facebook friends get more and more with the info

getting a lot facebook friends

We all like friends but from a business point of view having more Facebook friends can be a real benefit. I have 3008 friends and counting. The nice thing about this is that I get at least 2 or 3 friends request per day as they see me on their friends profile and wonder who I am. They check out my profile and think yeah, id like to be friends with this guy. So how did I get to 2708 friends?

If you try and sell to people they will do one of three things, unfriend you, block you or report you. The last two are things that will get you banned and then you have to either beg to be put back on or start over.

Being real will get you more Facebook friends it is that simple. Lets think about how you use Facebook, would you add someone who is all about selling or is just a picture of a girl with big boobs but seems to post a lot about Viagra?

By being yourself you will connect with people who actually connect with you. 2222 friends is great but how many of them actually connect with me? The answer is 10% and of those, how many book on a web design course, again around 10%. These figures are actually quite good as they repeat each month. The only way I can do this is by not selling out and being real when it matters.

If you see someone commenting or liking something that you do, then connect with them. People want to talk to people so it’s best to start off a conversation before you friends request, then you will have more chance of making that person into a new friend. The second benefit is that by making a new friend that persons contacts will see who they just befriended, from there they may wonder who their best mate became friends with and if you are worth knowing (see item 10) then you will get a friends requests.

To connect with people look out for topics that you are interested in or that are relevant to what you do. e.g. “I am starting a online graphic design course tomorrow” then that is your chance to comment and connect. My reply might be something like ”

If you sell clothes or run public speaking seminars dont harp on about them. Also if you're into something it does not mean everybody else will be. If you keep going on about something you can imagine how annoying that can be. Now this also means when you have a new product launch dont go through all the groups and fan pages and put the same text as this will appear as a long same same list on your profile. Someone looking at your profile will just see 10 or so posts all the same “how boring, he must just be using Facebook to sell, where is the unfriend link”.

I vary everything I do on Facebook, I tell people when I am having bad day, I wish my friends happy birthday, I post up funny pictures and I let people know that a new course is starting this weekend if anyone is interested let me know.

I know what you are thinking, “I am a busy person, I dont have time to share my life on Facebook". Well luckily it is not about the quantity on Facebook it is all about the quality. So post when you want or when something important has happened or will happen. If you are not a social person dont try to be, just be yourself and vary it a bit.

I am a member of 55+ groups, now that is not to say I take part in every group as often they start-up and fizzle out quickly. There is actually an art finding the good groups to join. When looking for groups I first see if they are relevant and am I interested in interacting with it’s members. Then I look at the wall, is the group active? With two yes’s under my belt I hit join and then I am in.

Once part of a group take a look at the conversations going on and see if you can anything of worth. When you reply to a persons comment and you get a dialogue going you can then check out their profile and hit friends request. Because they know you from the group they are more inclined to say yes.

A more direct way is simply doing a friends request and adding a person note like “Hiya, we are both members of the international ninja stamp collectors group, thought I would say hi”. If you are friendly, relevant and you share a group with the person you have more chance of the person clicking Confirm.

If you are new to Facebook then upload your contacts and Facebook will do the rest. To do this you will need to get a .csv file of all your contacts . In Outlook you simply export, Gmailyou go to contacts and look for export in the settings menu, Hotmail is the same and if you are on Mail for the Mac then follow these instructions.

A word of warning, dont do this with a bought list or an export of your customers. They need to be friends, if you dont have a list of your friends then simply do not do this. You want a quality set of friends not just a big number. My 2222 friends is getting smaller as it is bigger as I am deleting people who dont interact with me.

Can be seen by Google, not hidden behind a profile. Do be careful that your fan page does not out rank your own website though.

• A great source of interaction with your users. We often post our own articles on there (this one included)
• You can ask questions. This is an under rated phenomena and can be so useful e.g. “what do you think of our new logo?” or “do you think people will like this new design”. You will be making your questions relevant to your business but getting opinions can really steer you in the right direction.
• Fan pages can be added to your website, if people enter your site and they are logged into Facebook they will see a list of the friends smiling away saying “dude where have you been, we already like this page, you should too”
• Fan pages come with insights telling you who is interacting with your page, male to female ratio and you will receive regular updates in your e-mail.

When you are looking for more Facebook friends be sure to look past the pretty picture and look at what they have been liking, talking about, commenting on, groups they are part of and pictures they have posted. You can get a really good idea about a persons likes and habits from their wall posts and news feed. Find something that you share in common and contact them about that. For example, “I studied AiKiDo in France before coming to Thailand, how long have you been learning AiKiDo?” or “I saw you like collecting rare post cards, do you have the Justice Bhalla’s rare postcard collection?”

Think about this from their point of view, they get a friend request from someone they dont know, they want to know if there is a reason to know this person, if you share a common interest you have much more change of making a real friend.

1. Look around your friends friends, group members, fans of the same page
2. Find a person you think will be a good friend/connection
3. Look at their info and check if they are in the same city/area (for me this is important as we run a Online Marketing Courses in Bangkok not Toronto Canada and I would like to actually meet the person in the flesh one day as that gives more of a chance to connect with them.)
4. Find common interests, this can be with their likes, favorites or even where they studied. This is all on their info panel (assuming they have this accessible by non-friends)
5. Hit friends request and add a relevant message.

You need to be real, interesting and friendly or people will not like your friends request. Be sure that you also prune your friend list every now and then. This is for two reasons, to keep a list that is active and only of people you actually interact with and if you mention you are pruning your list it makes the people remaining on the list after the cull feel more special.

Important: when people accept your request or request to be your friend on Facebook, make sure you add them to relevant lists early. I wish I had done this much sooner as it is a very useful tool. With lists you can invite specific people to events and pages as well as contacting them as a group. Segmentation of contacts is super so be sure to do it.