Is your Facebook mobile friendly?

I had an interesting experience related to my Facebook account last week, which I think might be worth sharing. Here's what happened:

A friend (that is, a real friend who is also a Facebook friend) told me that he wasn't able to see any of my updates on his mobile device/smart phone and that he'd been missing out on all my big annoucements. (I recently shared news of my engagement.)

I'm vigilant about keeping my Facebook settings up to date, so this problem surprised me. Had Facebook been making even MORE changes to its privacy policies? Had I missed something?No,  but I had made a mistake. While my Facebook settings allowed my "friends" (and "fans") full access to all my Facebook content, my settings did NOT allow people to see any part of my Facebook via a mobile application. As a result, my Facebook page was not "mobile friendly."

We've talked a lot about accommodating the growing community of mobile users over the past year, but this is just one more area to keep in mind. Mobile friendliness is just as important to your social media accounts as it is to your website. You may have hundreds of Facebook fans/friends, but if that community can't get your content on the go, the numbers don't matter.

My privacy settings were set such that unless my friends were logged on to the actual Facebook website (the full site, at facebook.com), they wouldn't receive any of my updates. In order to fix the problem, I  needed to tweak my privacy settings to allow mobile apps to access my content.

This sounds confusing, but the change was very simple to make. Here's how I changed my settings (and how you can change yours) to make your Facebook account more mobile-friendly.

Go to Account > Privacy Settings > Apps and Websites: Edit your settings > How people bring your info to apps they use: Edit settings and enable (check) all the boxes that you would like your fans/friends to see via their mobiles. In my case, I enabled My Status Updates, My Photos, My Posts, etc.

Changing this setting doesn't mean that strangers will have access to my content. (My privacy settings only allow friends to see my updates). The change just ensures that those same (already approved) friends will be able to access my content via their smart phones and tablets, as well as through the usual channels on the main Facebook website.

_{* Header image from the Nyman Ink Facebook page. * Second image: Apple's trademark phrase "There's an app for that."}