Since my Facebook Tips for Lawyers post has been one of the most popular recent posts, I thought I'd start a series of Facebook tips posts, similar to the series of tips posts on Time Management and LinkedIn. Here's #1 in the series.
Think carefully about whether you want to keep your professional life and personal life separate on Facebook. Lawyers tend to use LinkedIn as a professional presence and Facebook for a personal presence. But if you want to use Facebook both personally and professionally, you can do so, and using Facebook's Friend Lists is one way to segregate them.
Friend Lists
There are two types of Friend Lists – automatic lists, called "Smart Lists" that Facebook creates, and manual lists that you can create yourself. Each Friend List can have up to 1,500 members, and your Friends can be on more than one Friend List.
Friend Lists let you target your posts. When you post to a Friend List, only members of that list will see the post. You can use Friend Lists to reach a specific group of people quickly and easily. For example, you can send an event invitation to your "business connections" list, and it won't be seen by the rest of your Facebook Friends. Your Friends will not be able to see the names of the Friend Lists you create, or which Friends you have added to a List.
You can also use Friend Lists to filter the Updates you see - in other words, when you click on the Friends List in the sidebar on your Home page, you will see only the Updates from Friends who belong to that List. This makes it easy to quickly catch up on what is happening with a particular group of people without having to scroll through your entire News Feed.
Smart Lists
Facebook automatically creates Smart Lists for you, such as Family, Close Friends, Acquaintances, High School, College, and Workplace, depending upon your activity and the activity of your Friends on Facebook. Sometimes Facebook is not always accurate when populating these lists, so you'll want to check them and add or remove members as needed.
Manual Friend Lists
You can create your own Friend Lists in addition to Facebook's default Smart Lists. For example, you may want to create lists for clients, colleagues, members of a specific organization or industry, etc. To create your own Friend List, find "FRIENDS" on the left sidebar of your Home Page. When you hover the cursor over FRIENDS, you'll see MORE. Click on that and then on +Create List on the top of the resulting page.
For more on Facebook, look for future posts in this series, or check out Facebook in One Hour for Lawyers, my new book co-authored with Dennis Kennedy and available from the American Bar Association Law Practice Management section.
Comments