Marking Facebook Milestones (Guest Post on PRBreakfastClub)


Do you know the history of your company? Aside from the date it was founded, do you know when the important milestones occurred? If you don’t, use the new Facebook for Timeline feature to find out!

You company has a rich history and your clients (fans in Facebook lingo) most likely don’t know about all those great things you did in the past. This is an opportunity to politely brag about your past accomplishments and reiterate to your customers that you are around for the long haul.

For the time being, Facebook won’t let you date photos prior to 1905. The work around is to create a milestone event. As long as you entered the correct founding date in your About section, you will have the option to select dates from that point on. For example, my organization, the Missouri State Teachers Association was founded in 1856. We’ve added Milestones from that date forward.

To read the rest, you’ll have to go check out PRBreakfastClub, where I wrote this as a guest piece.

Facebook Timeline as a virtual resume

If you haven’t upgraded to the Facebook Timeline, you should. Especially if you are looking at applying for jobs. Not only does Timeline give you the chance to clean up your past sins (read: party pics, drunken replies and posts out of context), but it also now gives you the chance to post life events.

First, let’s address the past sins. Be critical of your Facebook history. Spend a few hours looking over the past posts, particularly from very early Facebook. Do they even make sense? Does the picture imply something you didn’t mean for it to? Did you not even know your ex-best friend tagged you in that post? Now instead of deleting these items click the pen (or pencil depending on your interpretation), which takes you to edit or remove.

Which will then bring up an option for you to hide from Timeline, taking it of your wall.
Or if you would rather it just be gone forever, click delete post. Do this for all of your pictures, posts, comments and likes (particularly pages you liked and past groups you belonged to). Yes, it is time-consuming, but it is worth it.

Once you’d taken care of your past sins, it’s now time to brag about your past accomplishments. Think of this second part like your expanded work history. If it goes on your resume, add a life event for it. So add a life event for the prestigious scholarship you received, the outstanding award you won and anything else you would talk about in a job interview. If you have photos to go with these events, upload them.

To do this, click on life events, which will bring up an expanded drop down menu. You’ll see that Facebook has kindly put the categories together for you.
You can and should make your Facebook page into something you aren’t embarrassed about.