People won’t be able to see your FaceBook profile unless you make it public. FaceBook wants you to set up the level of access you grant people to your profile. You can keep it as anonymous or open as you like. Rather than try and explain it here go to the Privacy page on FaceBook and read the details.
Personally, I have some things I allow everyone on FaceBook to see, and some things only my friends can see. It’s a matter of your personal comfort level and openness. Generally, make it a practice to not put anything on FaceBook (or anywhere on the Internet) you feel is too personal. That way you won’t have any unwanted mishaps.
The first step toward making friends on FaceBook is to invite people to become your friends it’s easy to do and there three ways to do it:
Invite Friends by Finding Them on FaceBook: You can invite people by looking for them or discovering them. You can search for people by name or discover them in a network, group, or a friend’s profile. FaceBook only allows you to be in one network at a time, so choose one that holds the most promise for your ministry. You can join as many groups as you like, and make as many friends as you like. As you will see, each person’s list of friends is a network all its own.
Invite Friends by Inviting Them to Join FaceBook: Not everyone is on FaceBook. You can be the one to get them involved. Just go to the “Friends” tab in the top navigation on your FaceBook profile, click the down arrow and select “Invite Friends.” FaceBook gives you a space to add the emails of people you want to invite.
Invite Friends through Your Email Address Book: Third, you can allow FaceBook to access your email addresses on popular email programs like MSN Hotmail, Gmail, AOL, and Yahoo! Don’t worry, the program just accesses your email addresses and names and doesn’t store the information. FaceBook will check to see if they are already on FaceBook or not and invite them accordingly. Don’t worry you can’t mess it up!
Once you have friends on FaceBook, you will be able to see what they are up to by looking at their profiles or by reading their content feeds in your news feed. To see the feeds of your friends, just click the FaceBook logo in the upper left hand corner of your profile. There you will find the latest updates of people in your network of friends. This is the part of FaceBook I use the most often.
Also, you can see what people are doing by looking at your list of friends by clicking “Friends”. Use the pull down menu and select “Online Now” and you will see who in your network has their FaceBook profile open on their computer. If you see someone you’d like to talk to, just drop them a message, or poke them (more on poking later).
Why Make Friends on FaceBook?
When I think of FaceBook, I think of it as a place I can go to network with people. I don’t know what you think of when you think of networking, but for me, it is not about getting people to do things for me, it’s more about helping others succeed at what they want to do.
When you help people, you take your eyes off yourself and put them on serving others. Life is too short to live it only for yourself! Besides if you don’t like people, you are really in a bad place. Planet Earth is crawling with them! Why not get to know a few people? If you help people and take your eyes off your needs, God has a way of putting the people who want to help you, in your path.
Of course, most pastors I know already have built in drive to reach out to people to help them and serve them. Pastors who use FaceBook find they can stay in touch with their members, keep up with students from the church who attend school out of town, and spread the word about current events at the church. I have used FaceBook as a way to communicate prayer needs several times too. Also, I have made contact with new people who have helped me sharpen my relationship skills and helped me grow spiritually. FaceBook is a networker’s paradise!
BTW: The best resource I have seen on networking is an audio CD set called How to Build a Network of Power Relationships by Harvey Mackay. This resource has nothing in it about FaceBook, but the principles work really well in any of the new social networking media.
Remember it’s not the number of FaceBook friends you have as much as it is the quality of your relationships. It’s not a contest to see how many people you can add to your FaceBook. Many pastors I see on FaceBook have a lot of friends because they lead large groups of people. If you see someone with a lot of friends on FaceBook who is not a pastor, it is likely because they are already well-known in some other context.
Next, “How to Get People Coming Back to Your FaceBook Profile”
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