Managing your privacy on the web is important – even as an entrepreneur, you want to draw the line in the sand with who has access to what information about you. Facebook, though under the white-hot light, does offer powerful privacy controls that give you the liberty to manage who has access to your information. I’ll show you how to secure your Facebook profile from unwanted viewers and use Facebook like a CRM.
Privacy on the web is important. It’s a touchy subject – marketers want access to people’s online behaviors so they can target them effectively, publishers want to aggregate it safely and people want to maintain complete control over who accesses their data. Facebook has been scrutinized over privacy due to changing the default privacy settings for users and deterring them from removing their data that’s publicly accessible. It’s expected Facebook will revise their privacy practices so they find a good balance between privacy advocates and publisher needs.
Don’t publish sensitive or personal information if you don’t want people accessing it. I know that’s contrarian for me to say, but it’s a fact. Once you publish something, someone has access to it and if you don’t want people to share it, don’t post it.
That said, you probably want to be able to allow other people to access your information and interact with you if they meet differing criteria. What you need is segmentation. Facebook provides the ability for people to manage “Lists” and the subsequent permissions portions of your profile. To configure who has access to your profile, visit Facebook’s Privacy Settings.
Facebook provides valuable CRM-like features for personal profiles. Specifically, Facebook Lists comes to mind. Having the ability to segment your contacts into various groups is very powerful. AllFacebook goes in-depth about how to use Friend Lists effectively. These lists are especially useful because you can tag people across different lists and have your privacy settings honor permissions per each list.
As an entrepreneur or small business owner, you will probably connect with employees, partners, customers and …you guessed it … your family and friends. How do you balance who can view and post content to your profile? Strategically use Facebook Lists and Facebook Privacy Settings. It’s not just about privacy; you can use Lists to send a message to a group of people in a segmented and targeted way.
It’s not difficult to setup, either. I’ve sacrificed my own privacy in the video below to show you how I segment my contacts on Facebook. In the tutorial video below, I explain how to build a Facebook List, manage privacy settings to that list, and how to read and engage with that list. Make the video full-size for optimal viewing.
(Watch the video on YouTube HD if you have trouble watching the video above.)
I hope this helps. You don’t have to delete your Facebook profile to reclaim privacy on the web. You just have to learn and use their privacy settings.
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Posted In: Social Media
