A Little-Known Facebook Secret

How Facebook Can Help You Monitor Key Clients and Competitors

If you have a personal Facebook page (and if you don’t, you really need to set one up!), there is one powerful feature built into the system that you probably don’t even know how to use. In fact, you may not even have noticed it. It’s called Facebook “Interests.”

There are actually two totally different ways to use the Interests feature. The obvious one can be seen when you click on the “Add Interests” link in the left-hand column of your Facebook home page. (If you do not see it, you may need to click on the “More” link at the bottom of the column.)

When you click on that link, you are shown a page with lists of lists compiled by other Facebook users around specific interests. For example, you may be interested in subscribing to the Business Leaders Facebook page. This page compiles Facebook postings of a number of business leaders like Mark Cuban, Richard Branson, Bill Gates and others. The page already has more than 50,000 subscribers.

Or, you can compile your own list by searching for Facebook pages based upon a keyword search and subscribing to Facebook pages relating to that keyword phrase. Unlike Facebook “likes,” which are part of your public Facebook page, Facebook interests can be set up to be shown only to you when you are logged in.

For a business, this tool can serve two additional purposes that could be far more profitable. You can create an Interest list from any group of Facebook pages. And, you can keep those interest lists private, so that only you will see them when you are logged into your page.

Two Interest lists that I recommend that you set up are “Key Clients” and “Key Competitors.” In days gone by, sales professionals understood the power of knowing a client’s birthday or anniversary and sending them a greeting on those days. With Facebook, you can know so much more! If the client has an active (public) Facebook page, you are likely to know about vacations, the kids, hobbies and activities, and lots of other personal information.

You can also follow competitors’ posts using this Facebook feature. Learn their social media strategies, and get a sense of how they interact with customers.

To set up this kind of interest list, the procedure is somewhat different. First, visit the page that you want to include in your interest list. At the top of the postings, next to the “Message” button, you will click on the Settings dropdown. It looks something like a big asterisk. Click on the link for “Add to Interest lists.” You will be taken through a series of steps. Make sure that you set up these interest lists up as visible “Only to Me.” You can also categorize your interests for ease of use.