I used to see Facebook as a tool for family and friends but not
for business, however that is changing a great deal now. There are
people like Mari Smith with WhyFacebook? and Jason Alba with I’m on Facebook, now what?, along with many articles about using Facebook for business.  Some of them are:

• Seven Steps to graphing your Facebook strategy,
• How to use Facebook to promote your business and blog,
• and How to use Facebook to grow small business.

It was at a client’s prompting (I'm a Virtual Assistant in the daytime) that I started to look further into this because of coaching she is receiving.  Her coach uses Facebook for connecting all her coaching clients and I believe has a closed ‘forum’ at Facebook.  My client needed me to help her get set up and connected at Facebook.  So I've recently started learning how to use this tool in a totally different way.

I've created a brand new profile for my own business, separating it from my personal profile for family and friends, but I didn't think I'd see a benefit so quickly.  It was only a few days ago I began this process of exploration and learning and the most amazing thing has happened.

Facebook has the facility for setting up Pages, as opposed to Profiles. On pages you can grow a following of 'fans' rather than friends as in your profile setting.  I've been adding RSS feeds for my blogs and learning how to use some of the other applications, but that's not the amazing thing that has happened.

A couple of days ago a man left a message on my Wall - he found me through another person from a group we're both members of - a writer's group.  He was commenting that I live not far from him (no, he's not a stalker) and that we used to go to the same church.  We struck up this conversation and he began to tell me of a friend he had at his church who is single mother with children and currently homeless.

The day was Wednesday and that's significant in this story.  You see the 'old church' he and I both used to attend, runs a service helping people on the streets, feeding them, helping them to find jobs and helping them to find homes to live in and they are only open on Wednesdays. He wasn't aware the church had begun this service - he'd been gone from it for quite sometime. I gave this guy the name and phone number of the lady at this church who heads up the service and told him to contact her.

How amazing that he should make contact with me, live not far from me, used to attend my old church and had someone who was in need and I knew just the person she could get in touch with? And this all took place via Facebook.  I'm now starting to get a whole new picture of what this social networking tool can do.

In case you're wondering my Facebook page is at http://www.kathiemthomas.com - perhaps I'll see you there!