Facebook offers this explanation of some core changes:

Your profile begins with a quick summary of who you are, giving friends an easy way to see where you live now, where you’re working and more. A collection of recently tagged photos also shows what you’ve been up to lately.

Give a more complete picture of how you spend your time, including your projects at work, the classes you take and other activities you enjoy (like hiking or reading). You can even include the friends who share your experiences.

What’s wrong with this picture?

I believe that many of us are still struggling to find the right balance between our Facebook profiles being highly personal and only for our trusted friends, versus being more professional and safe for our work colleagues to see. I’m also assuming that many of us, like me, are not tinkering under the hood with a fine-toothed comb to make sure our privacy settings are tweaked to perfection.

Given these factors, here are some problems with the new Facebook Profile:

1. Tagged photos take center stage. While you can modify your privacy settings to control the tagging of photos and even untag yourself from other people’s photos, you are now having to “police” the images that show up front and center on your profile page, and they aren’t images that you’ve posted yourself. Before, they were hidden behind a tab and people had to seek them out if they were truly interested in your images, which was fine with me, because the photos that other people post of me and tag aren’t usually the ones I want to showcase.
2. Work info gets pushed to the top. My Facebook profile is my personal account. The fact that I’m founder and owner of Mediaegg isn’t something I want to have at the top of my personal profile. I have a LinkedIn account that serves to showcase my professional work. If I wanted to present my work affiliation on my Facebook page, I’d also want to include that I’m also co-founder and owner of Conversify, but that isn’t an option.
3. Educational info gets pushed to the top. I don’t want to showcase my educational details on Facebook. Again, that purpose is served via LinkedIn. I don’t mind that Facebook links me with former classmates via my high school affiliation, but I went to three colleges, none of which are important connections for me. I can’t remove the education data from the top summary of my profile page without deleting it entirely. There isn’t a “show my education in my profile” checkbox option like there is for gender.
4. “Send message” button is to the right. Maybe this is just a matter of how my brain works, but having the link to send a message to someone when you are on their page should not be on the right-hand side. That link has been on the left-hand side of the page under a person’s profile photo forever. Now when I go to send a message to someone, it catches me off guard.
5. “Friends in common” is gone. Or is it? I’m not entirely certain the “friends in common” feature is entirely gone, but I can’t find it. Ironically, for a service that is about connections, this very helpful feature is not where it used to be.

So, what do I like about the new profiles? I actually don’t mind that Facebook Pages now look different from Profiles — for the time being, at least.

Change can be good, and eventually we’ll all get used to the new Facebook Profiles. But it’s disconcerting when our social networks make assumptions about what we want to reveal or showcase, especially when the changes make it even harder for us to draw distinctions between our personal and professional presences online.

What do you think of the new Facebook Profiles?

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1. Use the name you’re known by. Perhaps your name is Robert, but most people know you as Rob or Bob. Or, for women, perhaps you worked under a maiden name for years. Use the name that most people know you by professionally. Cover all your bases by using your main name in your basic information and mention any other names elsewhere such as in the “Professional Headline” field, or in your recommendations.
2. Upload a professional photo. It’s worth the price to use a professional photographer.
3. Create an effective Professional Headline. Add a “Professional Headline” in the “Edit My Profile” page. This is a short bio that sums up what you do. Mine says, “Content Maven aka writer and editor behind meryl.net.”
4. Pick the industry that best represents what you do. Alternatively, you could use your clients’ industry if they all come from the same one.
5. Enter details for current and past positions. Highlight the activities that represent what you do or want to do by mentioning them first.
6. Write a summary that highlights your most important business information. Keep your summary clear and to the point. Remember you can list details under “Current Position.” The point of a summary is to give people instant information on what you do. I’ve looked at various summaries, and there’s no right or wrong way to do it. I used to have a bulleted list, but switched to a short paragraph. When I come across long paragraphs in the summary, I find them hard to read and follow. The shorter ones hold my attention and get the point across fast.
7. List your web sites and blog. Rather than using the name of your web site and blog, use keywords that describe what you do. For example, I use “Writer for hire and blog” instead of “meryl’s notes,” the name of the blog.
8. Add your Twitter ID. If you haven’t already, add your Twitter name.
9. Request recommendations. It’s OK to ask people to recommend you, but make sure you ask the right people.
10. Write recommendations. Writing recommendations can lead to receiving recommendations.
11. Add applications to enhance your profile. If you have a blog, feed your blog entries into your LinkedIn account with one of LinkedIn’s applications. You can also turn LinkedIn into an online document collaboration platform.
12. Send selected Twitter tweets to LinkedIn. While you can connect your Twitter account to your LinedIn profile, many of us tweet too often or tweet about things that would be irrelevant to our LinkedIn contacts. Instead, select just the tweets you want to show up in your LinkedIn profile by adding the hashtag “#in” to the tweet. You can turn on this feature in Twitter Settings.
13. Select what to display in your public profile. People not connected to you can only see what you allow them to see by setting your Public Profile options. The more you reveal, the easier it is for people to know if they have the right person. Here, you can also set up your Public Profile URL, which shows up as to http://www.linkedin.com/in/yourname.
    

    LinkedIn Settings

14. Review your settings. Though I’ve been on LinkedIn for a long time, I still run into new features and settings. Settings cover everything from profile views and email notifications to personal information and privacy settings. You can provide advice on how people should contact you on the Contact Settings page. Mine says, “Email is the best way to reach me.”

What tips do you have for creating an effective LinkedIn profile?

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To draw the line between personal and business use, I assign a Limited Profile setting to business contacts to control what they can see in my profile, and bear in mind Nancy’s advice about using social media: “What you get from me online is 100 percent me…but you don’t get 100 percent of me.” When I do anything in Facebook, I remember that a prospect or client might see it, even if they shouldn’t have access to it. You just never know what spills over.

Let’s get to work on creating an effective profile for business and personal use.

1. Use your full name. Mine says “Meryl Kaplan Evans” because some people knew me before I married and I used that name in my earlier writing gigs. If you’ve used other names, try to fit them in somewhere logical, such as your “Info” tab.
2. Fill out your profile as completely as possible. The profile has four sections: “Basic,” “Personal,” “Contact” and “Education and Work.” Fill out the information as completely as you can, but think about a potential client reading the details. Do you want the client to know that about you?
3. Choose the right profile photo. If you have a professional photo, use that. If not, pick a photo that captures you wearing the clothes that fit your style or what you would wear for a typical business meeting. Don’t try to be too dressy or too casual. You can post other photos of yourself under the “Photos” tab and assign privacy settings on a per-album basis.


Profile Info

4. Link to your blog. Facebook has several Applications that can import your blog entries into Facebook. I use Networked Blogs. It’s a great way to find readers of your blog’s content. My local friends never read my blog until I connected it to Facebook.
5. Think twice about linking to Twitter. Originally, I had all my Twitter tweets feeding into Facebook status updates. But then I took it out and now only send relevant tweets to Facebook using Selective Tweets. All I need to do is add the hashtag “#fb” to a tweet and Facebook posts it on my wall. People who don’t use any other social media application (like Mom and long-time friends) will feel confused and overwhelmed by your tweets especially if you use Twitter on a daily basis.
6. Put your most important business information on your profile home page. This is the paragraph that appears below your profile photo. What is the most important thing you want potential clients to know about you? What do they get out of working with you? Mention your industry, client type or other information to give people a hint. (See #6 in Profile Info screenshot, above)
   

   Privacy Settings for Profile

7. Use appropriate privacy settings for your profile information. Some people have their profile settings so high that when someone searches for them, they only see a name. Well, you might not be the only one with that name in the world, which makes it harder for people to tell if they have the right person. I open my profile photos and “Education and Work” to everyone. This helps searchers know if they have the right person while letting them know what I do.
8. Take advantage of privacy settings to limit access on a per-user basis. If I don’t know someone very well or only on a professional level, I give them a “Limited Profile” assignment. Those with this assignment can only see the parts of my profile that I open to them. You can also control who can view each photo album. For more personal photo albums, I customized the privacy settings to “My friends except for those on the Limited Profile list.” (See Privacy Settings screenshot.)

Still not sold on Facebook for business? We list 32 ways to use Facebook for business. You can also check out our tips for making a Facebook page for your business.

What tips do you have for a business Facebook profile?

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It’s surprising, then that people so often overlook the value of a personal blog in the social media web.

Not Just a (Live)Journal
Once you’re making your living online its time to say goodbye to the “Dear Diary” mode of blogging. Yes, you’ll miss it, but there are less risky ways to exorcise the exhibitionist in you.

Bidding farewell to the confessional style will benefit you in a number of ways. First, you’ll open up your potential audience beyond your immediate circle of friends/family members. You can keep a private blog for that purpose, but any publicly accessible site should have wider appeal, if only slightly. Second, you’ll avoid embarrassment. We’ve all heard the horror stories of potential employers shying away from employees with questionable content on their Facebook profiles. That sort of thing isn’t limited to banks or traditional employers. Even the most casual web-based employer or client will raise an eyebrow at your four paragraph-long expletive-filled condemnation of your neighbor who has loud parties.

Tend to Your Garden
Dead plants do not increase your curb appeal. Likewise, stale posts do not give off the impression that you care about your blog. A well-kept and current personal blog will show prospective employers and clients that you are a consistent, self-motivated producer who can see a project through to completion. And depending on your content, and the job you’re aiming for, a personal blog could be the perfect place to prove you’re a subject matter expert. Plus its a ready made portfolio of clips if you’re angling for a writing job. Make sure though, that if you’re reprinting material you’ve posted elsewhere, you have permission to do so.

Link (It is Social Media, After All)
A blog is a space for conversation, and with a personal blog, you’re lucky enough to be able to open up dialogues about pretty much anything you want to. Using your blog as a jumping off point for discussion will open doors, grow your network and result in contacts that will only add to the resources at your disposal in your professional life.

Linking (and source linking) also show that you know what you’re doing, if you’re looking for blogging work, and that you can communicate, research, and connect effectively. All skills, you’ll notice, that employers prize.

Personal blogs, in the end, are not so personal after all. If they’re publicly accessible, they’re part and parcel of your web worker resume, which is far more than a piece of paper in the context of today’s social media and online communities. Whether your blog is a practical enactment of the qualities you want to show employers, or a glaring reason not to hire you, is up to you.

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Once you set up a free Retaggr account, you can add a photo, include your status that can be easily linked to your Twitter account to show recent tweets, and link to your blog and include the RSS feed to pull up the most recent posts in your card.

You can also include your brief bio or profile and an email icon and your contact number on your card. Again, think of this as your business card, but don’t worry – your email address is protected.

To really enhance your card, you’ll want to add in all of your sites, blogs, microblogs, bookmarketing, social network pages, and more and Retaggr will link to them. The card customization process also includes a Facebook badge and a way to add other widgets you’ve created. If you’ve got a FriendFeed account, that will actually speed up your customization process.

You’ll be amazed at not only how many links you can create in your Retaggr card to all the publishing, communications and networking tools you use (lots and lots of them), but also how Retaggr displays everything in a very clean and compact format. (See my retaggr profile card at the bottom of this post or visit my retaggr page.)

Your card is easily embedded through the code the site provides to you or via one of those tiny buttons that represents your card and leads to it when clicked on. What I love about retaggr is that it gives people a hub point for connection to you and also displays the breadth of your presence and participation on the Web. What I was a little confused about was that on the home page of retaggr, it says that it is compatible with WordPress, but I was not able to embed my card into this post (WordPress stripped out the code every time).

On the social networking side of retaggr, you can tag people you know in images anywhere on the Web when a site is retaggr-enabled, including your own. First, you can make your own site retaggr-enabled. Once you do this, any image you see on your site will have a little “tag” icon next to it. Click on it to draw a box around any person in the photo to tag them. This means that other people who have photos of you on their sites can tag them with your name. If someone tags a photo on their site with your name, retaggr notifies you and provides you with a copy and link to the image.

Your retaggr card can follow you around to any retaggr-enabled site so if you leave a comment, anyone can find you through your profile card. You can also save other people’s cards in your account and create your own contact database of cards.

If you’re looking for a neat way to display your credentials and links to your sites and networks, retaggr makes it easy. The more people who use retaggr, the more pervasive the connections and the greater its value as an introduction tool that integrates and shares more than just your name, title, phone number and email address. Old-fashioned business cards have nothing on retaggr.

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