About 230 packed the conference at the Holiday Inn, including reps from Bank of America, Duke Energy and Piedmont Natural Gas. Walmart sent three from its Arkansas headquarters.

Keynote speaker David Armano told a spillover crowd that businesses on social media today are like teenagers experimenting with sex: They don’t know what to do, but they really want to do it. Then they’re disappointed when they finally get to do it.

Armano is with Dachis Corp., a new social media consulting firm in Texas founded with $50 million in venture capital. He closed his talk by telling businesses to look beyond this teenage phase.

“It’s time to grow up,” Armano said. “Social media is here to stay. In five to 10 years we won’t even be talking about this stuff.”

He compared the change happening now to when e-mail became commonplace.

He cited Best Buy’s use of social media to allow sales employees to share expertise and best serve customers in all of its stores. So if a customer in one state has a question about a computer modem, a sales rep in another can help. Representatives from utilities Duke and Piedmont said they are looking at using social media for a variety of customer service needs rather than just alerting them in emergencies.

Charlotte’s Kathleen Hessert – famous for teaching Shaquille O’Neal to tweet – told a crowd that knowing how to post on social media and knowing the right way to represent your company are two entirely different things. Social media have boomed, and many businesses must play catch up, she said. “It took 50 years for TV to build the audience social media has in five,” said Hessert, who runs the consulting firm Sports Media Challenge from her six-person office at N.C. 51 and Carmel Road.

Bank of America vice president Sidney Echevarria, one of several BofA managers at the conference, said he believes social media can help in “flattening the organization,” so expertise can be shared throughout. Many people know how to use Twitter and Facebook personally, but using them within an organization requires new strategies, he said.

Jason Keath, who organized the conference, plans a follow-up event in Charlotte, and is planning events in Nashville and St. Louis.

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Social Media sites like Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and YouTube are changing the way the world does business. I think this is in response to our desire to connect with others.

Relationship Marketing is all about connecting with people first as human beings and then as customers later. For a real business relationship to work, both parties must receive value. If only one or neither does, that relationship won’t continue for long.

It is the same with Social Networking. You have to provide value consistently for people to want to follow you (as in Twitter) or be your “friend” (as in Facebook). This value means something that helps them in their business or their personal lives.

So, what Works in Social Media and Social Networking?

What To Do In Social Networking

1. Provide Solid Value First. Provide tips that are valuable to your followers. If you talk about a special that is with a third party — where you have no benefit from your followers purchasing — you gain points.

2. Retweet (Twitter). This means you copy something that was said by one person and send it to your followers. You are helping in three ways here: 1) You help the person who sent the initial tweet and they will remember that, 2) You help your followers by providing value and 3) You help yourself two ways. First you strengthen the relationship with the person you are retweeting (don’t you love these new words we come up with today?) and secondly you help yourself as others see you as a resource. Make sure it is value when you retweet otherwise it comes off as TweetSpam and that can only hurt you.

3. Link With Bit.Ly, Tinyurl Or Other URL Shorteners. This sounds a bit technical but it’s quite easy. If you have a really long name for a website (URL) it can eat up your 140 character limit fast. A better way is to use one of the free URL shorteners available. Bit.ly is good for generating statistics on how many are coming to the site. Tinyurl and snipurl have been around for years and are quite reliable.

4. Always Points To More Value On Your Blog/Website. Let your Facebook postings, your tweets and Linkedin messages always point to your Blog or website (they can be the same) where your followers or friends will find more value on the subject. This is the methodology you want to deploy in your marketing today. Generate value on your Blog and point to it with your notices on all the various social networking sites.

What To Avoid In Social Networking

1. It’s All About Me. Ugh! How many times do we need to hear that the world doesn’t keep spinning around YOU? We all want to hear about ourselves and how what you have to say will make our lives better. Make all your communications about how others will benefit from being involved with you. Frankly, we don’t care that you’re “standing in line to get a hamburger.” What will help is if you found that hamburgers are available at half price today from 12:00 to 3:00 at 4th and Main and they are the best you’ve ever had. That information would be valuable. Make it about others and you will succeed.

2. Spam City. We hated spam on email (still do). We don’t like it any more in the era of social networking. So stop it already! Yes, we know you have a “great way to make money on Twitter” on your site but frankly, we’re tired of hearing it! Instead, promote serious ways people can solve problems in their business. You add to your credibility and avoid being seen as a spammer.

3. Too Much “Unfollowing” Or “De-Friending.” When you stop following someone (and there are times it is appropriate) make sure it is because of serious problems (like spamming — see above). When we see someone has “unfollowed” us (more of those clever new words we get today), it can hurt. I remember one person who I admired and had purchased a lot of her materials. However, when she unsubscribed to my email I was hurt. Was I logical? Of course not. However, that person has already lost thousands of dollars as I spent the money with someone else — and she doesn’t even know it! Careful on what you do and who it can offend. Hear more about this story in my podcast at www.TerryBrock.com.

Social Networking is really very much like good ole networking has been since human beings started gathering in groups. Treat people with honesty and dignity. Relationship Marketing principles work today on these new media. Avoid the “hot new ways to increase traffic” that smack of hucksterism and chicanery.

If it doesn’t come from a genuine, real desire to help other humans beings, it should probably be avoided. This is true in Relationship Marketing, Social Networking and life.

Copyright © 2009, Terry Brock and Achievement Systems, Inc. Terry Brock is an international marketing coach and professional speaker who helps businesses generate profitable results.

He can be reached by e-mail at terry@terrybrock.com or through his website at www.terrybrock.com.

Join the Twitter adventure with Terry through his Twitter address: TerryBrock

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There’s a very strong distinction in those two statements.

So when you embark on any social media endeavor, keep the following principles in mind:

· Be specific: Don’t waste your time on sites that won’t cater to your customers.

· Be aware that everything is public: Your Facebook page, for example, has just become part of your “brand,” part of what identifies you to the public. Post your status one day as “so hungover,” and you may see your business drop severely (or, depending on the market, increase!).

· Be creative: Marketing and online business are a dime a dozen these days. The only way to stand out is to find a niche, an angle, or a method that no one’s tried yet. For example, inject your personality with humor, or be so falsely serious it becomes funny. Just about any creative approach can garner huge success these days, whether it’s a video game reviewer who hates everyone and everything, or a clothing sales site that’s almost a social
networking extravaganza in and of itself, you’ll find that creativity is the key to both success and longevity.

· Treat crisis as opportunity: Some users quickly delete comments that reflect poorly on them or their products. You can see why, but it’s a big mistake – the person who made those comments will just turn around and badmouth you everywhere else, and the fact that you deleted his original comments will seem to confirm his complaints. Instead, take a lesson from many large companies who monitor social media sites for mentions of their name. When they find a complaint, they immediately post offering to help with the problem. Now the internet wide complaint has become an internet wide example of this company’s caring and consideration!

The important thing, once again, is to create a strong personality and then respond through that personality’s eyes – but with a constant eye to the professionalism and credibility you want to establish, whatever form that may take.

Hope you enjoyed these 4 simple but ‘Powerful’ principles, If so please leave a comment.

Enjoy your day

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Facebook is releasing as open source a Web server technology because it wants to make it easier for developers to create applications that let users post status updates in real time, a functionality popularized by Twitter.

The Web server framework that Facebook will offer as open source is called Tornado, was written in the Python language and is designed for quickly processing thousands of simultaneous connections, the company said Thursday.

“Tornado is a core piece of infrastructure that powers FriendFeed’s real-time functionality, which we plan to actively maintain.

While Tornado is similar to existing Web-frameworks in Python … it focuses on speed and handling large amounts of simultaneous traffic,” wrote David Recordon, Facebook’s open programs manager, in the Facebook Developer blog.

“We believe in releasing generically useful infrastructure components as open source … as a way to increase innovation across the Web,” he added.

Twitter is the best-known application for people to post real-time updates on their thoughts, status and whereabouts, and Facebook has been tweaking its site to tap into this trend.

For example, Facebook revamped its profiles to make the stream of friend notifications and status updates more prominent. It also added an option to let members display this stream and other parts of their profiles more broadly to everyone on Facebook, not just to hand-picked friends and members on mutual Facebook networks.

Recognizing that the large network of developers who build applications for Facebook is also interested in creating applications for real-time updates, Facebook in April released its Open Stream API. This API (application programming interface) lets developers build applications that access these Facebook notifications and help users manage them

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Answer: Social media can be a powerful tool for B2B marketers and business owners. It can be used effectively to monitor prospects, drive referrals; create new business opportunities; and attract the right talent and more… Although the effectiveness of social networks (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) may vary by industry, LinkedIn seems universally effective for B2B marketing.

In B2B industries, nothing is more valuable than the quality of your relationships. Whether you realize it or not your success in business depends on your ability not only to establish key relationships, but to leverage, influence and add value to your relationships.

Create new business opportunities

Social networks, such as LinkedIn are like muscles. The more you use them, the more you’ll get out of them. The power of social networks is founded on its size and strength. The trick is balance these two aspects of your network. When it comes to networking, size matters. LinkedIn is a great place to connect with everyone you know professionally and personal contacts that are willing to share connections with you.

LinkedIn users with a free subscription can search and access a portion of social network’s 34 million members based on their connection count. This includes: their immediate connections; second degree contacts (friends of friends); and third degree contacts, and people with a mutual connections. You don’t have to have a huge network to reap results. For example, people with more than twenty connections are thirty-four times more likely to be approached with an opportunity than people with less than five.

Look at the networks of your most satisfied customers. Identify prospects who may have similar needs and use your relationship with the satisfied customer to fuel your contact. This can be done by contacting the prospect directly and highlighting your shared contact (aka satisfied customer). Or, you can ask your satisfied customer to make an introduction on your behalf.

Great networks take great amounts of effort. Think of the most successful people you’ve ever known and they will always seem to know the right person to call on in any given situation to influence or effect the desired outcome. This type of influence doesn’t just happen. It results from years of painstaking social networking.

Drive referrals

Social networks generate referrals. LinkedIn is the most powerful B2B referral network in the world. If you do a good job, one customer might tell three to five of her colleagues, family and friends about you. Using LinkedIn, these results are amplified. When someone writes a recommendation for you on LinkedIn, their entire social network is notified. And, the information is immediately available for the customers and prospects that view your LinkedIn profile.On social networks, you promote your network, and your network promotes you.Solicit LinkedIn recommendations from satisfied customers. Ask them to describe aspects of your working relationship that they value most. Choose customers who have a flair for writing. Don’t be afraid to ask customers to write about specific projects or company characteristics: your creativity, your ability to solve problems, your leadership, etc. Ideally, you’ll want a series of recommendations that compliment each other If someone writes a recommendation you don’t like, you’re not obligated to display it. And, LinkedIn provides tools that let you request updates to recommendations.

Write unsolicited recommendations for businesses you have worked with. This generates goodwill on behalf of each recipient – which strengthens your network. As an added benefit, you’ll often get a recommendation in return.

Be known as an expert

Being an expert on LinkedIn will boost your credibility and build goodwill with prospects. To do this, visit the ‘Answers’ area of LinkedIn to view questions from other LinkedIn subscribers on a variety of topics. Answer questions related to your indusry and personal area of expertise. When you provide the best answer to a question, the submitter can identify your answer as ‘best.’ If you provide the best answer enough times to a topic, you’ll be designated as an ‘expert’ by LinkedIn.

Know your customers — and competition

Linked is a great CRM tool for B2B. You can track the activities of prospects, competitors, and customers and use the information you learn to fuel successful contacts:”LinkedIn is a rich source of information for your sales team about the prospect, so I put it in another class,” said John Rasco, president and founder of RefreshWeb. “What you have to realize about social media marketing is that it’s seeding information for people to find. It’s not a broadcast medium for promotions.”

Find talent

Use social networks to create relationships with prospective employees before you need them — especially if your B2B industry requires a lot of specialized education. Identify thought leaders and skill practitioners in the industry by monitoring their activity on LinkedIn, Twitter and contributions to industry blogs. By creating relationships before you need them, you’ll loose less time when you are ready to add an employee or need to replace an existing employee.

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Today, 42% of adults in the U.S. with Internet access maintain a profile on a social networking site, up from 20% in 2007, according to Forrester Research. And in an economy where almost one-tenth of the population is unemployed, more job-seekers are likely to look for opportunities online.

Meanwhile existing members of social networks may take the time to fill in more of their job history in their profiles.

Recruiters have been scouring professionally-oriented social network LinkedIn for qualified candidates for years now. More than 40% of Fortune 100 companies pay to use the site to find talent among its 46 million members.

But social networks are still evolving as places to hire and be hired, and Facebook, with its 250 million members, is gaining ground.

Unlike its more career-focused competitor, Facebook offers members profiles that tend to reflect their whole life. In the past that deterred many who were concerned an incriminating photo or wall post might be discovered by a potential new boss.

Professional and personal lines blurring

That fear is going away as people become more comfortable sharing their lives online, sometimes even blending their personal and professional personas. Some users take advantage of Facebook’s privacy settings to edit the information they present to professional contacts.

More importantly, Facebook is gaining credibility as a tool for recruiters and human resources professionals, the very folks who’ve been avid fans of LinkedIn. For one thing, Facebook seems to cast a wider net and provide recruiters with more references – and more outlets to spread the news about a job opening. Facebook users have an average of 120 friends. While LinkedIn won’t release this statistic for its members, recruiters say the average number of connections likely is smaller because of the site’s narrower scope.

The types of relationships and contacts found in a personal network versus a professional one are also assumed to be more authentic and less transactional, and therefore more desirable to marketers. And while Facebook members now span all ages and demographics, the average age of its users is 31, compared to 41-years-old for LinkedIn.

These are aspects that attracted technology company EMC (EMC) to Facebook. “Many college grads aren’t on LinkedIn,” says Polly Pearson, VP of employment brand and strategy engagement at EMC. “We’re going where target market is—that’s why we’re on Facebook.”

Reaching recent college grads

As a business-to-business lacking strong consumer awareness, EMC relies on its Facebook page to build its reputation as a great place to work. It’s still too early to judge the success of EMC’s foray into social networking—the page only has 745 fans—but Pearson says the company has made hires through social networks and is more focused on starting a dialogue with potential employees.

“We have to have a huge pipeline,” explains Pearson. “A company can have a website all day long but there’s a lot more people hanging out on Facebook than on our website.”

As a technology company, EMC took a DIY approach to Facebook. But companies like the Pepsi Bottling Group (PBG), Harley Davidson (HOG) and Bally Fitness rely on CareerBuilder to develop a presence on social networks. The career site consults with 250 clients, helping them build Facebook community pages that incorporate job listings, blogs about applying for positions and discussions among candidates and employees.

“Companies are always initially afraid,” says CareerBuilder chief marketing officer Richard Castellini. “We’re trying to help them understand that by giving up control you’re still going to get benefits in terms of deeper and wider conversations.”

While active job seekers might visit the Facebook pages of companies they’re interested in, Facebook also enables companies to reach target candidates who might not be looking. This more recent advance is made possible by Facebook Connect, a feature that enables websites and applications to access information in a user’s profile (with their permission).

Two Silicon Valley start-ups are deploying the feature to help companies encourage their employees to refer friends for open positions. Internal referral candidates are the most appealing to human resources departments since they are less expensive to find and tend to be the best fit for a position, meaning less turnover.

San Francisco-based Jobvite manages the entire hiring process for its customers, which include Tivo (TIVO), Mattson (MTSN) and Mozilla. The firm, which announced an additional $8.25 million in funding yesterday from ATA Ventures and CMEA Capital on top of an initial $7.2 million investment from CMEA in 2007, operates a “software as a service,” or SAAS, platform. Clients simply subscribe the service on a monthly basis, rather than paying to have the software installed on their own servers.

The name Jobvite originally referred to a feature that enabled clients’ employees to use Outlook to generate invitations to apply for jobs at their company. But that required employees to sift through their contacts themselves, assuming they even used Outlook as their source for email addresses.

In February the company created an application that used Facebook Connect to allow employees to send job invitations via Facebook. The app will even search the profiles of the employee’s Facebook friends to see who might make a good match for the job. The invite can then also be forwarded on to friends outside the original employee’s network. (The invite feature is also available for LinkedIn.)

“We help companies scale how they hire people through networks,” says Jobvite CEO Dan Finnigan, who spent five years at Yahoo’s (YHOO) HotJobs unit prior to joining the start-up last year.

Appirio in San Mateo offers a similar invite feature as software-as-a-service, but only for customers of Salesforce.com (CRM). The firm, which is backed by Salesforce, Sequoia Capital and GGV Capital, offers applications that manage referrals in social networks, whether for hiring purposes or a marketing campaign. All the data is sent back to Salesforce for analysis and tracking.

If you’re fortunate enough to have a job right now, especially one you love, all of this may not seem especially relevant to you. But at some point in your career, you could simply be posting a status update when your next job comes looking for you.

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The hyperbole (and the frenzied buzz it creates) is confusing and many businesses could use a practical guide on how to evaluate social media and how to engage – if it’s appropriate.

It’s amusing to think that “Word of Mouth” marketing (which, essentially, is what Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites are) is a new phenomenon. Back in the day of low technology and small town America, the only way to pass information was by word of mouth. Neighbors depended on each other for news, including, one can imagine, new products on sale at the local market.

Social communication by “word of mouth” is a fundamental human characteristic and taking advantage of that is fundamental to all marketing because (let’s face it) consumer to consumer (C2C) communication is free.

So the first benefit of using social media in your marketing efforts (and the first thing to keep in mind) is that social media systems are designed to facilitate person-to-person communication, as opposed to traditional media and most first generation web efforts, which are predominately one-way communication.

Social media marketing enables businesses to hear from their customers, observe interaction between customers, enhance trust and build credibility by expanding beyond traditional marketing messages and participate in “communities” with customers.

Small town inhabitants are similar people. Their word of mouth communication is effective for marketers precisely because they have similar tastes and share those tastes with each other. (Usually.)

In other words, they belong to the same market segment.

Market segments are a widely misunderstood concept, frequently equated with verticals, as in “my market segment is the health care industry;” or shared pain (“I am targeting those companies who suffer from email spam”) or a buyer profile (“I am going after college-age kids.”) These criteria may be necessary for a segment, but do not comprise a segment.

Market segments are comprised of like people, who share a common interest, who look to one another as a trusted reference and who have access to each other. If customer in California is just the same as a customer in New York, but they have no means to communicate, they are in separate segments. Your marketing and sales efforts will be developed to reach both geographies.

From a marketing perspective, one of the primary benefits of technological advances has been simplifying communication between like buyers, thereby expanding the reach of market segments. TV, radio, telephone and the Internet have all provided this benefit.

And so it is with social media. Since dial-up bulletin board systems (BBS) first appeared in the late 1970s, users have been “going online” to share common interests.

While early BBS’s were geography-based, today’s descendants, Internet forums, are typically concentrated around a specific hobby or topic independent of geography. Businesses who sell products within these niche markets have long known about these sites, and where welcome, have helped sustain them through advertising dollars.

With North American Internet usage now at 74 percent of the population and the recent proliferation of super-social sites, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, social media has gone mainstream. A broad spectrum of users participates in some Internet social networking activity.

So the second primary benefit of social media is that it can provide a captured audience of customers in your particular target segment.

There are myriad ways of participating in the social media marketing phenomenon. So how can you determine if you should participate and if so, how?

Current activity -First, you should be actively monitoring your brand. Are people talking about you online? Software products exist designed specifically to help you track company and product branding and PR firms often offer this as a service. Minimally, set up Google Alerts to track mentions.

Does online behavior influence purchasing? -Some of your customers may participate in social networking, but their activity may have nothing to do with your product. Tread carefully so as to not intrude on their purpose of participation. (For example, you may wish to advertise on Facebook since you know your customers visit the site, but whether or not to invite them to your fan page requires a more nuanced decision.)

Which social media venues? -As with most things marketing, the answers are with your customers. Where will you find them online? Who influences their buying decisions? Would they find company provided social tools such as online feedback, feature request voting or peer supported forums valuable? Would a company blog enhance credibility, increase trust or loyalty?

Rules of Engagement -Since by and large, consumer participants in online communities determine the rules of engagement for businesses, it’s important that you follow the rules. Your social media activities should not be advertising per se, but rather your participation should provide value to the community. In other words, as a business participant, you are there to share knowledge and expertise to the benefit of the consumer. This is true, by the way, even when you have developed the community.

Social media marketing can be a boon to your company, giving you insight into customers and letting you interact with them in a way few other marketing channels do. Just remember it’s a different world with different rules – and it’s best to be crystal clear on those before you jump in.

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With new apps and add-ons, Facebook users can send each other a virtual drink, create and host events, advertise their businesses through social ads, and more. When Charlie Gibson hosted the debate for the 2008 presidential candidates along with Facebook, the little networking site became a powerhouse in the online-marketing community.

If you’re thinking of tapping into the Facebook crowd for some high-profile advertising, take a look at this list of 100 tools and tips that will help you maximize all of the applications and opportunities that Facebook has to offer.
Why Facebook?

Why has Facebook become the go-to networking site for marketers? Check out these articles to read up on the rise of this networking giant.

1. Inside Facebook: This blog is devoted to “tracking Facebook and the Facebook Platform.” You’ll find useful stats, marketing tips and more.

2. Facebook’s Ads Page: This page explains how Facebook provides business owners with self-service solutions, market-research solutions and integrated solutions when it comes to advertising.

3. Should You Advertise on Facebook?: This article helps U.K.-based businesses decide whether or not they should advertise on Facebook.

4. The Value of Facebook: Even in its earlier days, Facebook was considered a hot commodity in the industry. This post uncovers why there’s good reason for all the hype.

5. What’s the Big Deal About Facebook’s Social Ads?: This article discusses why Facebook’s social ads are such a hit.

6. $240 Million! Think of All the Beer We Can Buy!: When Microsoft shows a $240 million interest in your company, you know you’ve made it. Advertisers will also want to take note.

7. Why Is Facebook Suddenly So Popular Among We Geezers?: A CNET blogger wonders how Facebook’s popularity has stretched from its original base of the under-25 crowd.

8. Ten Reasons Why Facebook Is So Popular: This tongue-in-cheek article explains exactly why Facebook is such a popular site.

9. How Did Facebook Become So Popular?: This blogger tracks Facebook’s rise to social-networking stardom and its technique of “utilizing one of the most powerful viral marketing strategies ever conceived.”

10. Facebook: More Popular Than Porn: Time magazine’s Web site discovers that Facebook is more popular than porn sites among college students.

11. Fifteen Reasons Facebook May Be Worth $15 Billion: Back when Microsoft decided to invest $240 million in Facebook, it also declared the social-networking site to be worth around $15 billion total. The reasons for the site’s popularity still hold true in 2008.

12. The Impact of Facebook’s Platform: This article from ReadWriteWeb compares Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to a young Steve Jobs and applauds Facebook for opening up its company to developers and advertisers.

Advertising

Learn about current and future advertising opportunities on Facebook by reading these posts.

13. Sponsored Groups: Sponsor your own group on Facebook by purchasing a link that hosts ad content, message boards and more.

14. Mini-Feed: When it first came out, members weren’t sure if they wanted to be updated each time a friend added new photos, changed their status or even wrote on someone else’s Wall. As an advertiser, though, you can track your Mini-Feed to find out what your friends have been up to and more closely study your target audience.

15. AceBucks: Facebook users earn AceBucks by playing games and taking surveys, then cashing them in for real-life prizes like Wii systems and iPods. Create your own survey or game to promote your business, then invite others to play.

16. Five Moneymaking Opportunities on Facebook: Mashable! lists several moneymaking strategies available on Facebook, advertising and otherwise.

17. Facebook’s Secret Rate Card: This article explores which Facebook advertising methods are worth your money and effort, and which aren’t.

18. Could Facebook Change Web Advertising?: Listen to this NPR (National Public Radio) report to uncover the newest trends in Web advertising.

19. How to Effectively Advertise on Facebook: Trendcatching’s post explores some of the more lucrative strategies advertisers have used to tap into the Facebook market.

20. How Does Facebook Figure into Your Online Advertising Campaign?: This article is a must-read for business owners who are thinking about incorporating Facebook marketing into their own advertising campaigns.

21. Social Networks Find Ways to Monetize User Data: Learn how to make money off of your Facebook friends (it’s not as sleazy as it sounds) with the tips and analyses provided here.

22. Digging into Facebook’s Ad Future: CNET News.com believes that Facebook has the capabilities to become an “advertiser’s paradise,” despite some social-networking sites’ inability to make serious profits.

23. Promote Your Cause on Facebook in Six Easy Steps: TechSoup shows nonprofits how to use Facebook for self-promotion.

24. Facebook Ads: Facebook’s official advertising page strives to prove how social ads, profile pages and paid ads can increase a company’s business.
In the last couple of years, Facebook has gone from a college photo-sharing site to a burgeoning business- networking platform for self-promotion, advertising and multimedia interaction. With new apps and add-ons, Facebook users can send each other a virtual drink, create and host events, advertise their businesses through social ads, and more. When Charlie Gibson hosted the debate for the 2008 presidential candidates along with Facebook, the little networking site became a powerhouse in the online-marketing community.

If you’re thinking of tapping into the Facebook crowd for some high-profile advertising, take a look at this list of 100 tools and tips that will help you maximize all of the applications and opportunities that Facebook has to offer.
Why Facebook?

The Complete List of 100 Can Be Found Here, Enjoy

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There are excuses aplenty not to join social networks, writes Valeria Maltoni, but that’s all they are: Excuses. When people say social media is just a passing fancy, for example, they neglect to realize that today’s social networks have been a decade in the making…

“At this point, you’re either in or you’re going to be left out!

Top 5 Excuses

5. It’s just trendy

No, it’s not. I participated in the first social networks and helped build and curate one almost 10 years ago and things are just getting interesting business-wise now. The Cluetrain Manifesto is 11 years old and at this point, you’re either in or you’re going to be left out.

Free in not a benefit, it’s a feature. The benefit is what you build with it. What’s in your strategy?

4. Companies don’t have enough control

Control is an illusion, whether it’s on Facebook or the fax machine. Do you tap the phones? Do you know what your sales people are telling customers? Really? I didn’t think so. Who talks to vendors at your company? That’s additional exposure.

Your employees want to know what the business is about, they will gladly share about it if you explain things in simple enough terms. It’s not because they’re simple, it’s the business that needs to learn to articulate what it’s about simply to be remembered and talked about.

3. Traditional marketing is a better investment

This is like saying meetings are a better investment than the telephone. The Internet has made spam very cheap, that’s why there’s so much of it. It has also made it easier for people to vote on what they’re interested in. That is good.

There are more ways to connect with fans and people who are looking for what you offer than there have ever been before. Why continue buying your head in the sand as if turning on and off a dialogue was still the best or only way to go? Can you afford to be thought of as spam?

2. There are too many social media experts and I don’t know which ones are legit

I agree this is a problem – but it’s a cop-out as a show stopper. How do YOU think companies should find
legit people? We discussed a public relations candidate job description a couple of days ago. I say look at execution and results.

Or you could look at how many followers they have on Twitter and fan on Facebook (kidding!).

1. The only people on the Internet are kids

Guess what, there’s fewer of us in the current online-crazed group. And you’d be surprised to find out that in the 6 month period ending July 4th, 2009 that Facebook saw 513% Growth in 55+ Year Old Users.

Want to sit this one out?

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Here are a few ways (sites) you can leverage their success into your own.

Cheap Tweets: Followorthy Deals On Twitter

5 Money-Saving Shopping Tips

Shopping Online: Convenience, Bargains And A Few Scams

Develop a Popular Facebook Application

Indian brothers Jayant and Rajat Agarwalla developed the wildly popular Facebook application Scrabulous, which in October, 2007 was bringing in $18,000 a month from advertising, according to the Wall Street Journal, and at its peak was rumored to be bringing in $25,000 a month in ad revenues. While the brothers ended up having some legal difficulties because of copyright issues with the Scrabble board game that resulted in the game being shut down in July 2008, monetizing Facebook applications remains a viable opportunity. Just look at recent success of gaming company Zynga. It’s social network applications like Mafia Wars, FarmVille, Texas Hold’em and YoVille had over 60 million active monthly users as of July, 2009. Besides selling advertising, social network applications have raised millions in venture capital and charged users real-world money to purchase virtual goods that enhance the gaming experience.

Use Facebook Marketplace

The application “lets you sell, give away, buy, ask or search for anything you want,” according to Facebook. You can also search the marketplace’s job listings or advertise your own services as a job seeker. If you’re a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, you can list your organization in the Causes section of Marketplace and raise money for your group by selling items or by collecting donations from users who choose to donate the proceeds of their sales to your group. Network for Good, the company that runs the donation program, even sends users receipts for their donations that they can keep with their income tax records. It’s free to post a listing on Marketplace, as long as you’re a Facebook user.

Tweet With Your Customers

Twitter recommends that its business users think of Twitter as a way to build relationships with customers rather than as a way to simply broadcast advertisements about your company. And it’s true — Twitter is an ideal venue for staying on top of what people are saying about your business. It’s easier and faster for someone to tweet about your company than it is for them to track down your contact information and get in touch with you directly, so Twitter can give you feedback you’d never hear otherwise. If you pay attention, you can create goodwill for your company by responding to users’ tweets, whether it’s to resolve a customer complaint or to thank someone for publicly praising your products. You can also offer unique deals via Twitter by providing special coupon codes. If you need more inspiration, Twitter’s web site has ten case studies of how businesses have used the program to promote themselves.

Build Your Fan Base

If you are your own brand, as is the case for basketball legend Shaquille O’Neal, social networking tools can put you in closer contact with your fans and make you more of a real person to them. Though Shaq was already famous before increasing his online presence through Twitter, over 1.8 million followers know they can get uncensored and amusing insights into what it’s like to be Shaq that they might not get otherwise. Some lucky followers even get the chance to interact with him. If you decide to use social networking to promote yourself, make sure to create a separate professional profile to keep your personal life separate from your work life, and keep an eye out for impostors.

Get a Job in Social Networking

If you’ve got something special, perhaps you can gain a coveted position working for a social networking company. If the prestige isn’t enough, consider the perks: Facebook pays 100% of premiums for medical, dental, vision, life insurance and disability, 50% of premiums for dependents, and 50% of monthly gym fees for its full-time employees. It also offers four weeks of paid parental leave, $4,000 in “baby cash,” $3,000 a year in daycare assistance, 21 days of paid vacation, unlimited sick days, 11 paid company holidays, free snacks, and a 401(k) plan.

These are just a few examples of how tools like Facebook and Twitter can help you make money. “By thinking outside the box and being savvy about the latest technology, you can take advantage of trends in social networking to maximize your profitability.”

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