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Online marketing with social media is not just for large companies- any business can prosper.Any small business that invests its time wisely can improve it’s customer or client loyalty and word of mouth marketing with an effective social media strategy.

Social media is useful for almost every type of business. Cafes, retail stores, and even B2B professional services can build their online reputation and increase trust.

By taking advantage of social media, businesses can make themselves more accessible, more personable, and maintain long term connections.

Facebook is the most popular social networking website on the internet, and often the first site that comes to mind when people mention social media.

Establishing your business presence on facebook requires an ongoing effort, but can have some great rewards if done well.

Here’s Dr Search’s advice for getting started with Facebook.

1. Create a business page – Creating a page for your business is really quite simple and gives you an instant presence on facebook to share information about your company.

To get you started visit www.facebook.com/advertising/?pages and click Create a Page. Here’s a few suggestions for populating your page with relevant business information:
* Overview of the business
* Website and contact information
* Your logo and pictures of the business
* Videos
* Press releases and blog posts
* Company news and updates
* Your contact details

2. Interact with your fans – Once you’ve setup a page for your business, the most important step is to interact with your fans!

Try and post updates to your page at least weekly which can include new blog posts, competitions and links to new products or special discounts.

It’s also important that you engage with any customers that leave a comment on your wall or wall posts. Remember that facebook is a public forum so take care with your replies and show potential customers that you provide excellent customer service.

3. Promote your facebook page – The tricky thing about facebook pages is that you can’t friend someone the same way you can from your personal profile. People can elect to become fans of your page, but only if they know about it.

Here’s a few ideas on different ways to promote your page:

* Identify contacts from your personal profile that are business contacts and invite them to become fans of your business
* Include links to your facebook pages in the footer of email communications with customers
* Include a facebook icon on your website or blog and give customers some incentive to become a fan (special discounts, coupons etc.)
* Promote your facebook page using other social networks that you participate in like Twitter and your blog posts.

Facebook has reached 500 million members – the equivalent of connecting with eight per cent of the world’s population or the third largest country.
The milestone figure comes only five months after the social network signed up its 400th million user. The pace of its growth has accelerated rapidly – Facebook had only 150 million registered users in January 2009.

Facebook, the brainchild of Mark Zuckerberg while he was still studying at Harvard University, launched in February 2004.

To mark the half a billion milestone, the site has launched a new application called ‘Facebook Stories’, a website within Facebook, that encourages users to share their experiences of the social network.

These stories, which are limited to 420 characters, (the same number as a Facebook status update) will then be sorted by location and theme. The application will also be hosted on several launch partners’ Facebook fan Pages, such as the X Factor and the White House.

The site has approximately 26 million UK users, which is more than a third of the country’s total population.

Last month, Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and chief executive, said it was “almost a guarantee” that the site would hit one billion users, while speaking at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. He explained: “If we succeed in innovating and remaining relevant there is a good chance of bringing Facebook to a billion people.”

He also revealed that Facebook had just four remaining countries left to conquer: Russia, Japan, China and Korea, according to Zuckerberg. “We are down to just four counties where we aren’t the leading social network.”

Zuckerberg also recently visited the David Cameron in Number 10 Downing Street and praised the British Government’s efforts to open up its data to software developers.

The Social Network, a film about Facebook’s rise to prominence is due for UK release in October 2010. It charts the birth of the site and has the tagline: “You don’t get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies.”

The site recently faced heavy criticism from both European Information Commissioners and users alike, for over-complicated privacy settings, which users said led them unwittingly to make personal information public.

Concerns about privacy on the site were running so high that 60 per cent of the 1,588 Facebook users questioned by Sophos, a computer security organisation, in May, said that they were considering deleting their accounts on the social networking site.

A further 16 per cent said they had already stopped using Facebook because they felt they had inadequate control over their data.

Burglars are increasingly using Twitter and Facebook to find out if potential victims have left their homes empty.
Social networking sites provide a “potential gold mine” of information for criminals, with many users unwittingly publishing their addresses, and full details of where they are and their holiday plans.

A survey of 50 former criminals, undertaken by the insurance company More Than, found that many burglars undertook a considerable amount of research before attempting to steal from people’s houses – research that is easier to come by in the age of online social networks.

Richard Taylor, a former burglar who is now a Methodist minister, said: “In the old days you could buy information from a postman or from a milkman, about who was away on holiday. Now people are online giving you updates about going to the airport, about sipping their coffee, about everything.

“I always say that although Facebook says you have 900 friends. You don’t really. You have one friend and 899 nosy people who vaguely know you.”

Pete Markey, a spokesman for More Than, said: “The research suggests that burglars still use tried and tested methods when it comes to breaking in to properties but that they’re keeping up with the times too.

“Using Facebook or Twitter to boast about a big night out or a fortnight in Barbados may impress friends and colleagues, but it’s enough to give the social-media savvy burglar all they need to know.”

The survey found that 68 per cent said they collected information about their target’s home and daily routine in advance of committing a crime.

And 12 per cent of the former criminals said they had used social networking sites to do their research – a figure likely to be far higher with the modern generation of internet savvy criminals.

Yahoo and Facebook are to integrate their services closer together which means that people with a presence on both sites can have updates to one service mirrored to the other.It also means that it will get easier for users of Yahoo’s other services, such as Flickr, to share what they do with friends on Facebook.

Alongside the Facebook deal goes an overhaul of Yahoo’s Profile service to make it easier for people to control what they share.

The deal means that people who maintain profiles on Yahoo and Facebook can link the two pages and cross-populate both sites with just one update.

It will also mean that those who use Flickr, Yahoo Answers or the social site’s video and music services can pipe any media or data they create to friends who use only Facebook.

The account linking deal deepens the relationship that Facebook and Yahoo struck in 2009. That made it easier for people to build a contacts book that spanned both services.

The refresh of Profile will see it re-named Yahoo Pulse. It will also get improved privacy controls so users can fine tune who gets to see their updates or view the media they put on the web.

The deal with Facebook also builds on a variety of other steps Yahoo has taken to help its users make more of social media.

For instance, Yahoo has struck a deal with social game giant Zynga which will see hugely popular titles such as Farmville and Mafia Wars work with its network. The games are due to be available in late 2010.

New research has found that almost three out of five respondents currently used social media as a communications tool in their daily jobs – up 22% on last year.

A further 17% said that, while they did not employ social media techniques regularly, they were interested in doing so.

But 22.4% pointed out that, although they would like to understand the medium more, they found it difficult to unearth genuine ‘experts’ in the field to help them.

Just under a quarter of marcoms professionals are currently denied access to social networking sites by their IT departments, down from 46% last year, the study showed, which makes campaign execution and monitoring impossible for them.

Among those that are in a position to undertake such monitoring, however, by far the most popular online tool was Google Alerts, which is free (45.5% of those questioned). Some 37% undertake ad hoc monitoring in-house, while Radian 6 is the most popular paid-for tool (14.3%).

Twitter, meanwhile, is the social network of choice, with 61% of respondents saying that they use it regularly as a means of distributing new stories, up from 28% last year.

But about half of those questioned were unsure where ultimate responsibility for social media communications should reside, indicating that it was currently spread between a range of disciplines. Some 23% thought it should be handled by PR staff and 11% by digital experts.

Interestingly, however, about three out of ten respondents also believed there were simply too many social networks around these days, while about 12% thought that they were becoming too commercial.

As more marketing and communications professionals use social media channels for UK brands, new research by McCann Erickson shows that many agencies and consultants are not providing enough guidance to help their clients with social media.Almost half of those surveyed (48%) said they still don’t feel they have adequate knowledge on how best to use social media channels effectively for marketing purposes.

Although this is down by over 16% from 64% last year the figure is still surprisingly high.

Nearly a quarter of respondents (23.4%) admitted that advances in social media are difficult to keep up with and almost the same proportion (22.4%) said they would like to understand social media more but that it is not easy to find genuine ‘experts’ in the field.

Interestingly, in just 12 months since the last survey there has been a marked increase in general social media usage for communications activities.

On average, usage for each of the main social networks (facebook, twitter and LinkedIn) is up by around 22% from last year. Twitter has shown the most increased usage (+28.2% since 2009) with 61% of those surveyed now saying that Twitter is regularly used as a way of distributing news stories.

It seems that IT departments are now more willing to let their marketing teams have access to social networks at work.

Last year’s results showed that 46% of respondents were unable to get access at work and although this figure has come down to 24.3% it still shows that nearly a quarter of UK marketers and communications practitioners are not granted workplace access to social networks, making monitoring and campaign execution impossible.

Social media monitoring for brands is now a key area for marketers who need to demonstrate effectiveness of activity, ROI and target audience usage of social networks. By far the most popular way of brand monitoring online is through Google Alerts with 45.5% using this free tool.

Radian 6 has emerged as the most widely used paid-for tool with 14.3% usage followed by PR Newswire’s monitoring tool Social Media Metrics at 10.4%. 11% of those surveyed said they relied on their retained PR agency to monitor social media brand activity and 37% said they conducted ‘ad hoc’ monitoring in house.

Asked where they think the responsibility for social media communications should reside, 50% said it came under a combination of disciplines; 23% said it was best managed by public relations professionals and 11% said it should sit with digital experts.

Additional results at a glance:
• 59.8% respondents said that social media communications is now part of their day jobs
• 29% think there are now too many social media networks
• 12.1% think social media networks are becoming too commercial
• 16.8% said they are interested in using social media more within their daily role but do not
currently use it

Dr Search reviewed the research from: McCann Erickson Social Media Index 2010

Dr Search has found that, despite the warnings, some firms are still risking brand damage from cybersquatters by not protecting their Twitter account brand name.
While the social media gold rush continues, there remains a darker side to Web 2.0 that can potentially damage brand reputations through no fault of your business.

Last year a survey of Twitter accounts for 100 big brand advertisers revealed that few had ownership of the Twitter handles that corresponded with the name of their brands.

More worrying still, several big names had fallen victim to cybersquatters, including Mastercard and General Motors.

Several months later and some brands have still yet to heed the warning, as Dr Search discovered when I uncovered a worrying level of brand cybersquatting of one of the UK’s most recognised high street chains.

It all came about following a visit to a Bristol branch of the Costa Coffee last week. I chose that particular chain because I picked up one of the company’s new loyalty cards recently so that particular customer strategy worked. One strategy that didn’t though was a conversation I overheard.

Only last week at the European Customer Experience World, Kip Knight, president of Knight Vision Marketing, warned attendees of the dangers of cybersquatters.

In fact, after a session discusing the value of social media to the customer experience and emphasising how firms not involved in the practice should make it a priority, he chose to conclude his address with a warning about cybersquatting and the damage it can do to your brand.

“If you currently don’t own the brand name on your Twitter account, you’d better go and check that out, because a squatter might be sat on it right now,” he stressed.

You might have people writing things about your brand name that you don’t even know about! Dr Search asks- how pleasing is that for you?

The BBC is to link with Facebook and Twitter when it launches a new version of its television service iPlayer.The corporation is trying to strike a more conciliatory tone over its digital expansion plans after coming under fire from commercial rivals, which accuse it of attempting to colonise the web.

The BBC is proposing to close or merge half of its sites by 2012 and cut its £135m online budget by 25%. But the launch of a range of iPhone applications has been held up by the BBC Trust after the complaints.

The iPlayer remains central to the BBC’s digital push, however. There were 118m viewer and listener requests to the service in March, including 84m to watch television programmes.

The new version will let users share what they are watching with Facebook friends or comment via Twitter.

Last week Project Canvas, a BBC-led plan to bring internet television to the masses, avoided an Office of Fair Trading investigation despite being attacked by BSkyB and Virgin Media.

By combining Freeview with a broadband connection, catch-up services such as iPlayer and ITV Player will be more widely available on television sets.

Following on from Dr Search’s post yesterday- Facebook- how to delete or deactivate your account today I look at how you can protect your Facebook account’s data privacy settings if you are staying with Facebook.Facebook’s privacy policy is currently a massive 5,830 words long with 50 different settings and around 170 different options if you want to control every single aspect of your account.

Facebook says its extensive privacy settings allow users to have control over what information they share and who they share it with. So, which settings should you prioritise as soon as you set up your Facebook account, to ensure you’re not sharing personal information, private comments and photos with the whole online world?

Here are your top five most important settings to check and set:

1) Configure your friend lists
Apart from Facebook’s data security- or lack of, Facebook’s biggest problem is a lack of segmentation. Do you want your friends, family and work colleagues to all be able to see what you are up to?

So one of the most important tasks is to break your “friends” into separate groups. This is a time-consuming process, particularly if you have many “friends”, but it will make every aspect of controlling your privacy that much easier.

Friend lists allow you to group your contacts in to groups, so that you’re only sharing certain information with certain people.

For example, you might create four lists: “Close friends”, “Acquaintances”, “Family”, and “Work”.

“Close friends” is the group you will happily share your most personal information, photos and Wall posts with; you’d probably prefer the “Work” group of friends to see a somewhat sanitised and censored version of your Facebook profile.

By setting up these lists, you can ensure that no one gets to see something you’d rather keep private. You can add the same person to more than one list, but it’s worth spending time on getting this aspect of your Facebook settings right.

* To create and edit friend lists, log on to Facebook and select “Friends” from the list under your profile picture on the left-hand side of the page;
* On the next page, click the “Create a List” button;
* Enter a title for your list, and hit Enter;
* Add friends to the list by typing their names (or copying and pasting) in the “Add to List” field, or selecting them from the list;
* Click “Create List” to save these changes, and generate your new group of friends.
* To control what information each group of friends can see, click on Account, choose “Privacy Settings”, select “Profile Information“, and then work your way through each option, selecting the group of people you’re happy to share information with from the drop-down lists.

2) Opt out of searches
If you don’t want your Facebook profile to appear online, either when it’s searched for on Google or through Facebook itself, you can turn this function off. Click on Account, select “Privacy Settings”, and click on “Search”.

If you only want your friends to be able to search for your Facebook profile, select “Only friends” from the drop-down list. Under the heading “Public Search Results”, uncheck the box marked “Allow” to ensure your profile cannot be searched for on sites such as Google.

3) Protect your photos and videos
With 80% of employers already checking Facebook before hiring staff, what you do, say or show is particularly important to your financial wellbeing.

You can avoid this problem by restricting who can view photos stored on your profile, and even who can view photos in which you’ve been tagged – even if that picture appears on someone else’s profile page.

To manage this, click on the Account tab, choose “Privacy Settings“, then “Profile Information”.

Navigate to “Photos and videos of me” – select “Only Me” from the drop-down list if you don’t want anybody, apart from yourself, to see pictures and videos you’ve been tagged in; even if you’re less concerned about incriminating material, it’s wise to restrict this content to certain groups, such as the “Close friends” group you created earlier.

You can also restrict access to every photo album associated with your profile: below “Photos and videos of me” is “Photo albums”; click on this to choose exactly which groups of contacts can view which sets of pictures.

4) Control what personal information you share with applications and partner websites
Whilst some third party websites can be useful, others amy be less appreciated- however all of them may have access to certain elements of your personal information. You can control what information these apps are able to access by adjusting your privacy settings.

Choose “Privacy Settings” from the Account menu; click on the link labelled “Applications and websites”, then “What you share”, and adjust the permissions for each application accordingly.

The “Applications and websites” section is also the place to control what information your friends can share about you when they are using certain applications and programs (yes, that’s right – your friends could be sharing your information with third-party websites without your explicit consent) – make sure you go in and uncheck every box if you want complete control over how your personal information is divulged.

You can also opt-out of the controversial “Instant Personalisation” scheme through the “Applications and websites” page – this scheme is designed to help you “connect more easily with your friends on select partner websites”, such as Yelp and Pandora, and is switched on by default. You need to uncheck the box at the foot of that page to opt out of the service.

5) Make your contact information private
Personal security experts warn that people’s stupidity in publishing their full dates of birth, postal addresses and other contact details on Facebook – and then leave their profile’s open to the public – makes it easier for cyber criminals to commit identity fraud. You must ensure that only your trusted friends are able to see this information.

To lock down your contact information, click the Account button and select “Privacy Settings” from the drop-down menu. Click on “Contact Information” and then adjust each category by selecting the group of people you are willing to share that information with from the drop-down lists.

Dr Search wishes you Good Luck with your account. If you have comments or questions, please add them in the comments box below.

As  Facebook appears immune to the ongoing row over personal data privacy issues, Dr Search today and tomorrow shows you how to delete your Facebook account or how to deactivate your Facebook account.Facebook’s privacy policy is a massive 5,830 words long. As the New York Times recently pointed out, the Constitution of the United Statesof America is just 4,543.

In recent months, Facebook has made a number of revisions to its privacy policy that makes a growing amount of your personal information public by default; you have to opt out if your want to keep your information private, or share it only with a trusted group of friends.

Committing “Facebook suicide”, as it’s known, is a nuclear option- but you do need to plough through 50 different settings and around 170 different options if you want to control every single aspect of your account.

Here, I look at how to deactivate and delete your Facebook account – and the difference between the two – as well as how to lockdown some of the most important privacy settings on your profile:

Deactivating your Facebook account

Deactivating your account simply involves going on a temporary hiatus; it does not permanently delete your personal information. If you deactivate your account, you immediately become invisible to other Facebook users, who will no longer be able to access your profile.

However, Facebook  only “saves” your profile on file, so that if you choose to reactivate your account in future, then all of your friends, photos, lists of interests, games and other preferences, are automatically restored so your account looks just as it did before you deactivated it.

Deactivating an account is fairly simple: when you’re logged in to Facebook, click on the Account tab on the top right-hand side of the page. From the drop-down list, select “Account Settings“. The final option on the page is “Deactivate” – click on the link to be taken through to the deactivation page.

Facebook tries to tempt you in to reconsidering, telling you that your friends “will no longer be able to keep in touch with you”; it also asks you to say why you are deactivating your account.

At the foot of the page is box that allows you to opt out of receiving future emails from Facebook. If you do not tick this box, then you will continue to receive email notifications every time a former Facebook friend tags you in a photo, invites you to an event, or asks you to join a group.

Ticking the box means you will no longer receive these messages.

To reactivate your Facebook account, log in to the site using your usual email address and password. You will then be sent an email to that address containing a link which, when clicked, restores your Facebook profile in its entirety.

Delete permanently your Facebook account

If you’ve had enough of being asked to take part in endless quizzes or are simply concerned about privacy issues, then completely deleting your Facebook account is the nuclear option.

When you delete your account, Facebook promises to discard all “personally identifiable information” associated with that account from its databases – that’s things like names, email addresses, phone numbers, postal addresses, instant-messenger screen names etc etc.

However, Facebook says that copies of some material, such as photos, may remain on its servers for “technical reasons”, but that the material is “completely inaccessible” to other Facebook users, and is completely disassociated from any information that makes it possible to link that piece of content back to an individual user.

If you deactivate or delete your account, says Facebook, it will no longer use any content associated with it, either.

Committing Facebook suicide, though, naturally enough is not made easy. It’s not quite as simple as just clicking a few links to eradicate your social networking presence.

Instead, you need to send a message to Facebook, requesting the permanent deletion of your account.

Click or paste the following link into your browser window:

http://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=12271

It will take you through to a Help page that describes the difference between deactivating and deleting an account. At the bottom of the second paragraph is a button link, which takes you through to a page where you submit your deletion request.

Then click on this link, read the warning entitled “Delete my account”, and then click Submit.

It can take up to 14 days to permanently delete your Facebook account.

Dr Search’s next blog will show you how to adjust your your Facebook privacy settings.

Good Luck!