Robert Scoble

The biggest mistake you all make on Facebook.

I see so many people who are smart and connected like Francine Hardaway, Julien Blin, and Sarah Lacy making this mistake, along with other people.

What is it?

They have privacy set wrong so that their public posts can't get spread around the way they should. For instance, Francine just posted a blog to her Facebook page from her Medium blog. It's very clear she wants as many people as possible to read it.

But they can't.

Why not?

Because she set the privacy on that post to only go to friends. You can tell this because underneath each post you make is a little icon (the icon from her post is included here as an image). If it looks like two people, it is set to only go to friends. If it looks like a globe, like mine are, then that post will go to everyone.

While we're here. The second biggest mistake most people make is TOO MUCH PRIVACY. See, the press has freaked you all out. So you lock down your privacy. But most of the people I read are actually trying to get people to read their posts and their ideas. It's not like they are posting pictures of their naked children in the bath, or something.

This is why I take the opposite point of view: all my privacy is set to "as public as possible." I let search engines index my content here. I let people search for my name and my phone number.

I let people subscribe to my page. I set my default posting to always be public.

The thing is, even if you have a "totally public" profile, like mine is, you can still post something just to a friend, a group, or your family list and people like me won't be able to see it or repost it.

It's amazing to me how bad most people are at Facebook, particularly the ones who are trying to build public brands.

Oh, the third biggest mistake people are making? They use automatic tools to post. These tools, like Buffer, often get lower engagement and don't get through Facebook's filtering mechanism as well as an original post.

What mistakes do you see people making on Facebook?

Marketers and PR flacks HATE the new Gmail tabs. Here's why they want you to delete them: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+Scobleizer/posts/NqotZ7csGLr

Flipboard comes to the Web! This is a great magazine about startups.

This went viral over the weekend and is hillarious! I'm trying to find the photos of when a sheep was chasing Kevin Rose. It's time I publish those photos. Heh.