I’m going to start you out with some basic Facebook etiquette because if you break the basic rules on this social network your account will get banned in a heartbeat.

Facebook is especially strict and the admins have a zero tolerance policy for spam and bots.

Soon I’ll give you specific tactics on how I use Facebook to grow my business, get more visitors to my website, and increase my brand recognition, awareness and goodwill.

Facebook is great for business and has achieved tremendous adoption and growth because it’s a protected environment and you can easily connect with influencers you probably never would’ve reached through any other channel.

This is the true power of the chrome extension social network and probably why they’re so strict…to protect how powerful it is and keep abusers and spammers out.

Sometimes it has a very ‘Big Brother’ feel to it like something out of 1984. But spam is bogging down the net and fighting it off is good even when some innocents get caught in the crossfire.

The problem is when newbies come in and don’t understand the rules nor the Facebook specific definition of spam.

These guys mean well but unfortunately sometimes the “baby gets thrown out with the bathwater”.

Even some very experienced and seasoned users of the site like Robert Scobliezer have been banned and had their account shut down. He later got it reinstated but why waste time with that unnecessary hassle.

I’ll start you off on the right foot in order to avoid these time wasting and frustration inducing issues from the jump.

You will spend quite a bit of time building up 500 or 1,000 friends and making solid deep connections so you want to protect your time investment.

Here are some basic rules you want to follow.

When you’re sending friend requests always include a personal message and only send the same message to 8-9 people before using a different one. Realize this is a general guideline and Facebook changes their algorithm periodically. To be ultra safe at the start you may want to send only 5 of the same personal message each day.

This ‘message’ field is available for your friend requests and I strongly urge you to include a personal message in each friend request because you’ll have a higher probability of them accepting your request.

They won’t tell exactly what their filter is but right now it seems if you send 10 or more of the same messages on the same day it triggers one of their filters and you’ll get warned. This changes periodically but as long as you stay under this low limit you should be fine.

It’s almost like your parent slapping the back of your hand… it stings for a while but you get over it. However, you get enough of those account warnings, seems to be between three and five, and the quickly fading hand sting becomes a swollen, painful nightmare. Your account gets disabled.

When you’re sending out your friend requests make sure to have a few different messages you can use so you don’t look like a spammer sending the same thing over and over.

I recommend, and do this myself, you include a personal message telling how you know them or mention a mutual friend’s name and what kind of business or reason you’re contacting them.