By Kim LaSalle, Marketing Director

When I set up my personal Facebook account, I had no plan whatsoever to apply it to our agency marketing efforts. I just wanted to keep up with friends and family. But a lot of friends that found me on Facebook were actually business contacts – and since I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings by refusing to be a “friend,” I quickly became acquainted with my privacy settings and “friend segmentation.”

Posts from friends that try to mix business with pleasure don’t appear on my Wall, unless I chose to view their posts. Nor do their posts appear to other friends of mine.

One friend, for instance, set up a Facebook account bearing her name and face to market on behalf of her employer and it just wasn’t working for me.   Or for her, btw.I thought I’d be reading posts about her favorite movies, viewing photos of her family and maybe getting a little scoop on shared acquaintances.

Instead, friends privy to posts on my wall and I were treated to a barrage of industrial manufacturing articles that had absolutely no meaning for us in that context — and understanding context is the number one rule of social marketing.

While there are a number of communication strategies for leveraging Facebook, you can’t get to those without following three basic rules:
1. Understand your constituents.
2. Understand how to separate messaging for different constituents.
3. Understand how and why those first two rules establish your personal or business credibility.