This week’s edition includes some easy ways to make a difference with social media, a look at how video conferencing technology is improving education, some new social strategies for businesses of any size, and much more.

Social Media

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• Dear Foursquare: This Is Not the Right Time to Sell

  The location-based network’s extraordinary growth and buzz have caught the eye of Internet heavyweights, notably Yahoo. But if the Foursquare team aims to be a worldwide game-changer like Facebook and Twitter before them, it may be wise to forego the big pay day and keep on truckin’.

• 9 Ways to Do Good With 5 Minutes or $25

  Social media makes it easier than ever to make a difference. Whether you can donate a little bit of time, or a little bit of money, check out these easy ways to contribute on the web or on your phone.

• How Social Media Can Effect Real Social and Governmental Change

  Transparency, open APIs, and free-flowing information are just a few of the ways societies and governments can be improved. This post discusses some important social media campaigns that have made a difference.

• 4 Tips for Tapping Into Twitter Conversations
  Twitter is so much more than just sending updates and links into the void — it’s the world’s real-time conversation. If you want to take part, heed the advice in this post.
• Exclusive: Tour the ‘If I Can Dream’ Command Center [VIDEO]

  The interesting new reality/online video hybrid show ‘If I Can Dream’ hit the web on March 2nd, and its impressive production and technical values have turned more than a few heads. This exclusive tour of the show’s HQ sheds some insight on the unique experiment.

• 5 More Ways to Go Green for Earth Day

  Earth Day may have come and gone, but that doesn’t mean you’re off the environmental awareness hook. Explore these social strategies for going green any time of year.

• How Social Media Helped Travelers During the Iceland Volcano Eruption

  The Icelandic volcano eruption cost millions in airline revenue and left thousands stranded, but it may have opened new windows of communication. See how travelers and airlines took advantage of social channels to relay vital information that call centers and websites could not.

For more social media news and resources, you can follow Mashable’s social media channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.

Tech & Mobile

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• HOW TO: Give Your iPhone a Spring Clean

  With so many tempting apps available for download, it’s easy for your iPhone to get cluttered. Well spring is here, and it’s time to organize your mobile life. Check these tips on streamlining your beloved handheld.

• 5 Ways Classrooms Can Use Video Conferencing

  Web-based video chat has allowed students to connect with a world of experts and curricula that were previously unavailable. Take a look at these five examples of high-tech education in action.

• 10 Free iPhone Apps to Help You Go Green for Earth Day

  Environmentalism doesn’t stop at your desktop. Staying green on the go can be a little bit easier with these 10 resourceful iPhone apps.

• 10 Excellent Examples of Recycled Gadgetry

  If you’re all about gadget-themed decor and apparel (and who isn’t really?), you won’t want to miss these awesome products, built from the circuits and wires of yesterday’s tech.

For more tech news and resources, you can follow Mashable’s tech channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.

Business

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• Why It’s More Important Than Ever To Be an Early Adopter Brand

  If your business aims to compete at the speed of social media, it’s critical that you be ahead of the curve on the latest trends. This post discusses why.

• HOW TO: Reignite Your Business Network Online

  Without a viable network, your business probably wouldn’t be successful. If that old Rolodex or business card pile is growing stale, here are some tips for reconnecting online.

• How Recruiters are Using Social Media for Real Results

  Social media has opened up a whole new channel for recruiters to scout. Here are some tips from the pros who have landed great candidates from the social web.

• How Companies Can Use Sentiment Analysis to Improve Their Business

  What are people saying about your brand on the web? Is it good or bad? How bad should it get before you intervene? These questions can be answered by employing a sentiment analysis strategy.

• 5 Unique Ways to Use Twitter for Business

  Contests, customer service, recruiting — it’s all been done on Twitter. If your business is looking for some fresh ideas, be sure to check in here.

• 8 Social Media Strategies to Engage Multicultural Consumers

  The purchasing power of multicultural consumers is growing exponentially. If you want to reach them, you need to understand how to connect. This post has some tips on using social media to do so.

• 5 Masterminds That Have Redefined Startup Life

  Along the road of Internet entrepreneurship, there have been thought leaders who took risks, and changed the game for everyone. Check out these five profiles of some of the most influential minds in tech business.

• Why Retention Should Be Your Top Priority in Social Media Marketing

  If your business model hinges only on how virally your product is shared, you may be missing the bigger picture. For long-term sustainability, customer retention is key.

• Top 10 YouTube Tips for Small Businesses

  YouTube is a too-often neglected channel for promoting your business. Because it’s free and has incredible reach, it’s the perfect platform for small businesses to set up shop. Here are 10 best practices to note while exploring your web video strategy.

• HOW TO: Add Blogger Outreach to Your PR Plan

  The opinions of bloggers reach far and wide, making them a great vehicle for your brand. If you haven’t added blogger outreach to your PR arsenal, read these tips for best results.

For more business news and resources, you can follow Mashable’s business channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.

(Via Mashable!.)

Between Twitter, Facebook, and Googles new social networking tool, Buzz, its hard to turn a corner without running into another social network. But how do you know which networking tool fits you best? Were here—with big charts and all—to help.

Last week Google Buzz made us ask ourselves what we wanted out of social networking. To answer that question, we charted what we liked and disliked about setup, privacy, usability, and other aspects of Buzz, Twitter, and Facebook. Here’s the result.

This chart doesn’t cover everything about every network out there. MySpace is (seemingly) on the decline or, at best, re-purposing itself. LinkedIn is really a business contact pool, FourSquare a geo-location game, and other networks generally too niche to be compared in the same aspects and categories.

For the simple read, here’s the full chart of our Buzz, Twitter, and Facebook comparison. We color-coded each answer to give a context of where it stood, in comparison to what we know is possible and what a smart user would like to see. Red means that you can’t rely on this network for this feature. Yellow indicates that the network offers it or makes due, but could definitely be better. Green means something works, and can be considered a selling point.

Click on the chart for a bigger view, or right-click to download the full-resolution file.

There’s a lot of text there already to parse through, but it’s obviously segmented and specific to each function. Having dug into the settings of each network and debated it with my fellow editors, I’ll try to offer up a concise take on how I’d explain each network to someone completely new to any of them. I hope it might spur some thought about which network you’re using now, too, and why.

Facebook

Facebook’s strongest feature, as it stands now, is that it’s relatively easy to figure out who your ‘friends’ are. You can pull them from your webmail address book, sure, but you have to check off those you want to be a friend with, and they have to reciprocate. After that, you start seeing their status updates, photos, and other activities on Facebook.com, right when you log in. Simple enough, right? Not exactly.

You cant, or at least shouldnt, create two separate Facebook accounts for personal friends and work contacts/co-workers/casual acquaintances, all of whom are likely to hit you up on Facebook sooner or later. So its up to the user to create groups of friends, set what those different friends can see. Also, your Facebook identity is tied to certain ‘networks’—an employer, a school, a location—that you have to remember to set controls for, too. Dig around and youll almost certainly find the very fine-grain controls you might need. But then, every few months, Facebook changes up their offerings, for better or worse, and it’s up to the user to notice and re-learn how to decide what’s private, to whom, and, in a much more worrisome way, what’s being made public and search-able on the web.

Facebook does have a pretty great iPhone app, and offers a good amount of access to third-party clients like Brizzly and TweetDeck. But they’re still limited in some ways meant to drive you to the web site, and their non-iPhone mobile apps and sites are tough to love.

Twitter

What’s easy to like about Twitter is the simplicity. You get an account, you see a suggested list of famous users that you can feel free to ignore, and then you’re asked to write 140 characters about something, anything. It will be made public, search-able, and able to be re-broadcast by other users, unless you’ve decided to lock your entire account and require your permission to view it. You can follow other people, block the occasional jerk from following you, reply to others’ posts, message other users privately (if you both follow each other), and, over time, you’ll learn about third-party apps and context tricks that make the service make more sense. I started using Twitter one day into my first SXSW, and I had it mostly figured within one or two over-eager days.

That simplicity, and reliance on third-party sites and apps for picture posting, link shortening, and the like can be confusing to newcomers that aren’t into digging around, for sure. And the speed and volume of the main stream can be overwhelming and off-putting. But Twitter has grown slowly into a network that adapts to users’ needs, whether by force or through user innovation. If you don’t like how noisy and fast your main feed is, creating a list of high-priority friends and thinkers will do the trick. As you figure out what you like and don’t like about Twitter, you’ll be able to find third-party apps and interfaces that cater to those interests. We’d love to see expanded features here or there (for discovering who’s following you, and perhaps hiding certain posts from all but a few close followers, for example), but Twitter is a pretty novel solution for those who like to share short updates with the web at large.

Buzz

Whatever we write about Buzz will be slightly inaccurate in a week’s time, most likely. Buzz is brand new, and already it announced an apology and upcoming ‘fixes.’ From what weve seen, though, it seems like it wants to be the solution that FriendFeed never was to tracking your friends and contacts multi-varied interests. Some friends change their IM status to say whats up, while others post on Flickr, Twitter, their own blog, and other places. Rather than making you head to each site, or make those friends become endless self-promoters, Buzz aims to connect you to everything your friends are doing from a place youre already familiar with—your Gmail and Google contacts.

And that, of course, is where the uproar started. Buzz showed up, suddenly, inside Gmail, and when asking users to sign up, assumed too much that they’d like to turn their email contacts into people they ‘follow,’ and maybe make that following status public. If Google could reassure Buzz users that what they did on the network was only among their followers they’ve individually approved, it would be more appealing. The service also needs a dedicated home, instead of being spread across mobile sites, Gmail, Google Maps, and elsewhere, and gain better controls for how much ‘buzz’ flies at you. But it’s promising, still, because it’s not a public-type Twitter, or a walled-off Facebook, but something else entirely.

Which Social Network Fits You Best?(survey software)

How would you revamp our chart of social network strengths and weaknesses? What did we get right, wrong, and miss entirely? We’re open to your ideas, suggestions, and links, in the comments.

(Via Ian Scott.)

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

What’s the most important piece of your business’s web presence? Your website, of course.

Creating a website requires a good deal of thought; it’s important to plan what information you want on the site, what the layout will look like, and how you’ll connect each piece together.

Think of your website as your hub; it’s what people will see when they look for you. Here are four elements of a successful business web presence that can help ensure that your first impression is a good one.

Before We Begin

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Your very first step should be to define the goals of your website. Most businesses should have at least three: to create an online presence, to differentiate your business, and to capture leads.

1. Creating an online presence is the most basic reason for building a website. This means building a site that includes your business information, highlights what makes you special, and gives consumers a way to contact you.

2. Making your business stand out takes a more advanced strategy. Maintaining a blog that portrays your thoughts and insights can help your website stand out and help consumers better understand your business.

3. A good business website can be used to capture potential leads. As the site grows it becomes a community for customers and potential consumers. Connect with potential consumers and find a way to continue marketing to them. Your website can be the elevator pitch and your connection the long sell.

The Website

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With our goals in mind, we can begin to explore specific elements of a strong website.

The homepage will generally be the initial point of contact with your consumers. A good homepage will answer the questions ‘What do you do?’ and ‘Why should I trust you?’ Consumers will make a split-second decision on whether they’ll stay to learn more or go to a competitor. Don’t lose them at the start.

An ‘About’ page can further reinforce the trust factor. Explain exactly what your company does, in-depth. I want to know who you are, why you do what you do, and what makes you special. This page should make an impact and impress your consumers.

Finally, create a ‘Contact’ page. This page should clearly explain to your customers how to get in contact with you. Make sure it outlines your address, phone number, email address, and any other way someone can reach you. You might even want to include a Google Map with directions to your store or office.

These three pages create a basic online presence, but not much more. If you want to set your business apart from everyone else, the best way to do that is to create a company blog.

The Blog

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For some reason, many business owners shy away from blogs. What they don’t realize is that most business ‘News’ sections are blogs. ‘Blog’ simply defines any continually updated news or content section of a site. In fact, this is technically a post on a blog.

So why is a blog important? For one, it shows that you know what you’re talking about. It helps you identify yourself as an expert or unique. Secondly, a blog is constantly updated. It gives readers a reason to come back to your site. The more contact you have with your consumers, the more likely they are to buy from you.

Also, consumers have become savvier and will search out information. They want more than a simple explanation of what your product does. They want to know how to use your product, examples of interesting things people are doing, and how you can make their life easier.

After you have a site with information and a blog that is ever-growing, you’ll begin to experience a growth in site traffic. It would be a shame to ignore these potential customers. Which leads us to our next step; lead capture.

The Newsletter

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It’s here that we begin building leads from your website’s visitors.

The first and most important element is a newsletter form. I use Aweber to handle my own personal newsletter sign ups and delivery. I just write the actual newsletter and format it.

There are a number of other services you can use too such as MailChimp and ConstantContact; it simply depends on what you want. Do your research and choose a program you like. The newsletter cost quickly pays for itself. Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to generate sales.

Getting consumers to sign up for your email list means you no longer have to wait for them to come to you, you can go to them. You can offer your core consumers specials and keep them up to date on new products or changes.

Social Media Accounts

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Another option for capturing leads is social media. Microblogs and social networks such as Facebook and Twitter can help you connect with and contact those within your core community. For this strategy to work, your blog should serve as a central hub. The hub sends consumers to your respective social media profiles to build the connection.

Businesses with a Facebook Fan page can include a Fan box on the site to make it an easy process to fan the business page. If you have an active Twitter account, consider adding the ‘Follow Me on Twitter’ button. These two elements can help turn a one-time reader into a connected consumer.

When you’re building an online presence, the most important aspect is your website. It’s your hub and your first impression. Are you using the right elements to maximize your website’s effectiveness?

(Via Mashable!.)

If you’ve used Twitter for more than a couple of hours, you’ve probably already seen a tweet or two containing a word with the hash symbol (’#’) attached to it. That’s what Twitter users call a ‘hashtag,’ and at any given time at least one of them can usually be found among the trending topics on Twitter. But what exactly is a hashtag?

Hashtags are essentially a simple way to catalog and connect tweets about a specific topic. They make it easier for users to find additional tweets on a particular subject, while filtering out the incidental tweets that may just coincidentally contain the same keyword. Hashtags are also often used by conference and event organizers as a method of keeping all tweets about the event in a single stream, and they’ve even been used to coordinate updates during emergencies. In fact, hashtags were first popularized during the 2007 San Diego wildfire, when the tag #sandiegofires was used to identify tweets about the natural disaster.

You can create a hashtag simply by appending the hash symbol to a word, like this: #hashtag.

How to Utilize Existing Hashtags

Unfortunately, as hashtags have become more popular, they’ve also become a vehicle for spam. You should never use a hashtag on a tweet unrelated to that tag, and you should never stuff your tweets with currently popular hashtags with the sole purpose of appearing in Twitter search results. Proper etiquette dictates that you should only use hashtags if your tweet is actually relevant to the tag’s associated meme or topic.

So which tags should you participate in? That depends wholly on your business and your purpose for using Twitter. For example, it’s probably a bad idea to participate in the #robotpickuplines hashtag if you own a health club and use your Twitter account to offer customer service to members. But if you own a record shop, you’ll more than likely want to join in the #musicmonday hashtag, in which people tweet about what music they’re listening to and suggest other musically-inclined users to follow every Monday. Or if you own a restaurant, why not tweet out your specials or some recipes on #tastytuesday.

Use sites like Twubs, a hashtag directory, and What the Trend?, a wiki that attempts to explain what certain hashtags (and other Twitter trends) mean, to locate and identify hashtags that make sense for your business. Also, pay attention to tags being used by your followers and search for them on Twitter to see what sort of tweets are associated with those tags. If it makes sense for your business to jump on board, compose tweets that are on topic and compatible with that hashtag.

How to Start Your Own Hashtags

Once you’ve figured out the tag itself, the next step is simple: start using it and promoting it. Make sure your tweets using the hashtag are worthwhile and add something of value to the conversation. Promote your tag or the social media campaign that uses the tag via other social media channels, such as your blog or email newsletter. Tweet out calls to action explaining your new tag at regular intervals (but don’t overdo it!). For example, let’s say you own a bookstore, and you’re running a Twitter contest to give out a gift card to your store. Your explanatory tweet might be something like, ‘What’s your favorite summer reading material? Tweet using #beachreads to win a $100 gift certificate to Al’s World of Books!’

How to Keep Track of Hashtags

Of course, now that you have people using your new hashtag, you need to be able to keep on top of it so you can respond to participants. One of the easiest ways to track hashtags is by using Twitter Search. You can watch people using your hashtag (or any other tag you want to track) in real-time, and subscribe to an RSS feed of the results. Monitter and TweetGrid are two other good web-based dashboards for performing real-time Twitter searches of hashtags.

You can also use the built-in search functionality of popular desktop clients like Seesmic or TweetDeck, or set up alerts on business-oriented Twitter dashboards such as HootSuite or CoTweet.

(Via Mashable!.)

When it comes to Social Media, a lot of individuals and companies are quite afraid. Fear of the unknown. Fear of lack of privacy. Fear of retribution and negative response. Fear of ex-girlfriends’ new boyfriends, or of strangers stalking your kids. I hope to quell some of those fears with some good old fashioned rationalization and logical determination of what Social Media can do for you.

Social Media for Personal Use

When it comes to personal use, there is a lot more to fear from Social Media on an individual level than on a corporation level. There is a level of comfort that some were able to adapt to quickly (they all work in PR) and some took a little while longer to come around. Some still haven’t come around, but have their little toes in the water and some flat out refuse to be involved at all. Most of the fear in the latter categories come from lack of knowledge about the Social Media networks and false assumptions about what kind of information you are required to share.

Let’s talk about that for a moment. What information, on a personal level, are you required to share? That’s actually a very simple answer, one that seems to elude many. None. You are required to share nothing. Plain and simple. I think this fear of being forced to provide personal data just because you signed up comes from cell phones. I’m serious. When cell phones became mainstream I remember people lamenting that now their friends & co-workers would be able to get hold of them wherever they were and an expectation was set that they would. That’s the way the behavior drove the technology. Few people, if any, mentioned to me that the solution to that is to just not pick up the phone.

It’s the same thing for Social Media. You are only required to share as much information as you feel you should share. This is a fear I myself had to conquer when moving my persona onto Facebook. But then I realized that I can put whatever I want up there. I don’t have to tell people my innermost secrets, I don’t have to put my correct birthday or favorite foods. That’s all optional. I don’t even have to use my real name. The fear here is lack of privacy. People are afraid they will give away too much information. Well, only if you give away too much information. Again, at a personal level you aren’t obligated to do anything at all, so it’s completely up to you as to how you want to represent yourself online.

When it came to more career oriented sites like Linkedin, the logic there was easier. What information would I be putting up on that site that wasn’t already up on Monster.com or Careerbuilder? My resume, after being spread around the internet like herpes backstage at a rock concert, was pretty much public record. With that thought in mind, creating my profile on Linkedin was a walk in the park.

The other thing that really scares people, especially when it comes to networking sites, is connecting with the past. A lot of people have skeletons in the closet that they just don’t want to let out. Or they don’t want to be faced with the decision whether to ‘friend’ an ex on Facebook or not. There is a lot of trepidation about what the expectation is when it comes to selecting your ‘friends’ online. A great rule of thumb when it comes to that is – would you stop and talk to this person in real life? Is this someone you’d recognize in a crowded room? Someone you’d sit with uninvited at a coffee shop if you knew them? I have acquaintances from high school that try to connect with me on Facebook, but I either A.) didn’t like them then and probably wouldn’t like them now or B.) have no freaking clue who they are. Why should I feel obligated to connect? Am I that self centered to think that if I don’t connect they are brooding over it? Chances are, I’m one of a hundred invites they sent out that day.

I spoke to a friend who is consumed by the fear. The media hasn’t helped, with stories of MySpace & Facebook predators and so on. That’s where his fear stems from – he’s afraid his family would be targeted. It may be a harsh conclusion, but you may as well never leave the house and never let your family out of the house as well. It’s a rough and tumble world out there, and even more so online. You have to have a particular constitution about you and be armed with the knowledge of what’s out there and what kind of programs you are working with. The fact that Linkedin pulled in his gmail account address book scared the crap out of him. You can’t be participating online with that glaring lack of knowledge about how the internet and it’s related applications work. Arm yourself with knowledge and the fear will subside.

Getting over these fears are tough. However, they are clearly worth the benefits. I have several thousand connections on Linkedin, people I don’t know in industries I’ve never heard of – but they are there. Ready and mostly willing to provide information and insight when needed. I’ve made advantageous connections on Facebook with people I’ve not seen in years, working for or running businesses that could benefit my life. I’ve connected with people outside my zip code – which is the most important part. I’ve gotten freelance jobs through connections, been involved in projects I never would have known about had I not been connected. With networks like Twitter, I’ve got a constant stream of what’s going on in the world and with subjects I’m interested in. Not to mention the quick availability to self promote via utilities like Digg. Those are the benefits.

In a future post I’ll discuss the overuse & abuse of these networks that only propagates the fear, but again – the fear is only what you make of it. If you don’t post the picture of you getting drunk with a bunch of underage kids at a frat party, then no-one will see that picture.

Social Media for Business Use

With business use, whether it be to self promote or promote your business, there are different fears but based on the same inherent base fears. Lack of knowledge is the big one, followed by general apathy and ignorance. Businesses don’t worry about the privacy issue as much as an individual would.

What they do worry about is the return on investment. Is Social Media worth the time and effort? Based on Social Media consulting being a whole sub-industry of public relations, I’d say many companies think it is worth the time and effort. Basically, companies need to ask themselves if they have the time and resources to commit to networking. If they don’t, then it’s a moot point and less of a fear of using Social Media than an apathetic response.

The bigger question for companies or individuals looking to self promote, is do their customers use it? For me, the answer was a hearty ‘yes.’ As a writer, joining Twitter was one of the best ways to promote my own work. Did I mention that you can follow me? See? Self promotion.

Businesses hire Social Media experts to guide them onto the internet and promote their service and/or product. This is especially useful if a good percentage of their customer base is deeply rooted in the social networks. More companies are adding a Twitter feed to their contact page, or their CEO suddenly has his own blog to rant on.

A fear here is feedback. A lot of companies are flat out terrified of negative feedback. Terrified. Like walking in the dark and likely be eaten by a Grue terrified. However, that suggests something exists that would cause negative feedback. A good key for any company using Social Media is honesty and clarity with customers and consumers. If you have something to hide and it’s revealed, there will be negative feedback. In any forum however, there will always be negative feedback. Have you ever read the op-ed section of the newspaper?

Businesses can benefit the most from Social Media, more than any personal usage outside of self-promotion. Because there is money to be made. How is there money to be made? It’s basic economics. Reach a larger audience, sell more product/service and make more money. There are companies that wouldn’t exist right now if not for Social Media. Independents based online are thriving because of the networking possibilities of Social Media. As are Social Media consulting firms. Self promotion is another great side benefit as well. Can you think of how you would self promote a blog post before Social Media? Email everyone? That limits you to people you know. Send them certified mail?

In conclusion, and to sum it all up nicely (especially the part about using common sense), a quote from Boston based branding & PR Executive Don Martelli:

The social media fear factor is real, but controllable. Rather than being scared of eating bugs and goat intestines, the fear factor — personally and professionally — is really embedded in one thing, engagement. People are nervous of connecting with past lives and sharing stuff that they care not to. Brands are nervous about the two way communication street that social channels pave, especially with those on the road that aren’t kind.

Whether from a personal or professional standpoint, the fear factor can be controlled by using common sense and being transparent in your communications. My advice is to leverage the reach of social media to become a trusted source of helpful content, which, in turn, will help companies and their brands build a following or stronger community.

(Via Geekdad.)

If you’re like most people, you have a decently-filled out profile. You’ve probably listed a few of your favorite movies, put down your high school and posted a couple photos. Now that you’ve gotten this far, it’s time to spread your wings.

Facebook is about social networking, so it’s time to actually do get social and do some networking with people other than your spouse or that crush from high school you really don’t remember. A couple of the best ways Facebook allows users to do this is through fan pages and groups.

The first question is whether to start a fan page or group, or maybe even both. Although they sound similar to one another, fan page and groups are two different Facebook features that accomplish different things. Groups are basically the same on Facebook as they are at other websites. They are general destinations for people with like-minded interests to gather and become members of. Group members can write on the group’s wall, exactly as you could on a profile page, as well as leave topics and posts on the discussion board.

Facebook Groups are good for narrowing in on interests. If you’re a part of an organization in a city, you can use a facebook group for promoting upcoming events or post relevant topics that members would respond to. Although groups can be used for conversation, they often become more of an brand identity, rather than a place for dialoguing with other group members.

Facebook Fan pages on the other hand, although they sound like groups, are actually much different. Fan pages allow the same type of interaction as group pages but with much more options for customization and personalization. Similar to group pages, a Facebook Fan page has a wall and can have a discussion board, but it can also have much more, like Facebook applications, flash and html code. Because of the flexibility of using html code, fan pages can be customized to look similar to a web site. Although fan pages often are pages devoted to a particular athlete, actor or hero, they are quickly becoming much more than that, with pages for marketers, realtors, magazines and writers.

So do you want to create a fan page or group page? If you want a deeper relationship with your members and users who are going to come back after joining, then Facebook Fan pages are the way to go. They offer much more customization and allow further reach and interaction with users. If you have a more targeted audience, then you may want to go with a Facebook Group page.

What have been some of your favorite Facebook Fan pages or Facebook Group pages?

(Via Tutorial Blog.)

Relax. With some careful planning, you can streamline the process of keeping all of your Social Web accounts fresh and engaging without breaking your back or the bank. The trick is to make your social accounts work together. Most social sites use the concept of open source to make it easy for developers to write applications that enhance the features of the site. For our purposes, we will look at applications that can help us streamline our existing presence in the Social Web.

To demonstrate what I mean about streamlining the process, I’ll start with an example. Imagine that you have the following social media tools and accounts already in place on the Social Web:

• A WordPress Blog
• A Facebook Profile
• A Facebook Page
• A MySpace Page
• A YouTube Account
• A Flickr Account
• A Twitter Account
• An Upcoming.org Account
• A GoodReads Account

Your 6 Step Plan to a Streamlined Social Web Presence

Step 1: Optimize Your Blog Feed

The very first step in streamlining your presence in the Social Web is burning your blog’s feed to Feedburner. This is a free service, and obtaining a FeedBurner account will help you to easily manage and track your feed subscriptions. Once you have burned your feed to FeedBurner, note the URL of your new feed, which will look something like this: http://feeds.feedburner.com/MyBlogName .

Step 2: Feed Your Blog Now

You want to make sure that you are getting the most mileage from your blog posts. To do so, feed your blog entries into all of your social accounts that offer blog feeding applications. Remember that each social site may provide its own different way of accomplishing this.

Facebook, for example, allows you to feed your blogs into the Notes section of your Facebook page. Click Edit in the Notes box of your Facebook page and find the option that allows you to import notes from an external blog.

Feeding blog entries into MySpace is a little different. Find and add the application RSS Reader. You can access many MySpace applications by clicking More/Apps Gallery from the main menu of your MySpace homepage.

It is possible to feed your blog posts into Twitter, but blog posts are typically too long for this purpose. If you read on, I will clue you in to a better solution for streamlining your micro-blog entries.

Step 3: Maximize the Use of Your Multimedia

Maximize the exposure of your images and video clips by adding galleries and badges to your blog or Website, and by feeding your images and videos into your social networking profiles and pages.

WordPress has many plugins available for integrating Flickr images. My favorite right now is Flickr Tag, a plugin that allows you to easily place your Flickr images right into your blog posts, and create galleries.

A Flickr badge is a snippet of Flash or HTML code that you can place on the sidebar of your Website or blog that will pull in and highlight random or specific photos from your Flickr account. Find out more by going to: http://www.flickr.com/badge.gne.

Similarly, you can embed video galleries into your blog or Website by using your YouTube channels. After you’ve added videos to your YouTube channel, you can generate code for a video gallery and place this code on your Website or blog.

To feed images from Flickr into your Facebook page and MySpace profile, find the appropriate application and add it. For Facebook, I use an application called My Flickr; for MySpace, use Happy Flickr.

You can place videos on your Facebook page by implementing an application called YouTube Box, and using the application YouTube Favorites, you can display video clips on your MySpace profile.

Step 4: Integrate Other Social Tools

The way in which you proceed in step 4 depends entirely upon which social tools and Websites make up your Social Web presence. In the example I have created, we have accounts with Upcoming.org (a social event calendar) and GoodReads (a niche book sharing and author site) that have not yet been integrated. By searching the applications in Facebook and MySpace, you’ll find that Facebook offers an application that allows you to integrate your Upcoming.org events, and both Facebook and MySpace include applications that allow you to display your GoodReads books and book reviews.

Step 5: Take Advantage of Streamlining Tools

Using the social tool, Ping.fm, you can add short posts to your mini feeds on Facebook, MySpace, and your micro-blogging sites like Twitter and Jaiku. Ping.fm is a useful tool that lets you post one brief entry, or often a status update, and feed it into a number of social sites.

Step 6: Research and Repeat

The very nature of the Social Web is connecting people through social platforms and applications; therefore, when deciding whether or not to invest time and resources into a new social tool, it’s best to research the ways that tool will accommodate your existing Social Web presence. Can you feed in your blog posts? Does it allow you to import images from a photo sharing site or video clips from from your video sharing community? Have sites like Ping.fm integrated the new tool yet, or do your existing social sites offer applications to integrate the new tool?

When you do decide to integrate a new social tool or Website, do so as best you can by repeating the applicable steps presented above.

By Deltina Hay

Facebook doesn’t have to be a time hog. As a matter of fact, you can actually handle most of your Facebook tasks in as little as 15 minutes per day. Here’s what I do when I log into my account each morning (thanks for wonderful training I’ve received from Facebook guru Mari Smith for these great tips):

1. Update your status. This is the first section that you’ll see on your homepage when you log into Facebook. While you can do this from your Facebook account, I prefer to update my status in Ping.fm, as this service will update my status in all of my social networking sites, including Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and MySpace. However, if you’re using only Facebook for social networking, then go ahead and use the status update there.

2. Review your news feeds. This is the first tab on the right on your home page. In this review, you’re seeking stories on which you can share your expertise and on which you can comment. Some of your comments may be personal in nature, but this is a great opportuníty to showcase your experience in your field and industry.

3. Review news feeds of your friends. This feature is available from the home page as the down arrow on the far right of the home page tabs and permits you to view the feeds of your Friends Lists. Friend Lists allow you to create private groupings of friends based on your personal preferences. I’ve got my lists created by industry, i.e. Coaches, Virtual Assistants, Marketing Professionals, People to Watch, etc. Pick one líst and comment on those feeds just as you would yours.

If you have no Friends Lists, here’s how to create them: Click Friends at the top of any Facebook page. From the following page, click “Make a new líst” on the left. After typing in the title of your list, you can add friends to your líst by typing your friend’s name into the “Add to List” field. You can also click “Select Multiple Friends” to the right of the field, which will allow you to select many friends from your entire líst. After making your selections, click “Save List” to store your changes.

4. Review status updates. Take a quick moment to breeze through the status updates of your friends, and click on those on which you feel compelled to comment. Many people feed their blog posts into their status updates, so this is a great way to get out and comment on the blogs of others without having to search out relevant blog posts. In this case, I comment on the blog itself rather than the Facebook status update. I usually only go through one page of these to ensure I remain within my time constraints.

5. Acknowledge birthdays. These are listed under Events and Birthdays on the right side of your homepage. When you click on the birthday person’s name, you’ll be sent to their wall, where you can write your personalized birthday greeting (make more effort that just simply saying “Happy Birthday!”). I also take this opportuníty to find out a bit more about the friends on my list by clicking the “Info” tab on their home page and quickly scanning their profile. This helps me start to put names and faces together and get better acquainted with my network of friends, And, I take this opportuníty to add people to Friends List as appropriate.

6. Review friend requests. Add friends as you see fit, or according to any guidelines you have set for yourself. Facebook guru Mari Smith suggests setting up a “Friending Request Policy” in which you write down the conditions under which you’ll accept friends (i.e. picture must be on profile, have to have other friends in common, have to have submitted a personal note with the friend request, etc.) and to help you in your decision-making.

7. Respond to event invitations. Your friends will be sending a myriad of invites to various events (most of my invites are to teleclasses), so take a few moments to scroll through those and see if any are of interest to you, or if you have further questions about them.

8. Respond to group invitations. Most of these I ignore, but occasionally I’ll join a private group, usually related to a program in which I’m enrolled. Or, if it’s a group run by someone with whom I want to connect or from whom I want to learn, I’ll accept the invite to the group. If I have time, I’ll also visit one of the groups to see what’s going on and respond to any messages here.

9. Add friends. Facebook does an amazíng job of suggesting people I actually know to add to my friends líst in their “People You May Know” section on my home page. If I happen to see such a suggestion, I send out a request to add that person as a friend. When requesting to add a friend, I ALWAYS send a personalize request, letting them know how I know about them.

10. Review notifications. The notifications icon is on the lower right side of your home page and lists what’s going on in your account (friend requests accepted, notes on your wall, etc.). This is a good prompt for you to write on someone’s wall when they accept your friend request or to respond to posts on your wall.

11. Eyeball your profile. Make sure your profile appears as it should, and take the opportuníty to catch up on anything you may have missed with your other steps.

12. Check your inbox. Many of the emails in your inbox are duplications of event and group invites or group emails. When I look at this, I’m seeking out any personal 1:1 emails that I might have received from someone on my líst. I’ve discovered that many people I want to contact respond better to their Facebook emails than through emails sent to them (or an assistant) via their website, so I often email them through Facebook, instead.

If you devote 15 minutes per day, or at least 15 minutes 3 times a week, to updating Facebook, you’ll begin to see results from your social networking before you know it!

By Donna Gunter (c) 2008

( Valleywag.)

(Via iTech Savannah.)