers, is the contact information section . Some users
may find this section helpful for searching and connecting with old friends or taking Facebook communications
to a more private venue, but as a marketer on Facebook, you should keep your communications
on the site. Still, it’s useful to know how the entire Profile section works, and what you can add to yours
depending on how accessible you want to be to your audience.
First up is your email address, which is required to register for the site. Users can also add an IM screen
name, mobile and land-line phone numbers, a physical mailing address, and a dorm residence, as well
as links to additional personal websites that friends might want to visit—such as a blog, Twitter account,
or LinkedIn Profile. With the exception of your email address, no field is required. The amount of information
visible to the public differs from person to person, but again, generally speaking, younger users
seem happy to share IM names and phone numbers, while older members do not.
The privacy controls for this section are more finely tuned than most. Users can control who sees each
individual piece of information; settings range from Everyone (the most public option) to Custom settings
that allow users to specify only a few friends or members of a certain Friend List. For example, you
could decide that everyone can view your email address, but only college and work friends can see your
physical address, and just a select few work friends have access to your IM screen name. These privacy
adjustments make it possible to fill out your Profile completely and then tailor its appearance to individuals
or groups of friends.
Privacy Settings
Along with the ability to add and share all this information online, Facebook also created ways to keep
some sections of a Profile more private than others. Some people put up barriers that reflect real life,
only accepting friends they personally know. The easiest way to share what you want with whom you
want, however, is to use Facebook’s built-in privacy settings and friend lists.
As discussed in the previous section, privacy settings allow you to control who can see your
contact information. They also allow you to control who can see your personal information, including
your birthday, favorite quotes, interests, education and work info, and relationship status. You can also
determine who is allowed to post on your wall, tag you in photos or videos, or view your Profile in both
Facebook and public search results. Photo album settings are determined on a case-by-case basis, so
you can make some albums available to all friends, and others just a select group of people. You can
also control what you share with outside websites, as well as what your friends can share about you.
Privacy settings also allow you to see which applications are running on your Profile, adjust app settings,
and block or remove old apps you no longer use or want. For marketers, the more open a person keeps
his privacy settings, the more data you can collect or use for targeting.
Friend lists and groups
To make adjusting privacy settings easier, you can segment your friends into handy groups or lists
and fine-tune your settings in bulk. For example, you might create a list for work colleagues
and allow them full access to your personal information, but restrict some photo albums. Just keep in
mind that a friend’s settings are determined by the most restrictive list they belong to. So, if you have a
close friend whom you also work with, and you want him to view the most open settings for your Profile,
you won’t want to lump him in with other work colleagues.
You can also create exceptions to settings to keep only a few people (a former boyfriend or girlfriend,
perhaps) from seeing certain parts of your Profile. Just choose Customize from the Privacy Settings
menu and select the items you want to hide from certain friends. Then type the friend’s name and click
Save Settings to keep that piece of information private. Or, if you really don’t want to be bothered by
someone or to let a person find you at all, you can add her to your block list. Simply scroll to the bottom
of her Profile’s left navigation column and click Report/Block.
Profile Applications
Facebook offers a myriad of applications. These can be useful for marketers, because they provide a
naturally viral vehicle for spreading awareness of your brand. Some apps are designed by Facebook
and have a more practical utility, such as Photos or Notes. Others are more about fun, like Coke Zero’s
Facial Profile doppleganger app or Zynga’s FarmVille. Anyone can create a Facebook app, which means
there are a lot of fun and useful applications available; however, this also means that there are plenty of
abandoned apps that never worked quite right.
Most apps are perfectly safe to add to your Profile or Page. However, you should do a little research
before adding apps from lesser-known developers. Check out star ratings and user discussions in the
Application Directory to make sure the developer is still maintaining the application. You
can also see how many active users an app has, as well as what’s new or popular across the site.
Once you’ve found an application you like, click to add it to your Profile or Page, depending on the use
and type of app. Some are strictly for Profile use, such as games, while more practical apps, like the
custom tab developer Static FBML, can be used for Pages as well.
As Facebook phases out the Boxes tab of Profiles and Pages, applications appear either on their
own tab, like the Static FBML custom tab, or as a function of a Profile, like Twitter’s status updater.
Facebook maintains tight control over how and where items are displayed, and some apps are further
restricted by their developers for optimum viewing.
Profile Interactions
There are many ways that a user can interact with your brand on Facebook, from a Page to a custombranded
Application or ad. However, user-to-user interaction is actually a little more limited, despite the
categorization of Facebook as a social network.
Facebook friendships are two-way connections; that is, a user must request to friend another user and
wait for approval before they can talk or interact in any meaningful way. Once that connection has been
established, users can use Facebook Chat as well as Facebook’s private messaging system (which
works much like email). However, the favorite means of communication for frequent Facebook users is
Wall posting .
Facebook is a site founded on connections but is increasingly moving toward more open channels of
communication. Heavy Facebook users feed into this change by making many chats completely public.
Wall-to-Wall postings often read like email or IM exchanges, and the comments for status updates,
link posts, or photo uploads often run well past a simple note. In addition, the more people post or
comment, the more other people join in; they want to see what and why everyone is commenting on a
particular photo or article and join in the fun.
Summary
As you can tell, a lot goes into a Facebook Profile. What information you show and how much time you
spend updating and maintaining it is up to you and will largely depend on your goals for and use of the
Profile. But the Profile is where it all begins and is a major part of every user’s Facebook experience, so
it’s vital that you thoroughly understand how Profiles work, look, and relate to one another.
No matter what kind of brand, product, or service you are marketing, you need a firm understanding
of your target. On Facebook, this means getting back to basics and working from the beginning: the
Facebook Profile.
According to Facebook, there are currently over 500 million active users on the site, at least half of
whom log in every day . That means 500 million Profiles that you can use to get data about
your target audience. In fact, this is Facebook’s biggest selling point: the site actively (some say aggressively)
encourages users to fill their Profiles with the type of information marketers are always trying to
find—all for free.
