If you’re a beginner on social media, you’re probably feeling overwhelmed. Your friends have been on Facebook for years, so they’re no help. What to do? Here are five simple things you can do on Facebook.

Check Your Notifications

Updates are shown through little red squares on Facebook. Click on them and you’ll see who’s trying to reach you, when a post has another comment on it, and things like that. You can change which notification you get through your settings. Here’s an excellent article about Facebook’s Notifications Being Out of Control. By the way, you can change your notifications if you’re getting too many of them.

Post Something

If you’re a business, post something about your business, such as a change in your services. Or maybe you got a new logo and would like to say something about that. Or put up a blog post. By the way, posts with images or videos get a lot more views than just text posts. And if you want to engage others on Facebook, you might like: How to Engage on Social Media: Facebook. Be forewarned, though: getting engagement on Facebook is difficult unless you pay to play.

Comment on Someone Else’s Post

Try writing a comment on a public post. You can also comment on someone else’s comment. Don’t forget that commenting increases your visibility just like creating a post does. There’s a right and a wrong way to comment, however. You probably shouldn’t comment on every single one of your friends’ posts, as Jeva Anand describes in Posting Comments to Other People’s Wall on Facebook. And you definitely don’t want to spam anyone. Please keep your comment about the subject of the other person’s post–otherwise, you could get unfriended or blocked. The good thing about commenting on someone else’s post is often they may feel compelled to return the favor and comment on your page!

Photo by Iain Farrell

Connect with a New (or an Old) Friend

That business associate you worked with ten years ago is probably on Facebook. Why not reach out and connect? If your friend has a business page, you can connect with them there, too. You probably have some new friends that you could also be friends with on Facebook. You’d be surprised who’s there. Don’t forget to set up your own Facebook business page, too, once you get comfortable with Facebook.

Join a Group or Two

There are groups for all sorts of things on Facebook. Like mountain bikes? Do a search and you’ll find a group. Enjoy traveling? There’s a group for that! Want to explore your bird watching hobby? You can definitely find fellow bird watchers. And if you’re an author, you might want to know how to promote your book with Facebook. When you’re comfortable with groups, you might even want to start your own.

Need More Help?

Still feel stuck? Facebook, just like other social media platforms, can definitely be overwhelming! It’s changing all the time and difficult to stay updated. I can definitely help you sort things out!

You might notice that I skipped over the idea of whether your cats belongs on social media at all. Because of course they do. Cats have opinions about pretty much everything. And they love to share. Even if you don’t want to hear–they want to share. So I’m assuming that your cats needs to be somewhere on social media. And since so many introverts love cats, you might also like this article: Six Facts about Introverts and Social Media that Will Impress Your Friends.

LinkedIn

Only the most professional cats can make it on LinkedIn. Some of them might be professional, but the professional air only lasts for a few minutes at a time. For most, LinkedIn is unsustainable. They will seem professional, but when the catnip appears, all bets are off.

Twitter

This has always been my favorite platform, for cats and non-cats alike. Your cat may want to express its opinion, be snarky, and bask in its own beauty. Twitter is great for the pithy comment, too. My late, great kitty Purrsilla had a great run on Twitter as @BigDataKitty. She mostly insulted people and also she got listed with some big data professionals. Just her and 49 guys in suits. Does that sound like your cat?

Facebook

But of course your cat belongs on Facebook. Why not? Perhaps a private group for your kitty would give him or her the best audience. Yes–you can have an audience with a cat (since cats are similar to the Pope and a cat might grant you an audience–if you’re lucky). People want to see cute pictures, such as your cat basking in the sun, stealing food off your plate, and of course sleeping.

Cats and TikTok

TikTok

Yes, videos belong on Tiktok, and cats love videos. Ergo your cat belongs on TikTok. All three of mine have a video together on TikTok. The video was too big to put here, but you can go look at it on TikTok. And it looks like…

YouTube

There were 2 million cat videos on YouTube as of 2015–so you can just imagine how many there are now, five years later. Here’s a wiki about cats on the Internet. And there’s this: “In 2015, there were more than 2 million cat videos on YouTube, with an average of 12,000 views each – a higher average than any other category of YouTube content.”

Need Help Getting Your Cat on Social Media?

I’m available to help!

Scrolling through Gary Vayner’s wonderful post How to Make 64 Pieces of Content in a Day, hidden on page 66, I saw a little snippet. The snippet was about using the Notes App to capture content, but I saw something else. It was about focusing on your deepest interests: “Keep challenging yourself on what you do when you’re not at work and find ways to allocate time to putting in a business or media (social media) platform around your deepest interests.”

Your Deepest Interests

What are those things you do when you’re at home? Especially at home right now, since we’re all at home a lot now (except for essential businesses). Many of us are baking banana bread, deep-cleaning appliances, and reexaming our life choices. By the way, my new favorite banana bread recipe is on Epicurious. But there are also people enjoying deeper interests that they might have felt they had no time for before. Personally, I’m reading different books, with more fiction taking precedence.

Your Forgotten Hobbies

If you suddenly have more time to think and restart some old hobbies, you could be surprised and delighted. You might like this article about your hobbies: A Good Hobby Will Make You Feel Delighted. Active leisure doesn’t seem like something people engage in as much as they used to. Isn’t it time to bring back those active hobbies? The people in my family always had a million hobbies. My brother raised Siamese Fighting Fish and rebuilt motorcycles, for instance, while I mostly read and played sports.

Your Childhood Dreams

Was there something you wanted to do that you forgot about? Maybe now you have more time and could pick it up. Stranger things have happened. And if it’s possible to combine a childhood dream with something else you might like to do, why not now? Maybe you could illustrate your own blog posts with pictures you painted. Or created videos of your efforts at engine repairs.

If Writing Is Your Passion

You could easily create many pieces of content if you enjoy writing. While others may be struggling to come up with content, you could use that one article 50 different ways. If you are someone who’s struggling, you might like this: Content Creation: What Are the Best Habits for Writing?