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How to Build an Impressive Social Networking Presence, Beginning with Facebook
By Deltina Hay (c) 2008

Professional and social networking sites like LinkedIn,
MySpace, Facebook, and Squidoo are effective outlets for
finding new readers, but it is easy to find your message
spread thin if you don't choose the right strategy. Many
businesses settle for sparse profiles on various sites,
never discovering the other powerful marketing tools many
of these social networking platforms have to
offer - most of them for free.

To avoid the scattershot approach, choose one or two social
networking sites that fit your business well and invest the
time to maximize your presence in them. Let's explore what
that might look like if Facebook is one of your choices.

Prepare your best information before you start.

Avoid the "I will go back and fill that in later" trap.
Have all your necessary information on hand, ready to copy
and paste on the spot. Complete a worksheet containing:

1. Key Terms:
Make a list of your best key terms and weave them into the
rest of your worksheet items. Key terms are one, two, or
three word terms that someone might use if they were
searching for your business in a search engine.

2. General Information:
Your Name
Business Name
Email Addresses
URLs
Instant Messaging screen names

3. Biographical and Descriptive Information:
Short bio (50 words)
Longer bio (100 words)
Short company description (50 words)
Longer company description (100 words)
Business mission statement

4. List of Products

I based these worksheet items on a typical Facebook profile
and page. If you choose a different social networking site,
examine some completed profiles and base your worksheet
items on them.

Create an Account and Thoroughly Complete Your Profile

If you haven't already, get a Facebook account. Completely
fill out your profile using your worksheet. Under the
relationships tab, choose "networking." You can skip the
personal and education tabs for business profiles, but
there is no harm in filling them out. If you have an
existing account, upgrade your profile information using
your key terms.

But don't stop there!

Facebook, like most good social networking platforms,
offers many marketing opportunities for
businesses - some for free. You can find these by
clicking the "Advertising" link in the footer of the
Facebook site, or by following this link:
http://www.facebook.com/business/.

Since I can't cover all of the marketing tools in one
article, let's focus on my favorite: The Facebook Page.
It's my favorite not only because it is free, but because
it makes use of the many diverse Facebook applications.

Facebook pages are specifically for marketing a business or
a product. They offer a way for a business to represent
itself to the Facebook community in an authentic way.
Facebook users can search pages the same way they search
for people within the network community.

Create your page by going to "Page Manager" in the left
sidebar of your Facebook profile, or by following this
link: http://www.facebook.com/business/ and choosing
Facebook Pages. Choose the best category for your business.

Use Key Terms in the Name of Your Facebook Page!

It seems that the actual page name is the only text on a
Facebook page that is used in a search. With that in mind,
use at least two of your best key terms in your page name.

Populate your page with all of your best worksheet
information. You may have only a few seconds to catch a
reader's attention, so put your best key terms forward.

Once your page is in place, add applications to help
represent your company in your own unique way. To find
applications for your page, click on "Applications" in the
upper left corner of your page, or search for them here:
http://www.facebook.com/apps/.

Applications are not difficult to install and are usually
very easy to set up. Use this general rule of thumb when
choosing an application: If you can't figure out how to set
it up after the second try, find another one. There is
often more than one application available to accomplish the
same task.

Applications Top Picks:

My Flickr (http://apps.facebook.com/myflickr/): Display
photos from your Flickr account using this application.
These photos can include logos, product photos, photos from
events, etc.

Upcoming (http://apps.facebook.com/upcoming/): Add all of
your events to upcoming.org, and you can easily display
them on your Facebook page with Upcoming's Facebook
application.

YouTube Box (http://apps.facebook.com/videobox/): Allows
visitors to play your YouTube videos right on your Facebook
page.

Simply RSS (http://apps.facebook.com/simplyrss/): This
allows you to display up to eight RSS feeds on your
Facebook page and display the feeds from your business's
main site and newsrooms.

Implementing these applications creates an interactive page
that also gives visitors a personable look into your
business. To see all of these applications in use on one
page, visit
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dalton-Publishing/9792568507.

Note: If you use a particular application regularly,
consider donating to the application's creator - they
do not get paid to develop these applications.

Promoting Your Social Networking Presence

Now that you have invested the time in creating an
impressive presence on Facebook (or whichever social
networks you chose), go the extra mile and research how you
can promote your new presence both inside and outside of
the network. Here is a link to Facebook's promotional
guidelines:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/manage/promo_guidelines.php.

Of course, invite everyone on your mailing lists to join
your network and visit your sharp new page!

Don't Turn Your Back on Your Investment

Remember: The social Web is a fickle place! You need to
keep your content dynamic and interesting in order to
encourage people to return to your page, or to recommend it
to their friends. Do this, and you will see better results
than those who just move on to building their next profile.
Once you have a good, healthy presence in one community,
use your experience to move on to your next successful
presence.
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Deltina Hay is the principle of the companies Dalton
Publishing and Social Media Power. She has worked in
programming and Web development for 25 years. Ms. Hay's
graduate education includes computer science, applied
mathematics, and psychology. To discover the power of Web
2.0 and social media tools, visit http://www.socialmediapower.com
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