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Tools to Take Your Facebook Profile from Fine to Phenomenal

Like everything these days, Facebook offers many applications to tweak your profile. However, few people actually take advantage of these options. The result: everyone has the same stuff. You can take your Facebook presence from fine to phenomenal with just a few applications and tricks.

Facebook Toolbar
Mari Smith of Why Facebook? suggests you Optimize Your Real-time Facebook Experience With Facebook Toolbar. The toolbar lets you

  1. “see a list of your friends in order of the most recent status update,
  2. search the entire Facebook platform,
  3. jump to eleven different common features inside Facebook,
  4. see how many pokes, friend requests, email messages and group invitations you have, and
  5. share web pages on Facebook (this replaces the Share bookmarklet).”

Customize Profile Information
Profile HTML lets you to customize some information on your Facebook profile page. To use this application, you’ll need to be familiar with HTML (HyperText Markup Language; there are many tutorials online and it’s fairly easy to learn) and you’ll be introduced to FBML (FaceBook Markup Language; Facebook’s version of HTML). Add the Profile HTML application to your main profile page and you’ll be able to place any content in the box (provided you have the rights to that content; you don’t want to use things without permission) using HTML or FBML. The possibilities are endless.

Promote Your Blog
How to Import Your Blog Into Facebook explains how you can import your blog content into your Facebook profile using the Notes tab. If that’s not ideal for you, you can use applications like Simplaris Blogcast, NetworkedBlogs, and Blog Box to import your blog posts to your Facebook profile automatically. You just need the application and your RSS URL.

facebook logoVanity URLs
Facebook is considering allowing users to pay for the privilege of having a vanity URL (e.g., facebook.com/BloggingBasics101) instead of the long string of unintuitive numbers you’re using right now. Currently Facebook has given vanity URLs to power users like Mashable, but it’s conceivable that the URLS will be available eventually. In the mean time, you can work around this a few ways:

  1. Redirect a domain to your Facebook profile or page. Steve Coulson of Mashable tells you how: “If you own your own domain (and frankly, who doesn’t), set up http://facebook.mydomain.com to point to your profile.” No kidding. It’s one sentence. It’s that easy if you own your own domain.
  2. Use the application Profile Web Address to create an intuitive page URL you and your clients or friends can remember. Your new Facebook URL will look something like this: http://profile.to/melanienelson/ or www.profile.to/melanienelson. Easy to remember and it looks better on your business cards.
  3. Block Embarrassing Photos
    Let’s face it, there are times when you wish someone hadn’t tagged you in a photo. Paul Boutin writes, “Facebook can’t stop people from posting your picture. But there’s a Facebook setting that prevents other users from tagging photos with your name. Choose that setting, and other users won’t be able to tag you or search for photos of you. Plus you get plausible deniability: Nope, that’s not me doing a keg stand at the company picnic.” Mr. Boutin walks you through how to keep others from tagging your photo in his article How to Block Facebook Photos of Yourself.
    Creative Commons Licensephoto credit: AJC1

    A version of this article was cross-posted at BlogHer.

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