By Kieran Gracie
I have been amazed by the number of people who are still either intimidated or confused by Facebook. This social networking site has so many functions that it can take quite a lot of learning before being able to use it properly. Facebook does not exactly help itself either, offering a myriad of detailed instructions, a great deal of jargon but no simple guidance for beginners.
And it is constantly updating and changing itself with a stream of new features and layouts, which only adds to the confusion.
Without a good introduction to Facebook many newbies and older people quickly give up. They, and the whole social community, suffer as a result. This seems a shame to me.
I decided to do some research about Facebook tutorials or any other information about how to use Facebook that might be available online. Newbies want to have the Facebook basics explained in an easy and understandable way, free of jargon or techie talk.
This is a short summary of Facebook basics that, I hope, will help remove some of the confusion and encourage any wavering beginners to keep going.
Facebook for Beginners
As a beginner you want to know how Facebook works. You may have a feeling that it is some sort of internet social community which puts old friends in touch with each other. Some people seem to have a lot of fun on Facebook, even become addicted to it. Some play games on it, and some manage to sell things on it. But where do you start?
You start, of course, by opening a Facebook account! This should be a personal account, even if you intend to do business sooner or later. And you may only have one account, ever. Open more than one and you risk being shut out of Facebook for good. No excuses will change that decision. Don't worry about this, because your account will let you do everything you will ever want to do on Facebook.
Once inside you will have a Home page and a Personal Profile page.
Your Wall
Here is where the jargon starts but it is not difficult to learn. Your Personal Profile is known as your Wall, and contains as much or as little information about you that you want to share with your friends. You can have photos, videos, poems, comments - anything that you think will interest them. You are in total control of your Wall.
Your News Feed
More jargon - your Home page is called your News Feed! By default, when you log in to your Facebook account, you are taken to your News Feed. Everything that you post on your Wall also appears on this News Feed page.
But this is where it gets interesting. Everything that your friends post on their Walls appears not only on their News Feeds but also on yours. So, make a comment on your Wall and all your friends will see it too - in real time. If any of them like your comment they might decide to share it with their friends too. And so on.
You can see how an interesting post can be spread very quickly to huge numbers of people. This is where Facebook comes in to its own.
Facebook Fan Pages
Remember that Facebook started as a tool to help link people together. It had no interest, initially, in allowing people to do business but that has now changed. Enter Facebook Fan Pages.
At present you are limited to 5,000 Friends, with a rumor that this will be reduced. Also you are not supposed to engage in business activities on your Personal Profile. Create a Fan Page, however, and you can have as many Fans as you like. You can promote or sell things. You can have an Opt In Form for email subscribers. You can generate more traffic to your Fan Pages than you can probably handle.
It is actually possible to conduct your business entirely from your Facebook Fan Pages, with Facebook providing free internet hosting. I think that it is still better to have your own website and upload to your Fan Page, but others might disagree.
Privacy Control
Poor old Facebook has been heavily criticized for having inadequate privacy controls but, in my opinion, this has been unfair. You get a huge range of options for every piece of information you wish to hide, share or limit to certain categories (No One, Friends, Friends of Friends, Everyone). Much more control than is really necessary.
Some people may have blamed Facebook when they should perhaps have taken a closer look at their own management style. I have never had any issues with Facebook over privacy.
You can change any privacy setting at any time, so I suggest that you don't worry about this and just make your own settings exactly the way you want them.
What Help Is Available?
I have tried to give a simple overview of how Facebook is organized but, clearly, a newbie will need much greater detail to help get started.
My suggestion is to begin with a Personal Account, build up your Wall and start to get a few Friends. That way you will begin to see Facebook operating in practice, and get familiar with the way it works.
There are several quite good tutorial programs available, which show you step by step how to progress through all that Facebook has to offer. In particular you will need help in setting up your first Fan Page, with its iframes and applications, welcome pages and opt-in forms.
But, initially, you need to know that there is help available to all beginners. Don't be put off, try to learn the jargon, get familiar with the Facebook basics until you are able to see it for what it is - a great tool for interacting with other people and, if you want, to make money online.
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