The first two posts in this series weren’t really anything new.  People are always talking about how to use facebook without loosing your job.  But that’s about using facebook sociably, at work.  I don’t advocate keeping work and personal networks entirely separate, because I do think they overlap.  But I don’t advocate using facebook for personal matters at work, nor do I advocate doing work at a weekend.

However, for me, facebook is very different.  It has evolved from a social tool to a work tool.  Obviously, this has its drawbacks.  As some other workaholics will testify, it’s not great to find yourself having work conversations on facebook at 9pm at night.  It’s good to draw lines between what you will and won’t deal with and simply leave things for a bit.  As I describe later, the new facebook design helps with this.

But why bother will all of this?  Why not keep facebook as a social tool, something to chat to old friends on?  Something where being a Barbary Pirate or throwing a sheep at someone fills another hour that you would otherwise have had to spend doing something productive?

Well, firstly, because it’s boring.  Unless you are a die hard Scrabbulous fan or obsessed with throwing the latest trend at your friends, these applications soon loose their novelty.  You dread a newcomer to facebook who will send you all those requests for zombies, pirates and mutant-vampire-killers.  However, when you start to use it for work and professional interests, you meet new people who have wonderful, creative ideas, that you can often get involved in.  My personal development, keeping ahead of best practice and professional contacts have all increased dramatically, because of my use of facebook.

This post gets a bit rambling, so I’ll put in this concise timeline for building your work network, then talk you through it:

1. Block “bad” application requests
2. Do a friends and group ‘cull’
3. Add some key contacts
4. Join relevant groups
5. Add aggregating applications
6. Get on with your normal job, while twittering, tagging etc in the background
7. Check groups and contacts regularly.  Add and remove yourself as needed
8. Maintain your facebook page.  Like a garden, it needs pruning.  Remove what isn’t needed.

For me, this evolution started when facebook brought in the “Block Application” tool.  That finally gave me control to take the pointless stupidity out of facebook, leaving me with the raw networking potential I wanted.  Once you’ve blocked an application it never asks you anything about that application again.  Ever.  Now, instead of getting 5 application requests a day I get that many in a week – if I’m unlucky.

So, part one of building up the work network is to remove the parts of facebook you don’t see the point in.  I’m not saying make it boring.  If passing on the latest superwall posting or note-quiz makes you happy, do it.  But stop it with the stuff you DON’T want to do.

Secondly, do what’s become known affectionately as a “friends-cull”.  Remove the people that you don’t really want on there.  Block access to the wall and profile for those who might post rubbish you don’t want to wade through, or think shouldn’t be posted on something you’re using with work.  If the latter is your issue, block the wall to work colleagues, but I think that the facebook wall is a great place for work collaboration….you may not want to block it.  Personally, I was so bored wit hthe sometimes quite offensive rubbish on my Super & Fun wall that I removed both of thes, but left my main wall open to several groups.

Next, do a group cull.  I stayed in some pointless groups because their humor appealed to me.  I deleted many groups such as “Let’s see how many people with striped shirts we can get in one group”.

Now, with my newly cleansed facebook I started adding a few key work contacts.  People who I thought would be useful to know.  Local and national.  Many didn’t accept me.  Some did.  I started looking at groups these  people were members of and joining them, if there was a mutual interest.  A note of caution here.  Adding “celebs” is not always a good option for work, nor is joining groups simply because they are there.  Adding people who may be useful with work, have similar interests and the groups that refelct this, is.

Soon, I found other works people adding me.  Now, to keep the momentum I actually had to DO something on facebook.

At this point, I started using applications more creatively.  I found that, rather than using applications to throw jelly at people I could turn facebook into a very powerful aggregator.  I added one app that brought my Flickr photos  into facebook.  I linked my status with Twitter, so it updated the same.  I added SHOZU on my phone so I could upload photos and videos at a click of a button.  I used Yahoo Pipes (see my post on ADCOLOG) to mash up all my blogs and feeds and imported them into notes.  I got facebook toolbar for firefox which enabled me to keep track of facebook without sitting on it all day.  So, I didn’t actually DO anything new.  I brought what I was already doing to facebook.

People have told me I’m on facebook all the time.  In essence, they are right.  I’m pretty much permanently logged in.  But that doesn’t mean I’m sitting there staring at it.  It’s like telling someone they are on email constantly.

If something happens on facebook, a small alert pops up in the corner of my screen, or on the email on my phone.  I then choose to ignore it or respond to it.  This is where work life balance and discipline is needed.  I ignore work related things at home and vice versa.  I log out of the toolbar if I don’t want disturbing.  If you’re in a meeting and you get a message on your phone, you don’t need to check it right away.  But you know it’s happened.

A lot of what happens on my facebook profile happens without me touching it.  My photos are uploaded, my notes fed and my status Twittered.  But that doesn’t mean I can ignore it.  Some have removed the TwitterSync application, for example, because they feel their feed looks cluttered.  You need to keep your facebook profile clean.  You need to keep that delicate balance between work and play maintained in the feel of your facebook too.  Nothing too personal.  Nothing too serious. If I have something really personal to say to a friend, I use text messaging or, if it’s really extreme, I’ve been known to use the phone (nb:  We all used these once, remember?)  If I have a formal contact to talk to at work, I use my email.   Facebook is only the melting pot where it all comes together.  This is a good thing.

The new facebook, despite my many misgiving about it, has one new feature that makes it wonderful for work.  You can sort your news feed by friends lists.  As a result, I can easily filter out non-work related posts when I’m at work and vice versa.

Every day I check the groups other people have joined and join any that look interesting.  I use those groups.  Often, I get messages from them.  When I get too many that are of no interest, I leave the group.  But more often than not, I find the messages lead me to useful resources or ideas, which I tag (using delicious).  In turn, these are then displayed on my facebook page’s delicious box.

Basically, facebook acts a bit like my website.  It brings everything together.  Work, social, and that little bit in-between.  But still ,you may wonder, why do this?

For me, it’s about the network.  I’ve met people I never thought I’d meet through facebook. True, I’ve also done this through Twitter.  But, when using Twitter, I’ve needed to highlight myself all the time. ” Hi @celeb, I’m just sending you a message so you notice me” is something you see a lot.  There’s no need to do that with facebook as my page is all there.  It’s different from my website, because my website presents my public face.  Facebook shows my private face to the networks I choose.  It’s about making contacts.  It’s about making friends.  It’s about linking the various contacts you know in your life, both social and work wise, to make a place where you can keep up to date with everything that’s going on.  It’s about social networking.

There is, however, one drawback that hasn’t been mentioned.  My line of work sees great benefits in building up contacts and finding out the latest practice.  But what if your contacts are mainly customers?  What if your customers, or service users, decide to add you?

It’s always a tricky one an many institutionsand agencies  have clear policy on this, so make sure you check it.  I have to admit that, while I entirely advocate my professional networks seeing a bit of the personal me, I’m a lot more cautious about customers seeing it.  When I worked in front line community work, i would have been exceptionally cautious of adding customers.  You may not be and, if you’re not, that’s fine.  If you are, however, there are two options:

• Restrict customers to very limited amounts of information – This is a great idea, though it pretty much defeats the object of facebook – is there any point having someone who can see nothing?
• Set up a facebook page for your service: A facebook page is like a profile, however it does not give them access to any of your person information, nor does it give you access to theirs.  All conversations you have there are in public too, which is aworry for people working with vulnerable adults or children.

I plan a blog on facebook pages later.

The point here really is, even if you don’t want to open your life to the world your work, you, your networks, your potential networks, your focus groups, your customers, your hard-to-reach groups are all out there, on facebook.  Are you going to ignore them?

Do you use facebook for work?  Would you never dream of it?  Why?  I’d love to see your comments below.