Facebook Notes vs. External Blog links on Facebook

People ask all of the time if it is not better to have your thoughts or comments about your interests and organizations placed in the notes section of Facebook rather than having a blog? My answer to that is yes and no. It is a good idea to always use the native format of the social medium you choose, however, there are pitfalls. Facebook in its infant life had the ability to import an external blog or RSS feed directly into notes. Not too long ago Facebook had a message when you logged into your account that says notes will no longer be automatically created from outside sources such as blogs. This had been the ideal way to create Facebook notes from an outside resource.

So, if you had been using that method to import outside information into your notes section, then you had to find a different route. This created a problem for bloggers. Now they have to find a different way of connecting their messages to people on Facebook. Is this a catastrophe?

Over the past few years my instruction to college groups is to find the best route to update your Facebook notes without suffering a Social Media catastrophe. What happens to all of your work that you created exclusively on a social site when a new one comes along? It dies with the old site. Remember what happened to MySpace? (sorry, I didn't mean to bring up bad memories)

If you create your important thoughts on a blog or website then you don't have to worry about the new fad that comes along. Just link the old info to the new site. The Facebook notes import function used to be a decent way to do that. So, what do we do now?

There are third party Facebook apps that accomplish the same thing. Just spend some time to research and test. The easiest way (and best way) is just share a link to your new post on your favorite social media sites. This drives people to your site or blog and offers plenty of opportunity for others to see your previous work. Always keep in mind your "web presence" is the ideal place for your comments and the social media sites are just avenues to drive people to your site.

Keep connecting!