by Josh Peters (MASHABLE)

Josh Peters is a freelance social media consultant who has been deeply involved in the research and application of social media for several years and is the co-author of TwittFaced. He blogs at Shuaism and would love to connect with you on Facebook, LinkedIn, and/or Twitter ().

Having an online newsroom for your company is a very important way to provide information about your business for customers, bloggers, and journalists. Through a well put together newsroom, you can control the story in order to make sure news about your company reflects what you want out in the public. Unfortunately, most corporate newsrooms are boring, static, and sometimes days late getting info up. Facebook can help you change that.

Facebook Fan Pages are perfectly suited for use as company newsrooms because they have a low barrier of entry, high visibility, numerous customization and automation options, and can be put together in an afternoon. A Fan Page can be more engaging and informative than most newsrooms out there, or it can act as an information portal that redirects customers to other, more engaging product Fan Pages. This guide will show you how to use a Fan Page to give your company a voice on Facebook () by creating an interactive newsroom.

Basic Setup

A Facebook newsroom is not only a great way to disseminate information about your company from a central hub, but it’s also a good way to test the social media waters. The first step is to set up a Facebook Fan Page:

1. Sign into Facebook
2. Navigate to facebook.com/pages/create.php
3. Fill out all of the info you can and upload your company’s logo
4. Add content and set up the applications you plan to use (the rest of this post will help configure your page)
5. Click Publish this Page at the top of the page (bright red lettering) and your page will be live

Facebook does not automatically make you a fan of your Page just because you created it, so becoming your first fan is something you should remember to do after you create your page. Also make sure that you fill out all the info about your company that Facebook lets you enter. By entering as much information about your company as possible, you are not only providing a better resource for your customers and the press, but also making your newsroom easier to find.

Pulling in News

By setting up your page to automatically pull in information from already established presences your company has — such as your blog, Twitter account, or press release page — you can put your Facebook newsroom on autopilot and provide a good resource to fans and journalists with little effort. You can use one of the following apps to display your company’s blog posts on the page:

Facebook Notes – This is a default app on your Fan Page. To access it, click on the Notes tab at the top and then using the subscribe option you can enter your company’s RSS feed. Now new posts will show up automatically on your page.

Networked Blogs – This app will let you import your company blog feed, as well as display links to other blogs you like (in the style of blogroll).

Social RSS – If your company has more than one blog, perhaps broken up into categories in the style of Zappos, you can use the Social RSS app to bring in multiple RSS feeds.

Simplaris Blogcast – This is another super simple RSS app that supports multiple blogs.

Selective Twitter Status – You could just import your Twitter feed RSS to any of the apps above, or you could use Selective Twitter Status to only display tweets ending with the #fb hashtag. That way you can control which of your Twitter content appears on your Facebook newsroom Fan Page.

Involver for Pages – Involver is a complete suite of applications for Facebook Fan pages, allowing you to easily pull in RSS feeds, YouTube () videos, Twitter streams, and more.

Once your own content is coming into the newsroom you’ll want to tackle what other people are saying about you. The best way to do this is to use Delicious () to gather articles about your company. With Delicious you can bookmark and share press mentions of your company, which is smart because it allows you to completely retain control over the information appearing on your newsroom. If you’re already doing this, then it’s as simple as adding an app to start displaying the articles you find.

There are two good applications you can use to sync your Delicious account with your Facebook Fan Page. Delicious box adds a box on your Fan Page that shows your latest Delicious bookmarks. A slightly more sophisticated option is My Delicious, which adds a box that displays your latest Delicious bookmarks, but allows you to show only bookmarks that have certain tags. So instead of showing all your bookmarks as they come through, you can set it to only display the ones you’ve tagged as “PressReleases” or “GoodArticles” or “Testimonials” or any other tags.

Pulling in Images, Videos, and Links

Once you have text updates set up to flow into your newsroom, you may want to import images and videos. This is an opportunity for your company to post any commercials, videos, pictures, ads, etc. that will help to make your Fan Page a one stop shop for all news and information regarding your company.

When it comes to managing video for your Facebook newsroom you have a couple of options. The first is to just upload videos using the built-in Facebook video app. Facebook even allows you to record a video using your web cam from within the same app, so that you can quickly create a video if you have a quick message you want to get out to your customers. Alternatively, you can host your video content on YouTube and then import it into your Fan Page by using the YouTube Video Box app.

The links section (bottom left of your Fan Page) is a great place for you to place links to any official documents, pages of your website or anything else that you feel is important and isn’t being imported or represented through any of the other methods.

As you become more comfortable with both Facebook and your fans you can allow them to add their own videos, photos, and links to the page. This will help to create fan (aka customer) testimonials so that when other people come looking for information about your company they will see more than just your company’s sanctioned info. They will see real customers saying how much they like your product or company.

Use every section of the Fan Page to your advantage and really help tell the ever evolving story of your company through pictures, links, and words.

The Finishing Touches

After your Fan Page is published and live on Facebook, start inviting your Facebook friends to become fans and build your numbers. Once you hit 25 fans you are eligible to claim a username for your page. To do this go to facebook.com/username and click on “Set a username for your Pages.” What this does is make it so that instead of your page having a super long URL that is filled with random numbers and letters it will be http://www.facebook.com/YourBusinessName.

If you or someone at your company is familiar with writing code for the web and wants to learn some of the nuances of FBML (the Facebook Markup Language), you can add the FBML App to your page and open up a host of new customization options. This is a more advanced option and requires a lot more time and dedication, but is worth it if you have someone able to do it.

Your Facebook newsroom is a one-stop portal for all information flowing out from your company, so you’ll want to make it discoverable by doing things like linking to it from your website, business card, email signature, and other social media profiles. If you follow this guide and keep working at it, you can create a very engaging news and information hub for your company. Keep pumping in good info, and keep it regularly updated, and your Facebook newsroom will likely serve as a great spring board for other opportunities and ways to engage your customers using social media.

By Ben Parr (MASHABLE)

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable () regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

If you’re like most socially-savvy companies, your business probably has a blog. It’s a great way to connect with your customers, announce new products, and provide a human face to your company’s image.

While writing insightful and informative blog posts is the most important thing to do with a company blog, the design and implementation of your blog is key as well. The right plugins can help you get discovered on Google (), while a cluttered design can turn off potential customers.

With that said, here are some of my top tips for customizing a small business blog so that it is professional, productive, and easy to discover.

1. Install some top blog plugins

If you are using blog software such as WordPress (), then you can add plugins to customize how your blog looks and functions. While there are tens of thousands of plugins available on multiple platforms, a business blog should focus on search engine optimization (SEO), making the blog load faster, and making it easy for others to share blog posts via email, Twitter (), and other social networks. Check out the WordPress Plugin Directory to see some of the web’s most popular plugins.

2. Integrate social media links and buttons

Don’t be afraid to integrate Facebook () and Twitter on a business blog. It’s a standard practice and will help drive new visitors to your blog. Social media buttons make it easy for customers to tweet out your work, while adding links to the company’s Twitter and YouTube () accounts will help bolster their numbers and improve their ranking in search.

3. Focus on simple designs, not bells and whistles

The focus of a blog should be on the content, not on widgets or sidebars or flashy designs. It’s better to have a very simple design template than a complex one if you want to convert readers into customers.

4. Do show effort in the design, though

A corporate blog is also a chance to show off a human element of the company and to be creative. Just using the standard template is usually lazy and most readers will know it. Don’t be afraid to experiment.

5. Have your blog on your own web domain

Most companies have their blogs at blog.companyurl.com. It’s generally considered unprofessional for a company to have a blog hosted on WordPress.com or Typepad ().com, so always have your blog somewhere on your company’s website.

6. Don’t hide your “about” information

Assume that your average reader has never heard about your company. If you have that in mind, you want to be sure they can quickly find out more about you. Either have a paragraph at the top or on the side describing the company, or make the “About” page very prominent.

This article is quite long, however, worth the read.

High points for me were:

“… Facebook is leveraging its own community to cut costs. User-generated content has allowed many sites to populate with material written by users. Facebook has taken this a step further by enlisting its own users to localize Facebook into more than 50 languages. This has probably saved the company several hundred million dollars in localization costs, and it’s a template for how community-driven companies can tap their avid fans not only as an ad audience but also as a source of intellectual horsepower.

There are still many companies that specialize entirely in localizing Web content. And LinkedIn has largely failed to localize its content, which has meant that it hasn’t had as broad a user-base expansion as Facebook.”

Read the entire article: by Alex Salkever (Previously published on: DailyFinance.com)

Microblogging platform Twitter has 32 million users, an increase from about 2 million a year ago, according to research mentioned in the Wall Street Journal. Some Internet measurement services show that figure increasing 50% to 100% month over month. While it is not clear that Twitter will become as large as social networks MySpace and Facebook or video-sharing site YouTube, the company could certainly have 50 million visitors by the end of the year.

Because Twitter can be used with ease on both PCs and mobile devices, and because it limits users to very short messages of 140 characters or fewer, it has become one of the largest platforms in the world for sharing real-time data. A number of large businesses and celebrities have hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter. This includes personalities like Oprah and Ashton Kutcher. JetBlue (JBLU), Whole Foods (WFMI) and Dell (DELL), along with other multinational corporations, are among the most followed names on the service. (See the top 10 celebrity Twitter feeds.)

As Twitter grows, it will increasingly become a place where companies build brands, do research, send information to customers, conduct e-commerce and create communities for their users. Some industries, like local retail, could be transformed by Twitter — both at one-store operations that cater to customers within a few blocks of their locations and at the individual stores of giant retail operations like Wal-Mart (WMT). In either case, having the opportunity to tell customers about attractive sales and new products can be done at remarkably low cost while providing for greater geographic accuracy.

For Twitter to be a part of a company’s efforts to communicate with customers, the customers must be willing to “follow” the company on Twitter. That allows the individual consumer to choose which firms he is willing to get messages directly from. It may not be surprising that “new age” brands like Whole Foods and JetBlue have large followings and older and much larger brands like Kroger (KR) and American Airlines (AMR) do not. Whole Foods and JetBlue have successfully marketed themselves as being “customer-centric” — the kind of companies that would not misuse the access to a customer’s private Twitter information. (Read Ashton Kutcher’s take on why the Twitter founders made the TIME 100.)

While there may be commercial value for using Twitter to communicate with customers, the danger is that the Twitter community could turn against a marketer viewed as being too crass by being relentlessly self-promoting. Twitter users have set up their own rules of conduct when using the service, not unlike those with MySpace and Facebook. These rules were not put together by Twitter itself, which mandates only rules of use. Like many social-network sites, Twitter is self-governed by its members, and companies must take that into account as they join the service.

Twitter is still in the early stages of developing a plan for making money as a company, but plenty of large corporations like Starbucks (SBUX) are already using it as a marketing tool. Twitter will probably evolve into both a community of individuals and a community of companies that provide goods and services for those individuals.

24/7 Wall St. has come up with 10 ways in which Twitter will permanently change American business within the next two to three years, based on an examination of Twitter’s model, the way that corporations and small businesses are currently using the service and some of the logical extensions of how companies will use Twitter in the future. Some of these firms are already using Twitter, but their efforts are in the earliest stages of development. 24/7 Wall St. evaluated other sensible and potentially highly profitable ways Twitter’s real-time, multiplatform presence is likely to be exploited — in the best use of that word — to expand businesses both large and small.

— Douglas A. McIntyre

See 10 ways in which your job will change.

See the 50 best websites of 2008.

View the full list for “10 Ways Twitter Will Change American Business”

Most companies are embracing social media—but too many are wasting their efforts through sloppy management

By The Staff of the Corporate Executive Board

More than 70% of companies are already using social media; many are planning to increase their spending on social media across the coming years. Whether for learning from customers, building their brands or a range of other hoped-for outcomes, companies are clearly diving in.

Unfortunately, few have thought very hard about managing these initiatives. In a classic case or “ready, fire, aim,” companies are committing resources to social media efforts with very little process behind them. The result? A hodgepodge of unrelated initiatives, wheels re-invented and resources wasted.

The Corporate Executive Board has found that the best companies recognize that social media are just another set of promising tools and as such are to be understood, mastered, and used efficiently. Importantly, they also recognize that how they manage their social media efforts depends on where they are in the journey from initial discovery to mainstream use. That journey has three stages:

• Discovery: At this stage, the organization is just finding out about the potential uses (and risks) of social media for its purposes and making initial forays. The goal: understanding (“could this work for us?”). Since few resources are necessary at this point, companies don’t need heavy managerial oversight. But they do need downside protection. Clear, well-communicated policies on everything from information sharing to appropriate language is in order.

• Experimentation: As an organization does more with social media, the importance of learning efficiently becomes urgent. At this point, companies need tighter oversight and coordination of efforts. There are a number of ways to create that kind of transparency and sharing, ranging from steering committees to tiger teams” to social media czars. These bodies should develop and steward a learning agenda for the firm’s efforts, using each initiative to deliberately increase the institutional knowledge of social media use.

Measurement standards also become more important at this stage. The best companies settle on a consistent set of measures for similar initiatives, using that data to test and learn over time. Metrics like track-backs, for example, can clarify better or worse social media vehicles for a given objective.

• Adoption: While few companies currently find themselves in this stage, those that do loosen their managerial posture, moving away from oversight toward support. Here, the role of any central or dedicated management body should be one of education, coaching and provision of expertise. Some firms are building centers of excellence, repositories of people and knowledge about using social media. Metrics should shift here too, tailored for assessing efficiency and effectiveness of specific initiatives.

The short story: Social media isn’t a fad about to fade away; it’s a good idea for your organization to learn how to use it to your advantage. The best companies will learn faster and get more out of social media by aggressively managing their efforts.

Provided by Corporate Executive Board —What the Best Companies Do™

by Boris Epstein (MASHABLE)

Boris Epstein is the CEO and Founder of BINC, a Professional Search Firm that specializes in the Software Marketplace. Boris shares his thoughts about the recruitment industry, job hunting and career advice at AskBinc.com.

Ask anybody why they use Facebook, and most people will respond with reasons like staying in touch with friends, or being able to share pictures. Rarely does one’s professional life ever get mentioned when describing the social network. When it comes to business networking, LinkedIn () tends to take all the thunder, and Facebook () is generally written off as a place just for fun. Yet, perhaps that’s a mistake.

Facebook, after all, has 250 million active users compared to about 44 million for LinkedIn, and even though the atmosphere is clearly not as focused on business, there are still a ton of opportunities for professional networking that business users would be remiss to pass up. Once you look beyond the obvious social features like sharing pictures and poking friends, there are plenty of ways to tap into the professional community on the world’s largest social network.

In this post we’ll talk about how to setup your Facebook for professional use, how to find others to network with, Facebook features that work for professional networking, and ways to maximize the value from those features.

Setting up your Facebook for business networking

If you’re like most people, your personal and professional lives have already blended. You share your personal stories and pictures with your work colleagues, you discuss both work and your personal life on your blog and Twitter (), and you’ve probably let go of the notion that professional and personal must be kept completely separate.

But even with that blurring of our work and social lives, most of us still want some separation, and I would recommend actually splitting the two on Facebook. Once split, you can continue to reap the social benefits of Facebook with your friends and family while simultaneously connecting with your professional colleagues.

Here’s how to split the two.

– Go to your friends list by clicking on the Friends tab at the top of your Facebook page.

– Click the “Create a New List” button and create one called Professional.

– You can now go through your entire friend list and add all of your professional contacts into this new and separate business list.

– Once you’re done, navigate to your profile privacy settings by clicking on the Settings link in the top right corner of your Facebook; then click on privacy; then click on profile.

On the profile privacy settings page you can begin slicing and dicing your Facebook world into personal and professional segments by restricting access to various parts of your profile using your newly created friend list. For example, if you don’t want your professional friends to see any of your pictures, click on “edit photo album privacy settings.” In the “who can see this” drop down, click on “customize” and then in the “except these people” field type in your newly formed professional friends list. Now only your personal friends will be able to see your pictures.

Though these settings can get fairly complicated because of their granularity, you can control your entire Facebook experience from this area of the site and decide what parts of your personal life you would like your professional friends to be able to see. Bear in mind that there are no best practices here. Meaning, if you don’t want your professional friends to see your wall comments, don’t let them. If you don’t want your professional friends to see your pictures, don’t let them. It’s your world and you can set it up exactly how you like.

Using Facebook groups for networking

One way to professionally benefit from Facebook’s enormous user base and to grow your professional network is to participate in Facebook Groups. Facebook Groups is a feature that allows Facebook users to connect, discuss and network with each other within the context of a common interest or topic.

Finding groups

There are groups on Facebook representing just about every topic under the sun. To find the right group for your professional aspiration, think of topics that will motivate you, allow you to connect with others of professional interest, and will allow you to gain insight into your industry/skill set – groups around these topics are the ones where you’ll find professionals you can network with.

Now that you have a direction in mind, enter your keyword into the search box on Facebook, and click on the “Groups” filter to the left of the results. You can also filter down the displayed groups by drilling into a number of sub categories, including business (a good bet for many professional groups), common interest, geography, Internet and technology, and organizations.

There are, of course, other ways to find Facebook Groups. Here are a few techniques that should give you plenty of groups to get started with.

– If you have friends whose professional advancements you respect, go to their profile page and click on their info tab. Towards the bottom of the page, you’ll see links to all of the groups to which they belong.

– On the main page of any Facebook Group, there are links to several other similar or related groups.

– Conduct an Internet search for “popular Facebook Groups” coupled with some of the keywords that interest you. You’ll often uncover blog posts, articles and people tweeting about a variety of groups, some of which may interest you.

Once you find a group that interests you, it’s a good idea to evaluate whether or not it will be a good fit before joining and pouring too much time into it.

What to look for in a professional group

There are millions of groups on Facebook, so how many should you join and which ones? Joining too many might prove to be unmanageable, so it’s a good idea to only join the ones that you can actually see yourself participating in.

Below is a list of the features you’ll find in each Facebook Group and what to look for in each to determine whether a group is quality enough to be worth joining.

Recent News – This section contains news from group administrators that is either about the group itself or is about a topic that might interest the group. Is it up to date? Is it useful information or just self-promotion?

Member Listings – Lists all group members including their profile photos, location and link to their profile page. This is an easy access way to send a message to a specific group member OR to request them as a friend. You can also use this tool to evaluate the group before joining. Does the group attract people with similar backgrounds and interests to yours? Can you see yourself giving information to and appreciating information from these other members? Do they seem like people you would value interacting with?

Discussion Board – The group’s discussion board allows members to engage in a discussion about topics listed by other group members. Before joining, use the discussion board to measure group activity and member engagement. Are discussions recent? How many are there? Are they interesting and on-topic? You should contribute to an existing discussion or start your own, once you’ve joined.

Wall Posting – This section is usually for member introductions or job postings. This is a great way to introduce yourself and your interest in this group. How recent are the latest postings? If there is any spam, how quickly is it cleaned up?

Groups also often have photos, videos, links sections, and event listings. You should evaluate these areas for recency and quality of information, as well.

Group participation

Once you’ve joined a group, it’s time to start participating. This is where the real fun begins and the true business value will happen. Below is an example workflow I would recommend following upon joining a group for professional purposes. It’s a great way to show your presence in the group and get some professional networking activity under your belt.

Post an introduction on the Group’s Wall stating your interest in the group. If you’re looking to network, say so. If you’re looking for a job, say so. If you can offer advice, say so. The key here is to make this a simple introduction so the group knows who you are – not an advertisement for yourself or services, which may come across as spam.

Add links to interesting events, pieces of news or blog posts. Anybody who reads them will know you posted them, which will add to your professional branding efforts.

Go to the discussion board and comment on a few topics; don’t be generic. Find a discussion where you could truly add value and help some fellow members with their questions or contribute to some discussions with your thoughts.

Post a topic for discussion. Ask a question or propose a thought-provoking topic of discussion and share your thoughts — the object is to engage your fellow group members. Check back on this discussion often so you can participate and remain an active part of it.

Add friends. Because Facebook was intended to be an online extension of your offline social graph, it is proper etiquette to know somebody before adding them as a friend. While being in the same group might satisfy that requirement for some people, I think it’s a good idea to have some sort of further engagement with a member before requesting them as a friend. Once you’ve engaged someone (such as in a discussion board topic), request them as a friend but include a personal note letting them know you appreciated the interaction. That way, they will have some context for the request and will be more likely to accept. Once you’re friends, make sure to add them to your professional friend list so that you are able to maintain that line between social and professional.

Now that you’ve gone through this workflow for each group you’ve joined, you can now consider yourself to be an active member. So what’s next? Networking! Come back to each group often to post new links and videos, engage in discussions or start your own. You should also invite other existing contacts to join the group as a way to help spread the word and keep the group active. Also remember to befriend those with whom you’ve been active and take your professional relationship to the next level.

Once you have the basics down, professional networking on Facebook is very similar to professional networking in real life. The same rules and etiquette apply. As you build your professional network on Facebook you’ll be able to use those contacts for job hunting, business development, and more.

Conclusion

Although Facebook was built as a social network and most people treat it as such – there is a tremendous amount of professional value that can be gained there. Once you’re a member of a few groups and have completed the introductory workflow for each one, the professional value of Facebook should be evident and ready to be fully realized. Be creative, have fun, and remember: What you put into things is what you get out of them, so always try to stay active!

If you have any other tips for professional networking on Facebook, please share them in the comments.

by Josh Catone (MASHABLE)

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable () regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

Perhaps one of the most overlooked aspects of putting together a website or social media campaign is the copy. Many people assume that the same words that work for print campaigns or materials can just be copied and pasted for the web, but that’s just not true. The web is an entirely different medium, and copy needs to be treated with the same respect that design and user interface elements get.

Text is a very important part of user experience on the web, so it needs and deserves the same sort of design consideration. You must make your text usable in the same manner that you do the rest of your website or social media campaign materials. In short: text is user interface. Here are five rules for writing better for the web.

1. Know Your Objective

This actually applies to any sort of copywriting. Unless you have a clear picture of the end result, your writing won’t be as clear as it could be. Ask yourself what you’re trying to achieve with each bit of text you write. Once you know the objective, you’ll be able to more clearly articulate what you need to get across to your customers in your copy, and you’ll be able to identify any superfluous text that you can throw out.

2. Know Your Audience

The web is unique as a marketing platform because it can be so hyper-targeted. You can theoretically know exactly who your audience is and target your writing accordingly. Further, depending on where you’re writing, your audience will be different. Any time your audience changes, you may need to make changes in your copy as well. Obviously writing for Twitter is different than writing for your blog, but writing for your blog is different than writing for email, which is different than writing for Facebook (), which is different than writing for MySpace (), and so on. Before you lay any words down on the page, figure out who you’re speaking to, and write with them in mind.

3. Keep it Short

Studies have found that the more words you add to a web page the less time people spend reading it. Attention spans are shorter on the web, so your writing will be more effective if it is also kept shorter. One study found that users only spend about 4.4 seconds on a page for every 100 words of content. When you factor in average reading speeds, that means users generally only read about 18% of the text on a page (perhaps less — since at least some portion of that 4.4 seconds is probably spent doing things other than reading page copy). That suggests that if you keep your copy as concise as possible, it will be more likely that your website visitors will actually read more of your text. Of course, you can adjust this rule based on your audience — some audiences might be more likely to read long articles than others.

4. Make it Scannable

Because only a portion of your text is actually likely to be read by your audience, it’s also important to write with scannability in mind. That means readers should be able to get the main gist of your copy even if they just scan it. When it comes to scannability, large blocks of text are your enemy. It is nearly impossible to quickly draw out the key points from a long paragraph, so when presented with one, many readers will just skip over it automatically. Make it easier for them to pull out the central topic points by using descriptive headers and sub-headers (like the ones in this article), bulleted lists, highlighting of key points, and images or diagrams, which can both break up the monotony of text and present the same information in a different way.

5. Embrace Constraints

Every platform has its own set of constraints when it comes to writing copy. The most obvious example right now is Twitter (), which enforces a 140 character limit on every message you send, but every platform has limitations (for example, messages on Facebook can only have very limited formatting). These limits can be seen as a burden, or they can force you to think creatively about your content. If you only have 140 characters to work with, for example, you have to work extra hard to pack as much information as you can into each tweet while maintaining a voice consistent with your brand’s other copy.