A step-by-step guide — excerpted from Sur­vival Guide Chap­ter 6: Social Networking

Here is part 6 of the series I will post over the next few months based on chap­ters from my new book, A Sur­vival Guide to Social Media and Web 2.0 Opti­miza­tion.

This book is meant to be a guide to build­ing an opti­mized foun­da­tion in social Web for begin­ners and advanced users alike.

Chap­ter 6 of the book focuses on one of the most pow­er­ful social media strate­gies: social net­work­ing. These sites are incred­i­bly effec­tive out­lets for find­ing new cus­tomers and read­ers, but if you don’t choose the right strat­egy, it’s easy to find your mes­sage spread thin. Below you’ll find a detailed expla­na­tion for cre­at­ing and opti­miz­ing a Face­book page, as well as a Social Net­work­ing Strat­egy to help you pre­pare infor­ma­tion and build pro­files in social net­work­ing sites.

The fol­low­ing excerpts are from A Sur­vival Guide to Social Media and Web 2.0 Opti­miza­tion: Strate­gies, Tac­tics, and Tools for Suc­ceed­ing in the Social Web by Deltina Hay

Copy­right 2009 by Deltina Hay. All rights reserved.

Cre­at­ing Face­book Pages

Once you have a Face­book account and have com­pleted your pro­file, log in to Face­book, and go to the “Adver­tis­ing” link at the bot­tom of your Face­book pro­file page, or go directly to the Face­book busi­ness link.

Choose the best cat­e­gory for your busi­ness, book, or prod­uct. The three main cat­e­gories are: local busi­ness; brand or prod­uct; and artist, band, or pub­lic fig­ure. You can choose a sub­cat­e­gory as well. If you offer a num­ber of dif­fer­ent ser­vices or prod­ucts, you may want to cre­ate sev­eral pages. For instance, if you are a pub­lisher, you may want to cre­ate a main page for your pub­lish­ing com­pany using the “brand or prod­uct” cat­e­gory and indi­vid­ual pages using the “Artist, Band, or Pub­lic Fig­ure” cat­e­gory for each of your authors.

Choos­ing the name of your Face­book page is very impor­tant. You are lim­ited to around 65 char­ac­ters, so make them count. The name of your Face­book page deter­mines how well your page per­forms in searches.

The next step is to input detailed infor­ma­tion about your busi­ness or prod­uct. Click on “add infor­ma­tion” on your new page to do this.

The cat­e­gory you chose in the pre­vi­ous step deter­mines what type of infor­ma­tion you can enter. For exam­ple, the “Artist, Band, and Pub­lic Fig­ure” cat­e­gory high­lights Per­sonal Inter­ests, whereas the “Brand or Prod­uct” cat­e­gory asks for a Com­pany Overview and Mis­sion Statement.

Regard­less of the cat­e­gory you choose, pre­pare the infor­ma­tion you enter here ahead of time. Use your prepa­ra­tion work­sheet to pop­u­late your page with all of your best infor­ma­tion and key terms. You may only have a few sec­onds to get a reader’s atten­tion, so put your best key terms for­ward. At this stage, click on every tab and fill each box thor­oughly, reusing your key terms often. Be cer­tain to upload an image to the “Pic­ture” tab as well.

Once you input your detailed infor­ma­tion, you can cus­tomize or remove the built-in appli­ca­tions for your page. Click­ing on “edit” beside any one of these gives you more infor­ma­tion about what they are and how to use them. Click on “view page” to see these appli­ca­tions in action on your page.

As an exam­ple, click on “edit” beside the “Notes” appli­ca­tion. You can add man­ual notes to your page, or you can import a blog that feeds your lat­est blog posts onto your Face­book page using this appli­ca­tion. There are many more appli­ca­tions you can add to your page. Click on “More Appli­ca­tions” at the bot­tom of the edit page or go to the Face­book appli­ca­tion direc­tory. Add appli­ca­tions that help rep­re­sent your com­pany and/or your prod­ucts in your own unique way.

Appli­ca­tions are not dif­fi­cult to install and are usu­ally very easy to set up. A gen­eral rule of thumb when choos­ing an appli­ca­tion is that 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 out there that can accom­plish the same task.

Browse or search the appli­ca­tion direc­tory for appli­ca­tions that make sense to imple­ment for your busi­ness or product.

On our Face­book page, Dal­ton Pub­lish­ing uses the fol­low­ing applications:

Book Share Books
This appli­ca­tion lets read­ers share their favorite books with their friends, as well as rate them and com­ment on them. This is a per­fect appli­ca­tion for a pub­lish­ing com­pany want­ing to show­case their books.

My Flickr
Dis­play pho­tos from your Flickr account using this appli­ca­tion. These pho­tos can include logos, book cov­ers, pho­tos from author events, etc. You are pro­vided many options of how to dis­play the pho­tos, too.

YouTube Box
Allows vis­i­tors to play your YouTube videos right on your Face­book page. This is handy for book trail­ers or pro­mo­tional videos.

RSS-Connect
This is a nice appli­ca­tion that allows you to dis­play RSS feeds on your Face­book page. It is a con­ve­nient way for Dal­ton Pub­lish­ing to dis­play the feeds from their main site, as well as to their authors’ news­room feeds.

By imple­ment­ing these appli­ca­tions, Dal­ton Pub­lish­ing has cre­ated an inter­ac­tive page that also gives their vis­i­tors a per­son­able look into their busi­ness. You can find many appli­ca­tions that can do the same for your business.

Once your page is ready, don’t for­get to pub­lish it. You will see a mes­sage in the upper right cor­ner as you pre­pare your page that says “This Page has not been pub­lished…” Click on “Pub­lish this Page” in that box so that your Face­book page can be seen by others.

The “wall” of Dalton’s Face­book page is sim­i­lar to a reg­u­lar Face­book pro­file in that Dal­ton can post items and oth­ers can com­ment on them. This is also where most of the built-in appli­ca­tions appear. Also from here, you can send updates to all the fans of your page, pro­mote your page with an ad, and man­age page settings.

A social net­work­ing strategy

Fol­low these steps for each social or pro­fes­sional net­work­ing site you join:

• Read and fol­low the site’s Terms of Use.
• Com­plete your pro­file using pre­pared mate­r­ial, includ­ing your best key terms.
• Upload a pro­file image or logo when available.
• Search for appli­ca­tions to enhance or cus­tomize your presence.
• Inte­grate other social tools and sites into your pres­ence (like Flickr images or YouTube videos).
• Invite friends and col­leagues to join your net­work. Do not invite peo­ple just for the sake of invit­ing them; only invite peo­ple you think can ben­e­fit from a spe­cific community.
• Choose your friends wisely; do not just add any­one who asks; check out their pro­file first.
• Join groups rel­e­vant to your area of exper­tise or interest.
• Pro­mote your page or pro­file on your Web­site or blog.
• Get to know the net­work fea­tures: Explore all of the fea­tures of the net­work­ing plat­form and imple­ment each of them that make sense for you or your business.
• Do not turn your back on your invest­ment: Keep your social net­work­ing pres­ence dynamic by con­tribut­ing to it frequently.

This work­sheet is also avail­able on the resource CD.

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This chap­ter also includes exten­sive infor­ma­tion about other social net­work­ing sites, like MySpace and LinkedIn, micro-blogging sites like Twit­ter, niche social net­work­ing sites tai­lored to appeal to cer­tain groups of peo­ple or busi­nesses, and Ning.com, a free ser­vice where you can cre­ate and build your own social net­work­ing site. The resource CD offers fur­ther read­ing, link­able resources, and two fil­l­able PDF forms called “Social Net­work­ing Strat­egy Work­sheet” and “Social Net­work­ing Prepa­ra­tion Worksheet.”

Read more about this social media book at the publisher’s site.

As always, Socialmedia.biz read­ers also get a spe­cial price of $16 (ship­ping included — retail $24.95) for this book — just click the buy now button.

Pre­vi­ously in Socialmedia.biz:

• Sur­vival Guide Chap­ter 5 Overview
• Sur­vival Guide Chap­ter 4 Overview
• Sur­vival Guide Chap­ter 3 Overview
• Sur­vival Guide Chap­ter 2 Overview
• Sur­vival Guide Chap­ter 1 Overview

Deltina Hay is the prin­ci­pal of Dal­ton Pub­lish­ing and Social Media Power and founder of the new social media Web­site ser­vice Plumb Social. Ms. Hay’s grad­u­ate edu­ca­tion in com­puter sci­ence, applied math­e­mat­ics and psy­chol­ogy led her nat­u­rally to social media con­sult­ing. Her crit­i­cally acclaimed book A Sur­vival Guide to Social Media and Web 2.0 Opti­miza­tion can be found or requested any­where books are sold. Con­tact her or leave a com­ment below.

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