Don’t let Facebook confuse or intimidate you, or you’ll miss out

When I created my profile on Facebook many months ago, I was reluctant to use the site because I found it incredibly confusing.

Most days, I just ignored it. In the process, I missed numerous opportunities to start building a community of people who cared about what I had to say, promote my business, and give people a chance to know, like and trust me—and maybe even buy.

But I stuck with it and, today, have several thousand friends as well as my own group, Friends of The Publicity Hound, and Fan Pages.

I know I’m not the only one who’s still confused by certain parts of the user interface because I hear frequent complaints from people who say:

• They can’t figure out the navigation.
      
• They don’t know the difference between a Note and a News Feed.
        
• They’re confused about their Home page versus their Profile page.
        
• They want to actively promote something they sell but don’t know where to do that. When they experiment, they receive a notice from Facebook that says they’re violating the terms of service. Yet many of their friends promote THEIR businesses and never get warned.
        
• They can’t figure out how to keep some content private and other content available to the world.
        
• They know what they want to do, like create their own Group, but they can’t figure out how to do it because of the cluttered user interface.
        
• The large number of Applications is overwhelming.

That’s a short list of complaints. I know I’m not alone, judging from the gripes from other Facebook users who commented on The Growing Complexity of Facebook is Confusing Your Mom at the Techcrunch blog. And then there’s this popular video on 25 Things to Hate About Facebook. Many of the complaints you’ll see in the video are very different than the ones I mentioned above.

Last summer, I hosted a teleseminar series with Jason Alba on “How to Use Facebook to Promote Your Business or Nonprofit.” But Facebook has made so many changes since then that the product is outdated.  That’s why I’m hosting a follow-up teleseminar June 4 on “11 Ways to Avoid Missed Opportunities on Facebook.” This time, my guest expert is Christine Buffaloe, my virtual assistant, who creates and manages Facebook for many of her clients.

We’ll discuss 11 common mistakes people are making on Facebook and how to correct them. The teleseminar will include illustrated handouthat will be emailed to participants the morning of the call. 

This session is specifically for beginning and intermediate Facebook users, as well as for publicists, consultants and virtual assistants who want to help their clients with Facebook. We hope you can join us.