Chapter 2
In This Chapter
Creating status updates
Using replies in business pages
Editing updates and comments
Interacting with others on Facebook
Understanding the follow feature
The crux of Facebook is sharing real-time information with family, friends, and colleagues. Facebook offers several ways for you to share content with others and to respond to content from others. This chapter explains how you can create and interact with status updates using your personal Facebook account. We also show you how you can use the follow feature to share updates with people who aren’t your friends.
A status update, also called a story, is a short explanation of something you want to share with your Facebook friends. A status update can include just about anything, such as text, pictures, video, and links to a website. Status updates are the main way you share information with others. (You can also use private messages, chat, and comments, but this section focuses on basic status updates.)
To create a status update, you type in the status update text box. You find that box in your news feed and your personal timeline. In your news feed, click the Update Status link at the top of the page. In the text box that appears, you can type your status update, tag people, include your location, attach a file (photo or video), choose a “what are you doing” emoticon, and customize who can see your update.
The status update text box in your timeline, shown in Figure 2-1, offers a little more customization. In addition to tagging, adding a location, attaching files, adding emoticons, and customized sharing, you can add a year or signify that this update is a life event.
As Figure 2-1 shows, you can post a status update as any of the following:
Because life events are usually more important than an average text status update, each of these options has its own submenu that leads to a form to fill out with additional information. You can include pictures, dates, location, and a complete story with each life event update. The life event option is particularly useful as you update and complete your timeline. Book I, Chapter 3 explains how the timeline works in general and why you may want to add events to your timeline.
When you click in the status update text box, icons appear at the bottom of the box, as shown in Figure 2-1 and listed in Table 2-1.
Table 2-1 Status Update Icons
Icon |
What You Can Do |
|
Tag people. Click this icon and start typing the names of people you want to tag in your update. |
|
Add the year. Click this icon to include the year in your status update. If the year is different than the current year, the status update will appear in the correct chronological place on your timeline rather than being posted as a current update. You can also choose the month, hour, and minute if you want to be exact. |
|
Add a location. Click this icon and make a selection from the list of locations that appears. If you don't see your location, you can type it. You can type the name of a business (say, a restaurant), a city, a state, or even a specific address. |
|
Share what you’re feeling or doing. Click this icon and select from a list of emotions or activities (and accompanying icons) to represent what you are feeling or doing at the moment. |
|
Customize your share settings. Click this icon to customize how you share an update, before or after you've posted your update. You can share or restrict access to yourself, any person, or any list. |
If you want to change the privacy of a piece of content, you can do that before and after an item is published. When you initially publish something (for example, a text update or link), you can click the share drop-down list to adjust who sees your content. The share list sports two silhouettes (Friends), a globe (Public), a lock (Only Me), or a gear (Custom), depending on your current settings. From the menu, choose to share your update, choose a specific list or specific people, or otherwise customize how you share the item. If you want to change the shares setting for an item you previously published, just click the share icon and change the share setting. Yes, it’s that easy!
When you post a status update, you may want to choose a privacy setting that is different than your default setting. For example, perhaps you want to share a picture with only the people who appear in that picture.
To adjust your privacy settings for an individual post, click the share drop-down list and select Custom. The dialog box show in Figure 2-2 appears. Select the people or groups with whom you want to share that specific content.
A hashtag uses the # (number sign) in front of a word, phrase, or topic to change it into a clickable link. If you post something with a hashtag, you or your friends and followers can click that link and see posts on Facebook that include that hashtag. For example, if I click #Houston or #blazefly:
Flying to #Houston for #blazefly meetings.
I see a feed that contains all the posts and status updates from friends and people I follow that contain those words. You can also search for a hashtag using the search bar at the top of any page.
Note: Not all users have the hashtag feature.
Tagging is when you write a status update and provide a link to someone’s personal timeline or business page. When you tag a person or page, that person or business is alerted that you’ve shared something. Figure 2-3 shows a status update in which I tagged my wife Jen. When people see the update, they can click Jen’s name to visit her personal timeline. (If I had tagged a business, you could click the business name to visit the business page.) Facebook will alert Jen that I tagged her in a status update.
Tagging a person or page in an update is easy. Type @ and then start typing the name of the person or page you want to tag. For example, if you want to tag Wright’s Media in an update, start typing @Wright’s, and Facebook displays a list of related people and business pages for you to choose from, as shown in Figure 2-4.
Here are a few tips about tagging:
You can give people permission to reply directly to comments left on your business page and start conversation threads, as shown in Figure 2-5. This feature makes it easy to start a discussion or build a community.
When a friend, follower, or fan visits your page, the most active conversations will be featured at the top of your posts. Note that conversation threads are shown in relevance to each viewer and may appear differently based on their connections.
To turn on comment replies, follow these steps:
The Settings page appears.
You may find yourself rethinking something you shared and wanting to remove it. Perhaps, as you update your timeline, you want to remove some past updates as your circle of friends grows or your life changes. Or maybe you commented on someone’s status update and you wish you’d been a little more eloquent.
Although you can delete comments (yours as well as those from others on your updates), think first about your reasons for doing so. Social media is about sharing and accessibility. It’s about discourse and presenting all sides of a story or an issue. Ideally, that discourse will be respectful, but sometimes it gets out of hand. No one likes to have his or her voice (or, in this case, comment) removed, but sometimes that action is best to keep the peace. On the other hand, if you remove a comment (either yours or someone else’s), be prepared for the possibility of being called out for censoring the conversation.
Your timeline is your space, and you decide what is or isn’t appropriate for that space. It’s important to explain your stance to your circle of friends so they understand your point of view. Remember, though, that when you post content to Facebook, you’re inviting people to interact with you and share their opinions on that content. If you choose to remove comments you disagree with, others may not feel welcome to comment on your updates.
If you administrate a business page, removing comments becomes an even bigger issue. Some businesses remove inflammatory or unflattering comments, but that can be a mistake. Your customers expect your business page to be a place where they can interact with you — both positively and negatively. If you whitewash your Facebook business page, allowing good comments and deleting anything questionable, your followers and fans will rebel. (We explain the etiquette and overall management of business pages in further detail in Book IV.)
If you find that you really do need to edit a status update or remove a status update or comment, follow these instructions:
When you share content on Facebook, you’re probably doing it so others will interact with it. Let’s face it, if everyone just broadcast updates, pictures, and video without receiving feedback, the experience would be boring — and not fulfilling. When we share something, our intent is to have friends comment or Like the content. That interaction is validation that others agree or disagree with us — or an acknowledgment that someone else noticed that we’re around and sharing stuff. Either way, we get a sense of satisfaction from those interactions.
Depending on how interesting you found an update, you can interact in the following ways:
To share an item, follow these instructions:
The Share This window appears.
You can share it on your own timeline, on a friend’s timeline, in a Facebook Group you belong to, on a business page you administer, or via a private message.
The follow feature allows a person to follow your public updates without being your Facebook friend. Likewise, you can follow others’ public updates if they’ve enabled the public follow feature. Your account is already set up for following, in fact your Facebook friends already follow you, but you can enable it so anyone can follow you.
If you have the public follow feature enabled for your account, any time you post content and set the share settings to Public, your followers will see your updates. Those followers will not see any updates that have customized share settings (such as Friends Only).
To adjust the follow feature settings on your account, just do this:
The General Account Settings page appears.
The Follower Settings page appears.
You can select who can comment on your updates, adjust notifications, and add a Follow plugin to your website to attract more followers.
You can follow someone's updates as long as that person has selected the Everybody follow option. Just go to the person's timeline and click the Follow button, located in the lower-right of the cover photo. You’ll start receiving the person's public updates immediately.