For example; my previous business venture Four Elements is listed with Google’s Local Business Center as a company offering “Business Development Service” in Allentown, NJ. If you Google “Business Development Service in Allentown, NJ”, a piece of Google Maps shows up at the top of the results with 7 local businesses listed next to the map. Four Elements shows up at the top of this list, so people who made the search can view our website, phone number and location on Google Maps. That person can also click more information, which directs them to a full page profile of Four Elements. On this profile page, anybody can get the following information:

• Directions to/from our location
• Our web pages
• Payments accepted
• A short company description
• Email address
• Reviews from clients/customers
• Photos and videos

If you own a business with the ability to offer coupons on certain products, Local Business Center allows you to include coupons with your listing. If you own a pizza parlor and want to offer 10% any second pie, simply fill in the details on your Google coupon and your customers can print it out and bring it to your restaurant. This option of adding a coupon to your business listing is completely free and only takes a few extra minutes of your time.

My favorite part of the Local Business Listing is the Google Analytics type dashboard, which allows you to view the number of impressions and clicks in graph form and list form. The number of clicks on your listing is broken down even further into three parts:

• Clicks for more info on maps
• Clicks for driving directions
• Clicks to your website

Lastly, the dashboard shows the top Google search queries for which your business listing appeared, along with the number of times users saw your business listing in the search results for those queries.

Every local business owner should set themselves up on Google’s Local Business Center. It’s completely free and takes under 10 minutes to complete. Next time your scratching your head, thinking about ways to cost-effectively reach more potential customers; visit Google Local Business Center and grow you business while lightening your expenses.

Here is how to get started!

• Go to www.google.com/localbusinesscenter
• Sign in with your Google Account (if you don’t have a Google Account yet, start by creating one).
• Click “Add new business” once you’re logged in, and add your basic business details as you’d like them to appear.
• The map on the left will zoom into your location as you type in your address. You can move the marker if our best guess isn’t quite right.
• Write a business description that emphasizes the qualities that make your business unique.
• Select the listing to claim, or add a new one (if your business doesn’t match any listings, skip to Step 9.)
• From the list of options, click the “Claim Listing” button next to the one that’s most similar to your business.
• If your business isn’t there, click the “Add Listing” button at the bottom to create a new listing. Note: In the list of close matches, if the business name on a given listing is wrong but the address is right, click “Claim Listing” and Google Maps will use your preferred name. However, if the address is wrong and you can’t receive mail sent to that address, you won’t be able to verify your claim. In that case, you should click “Add Listing” at the bottom of the list to create a new listing.
• Add details to help your business stand out.
• Select from the category listings that appear as you type.
• Add your hours of operation — this is useful info for repeat and potential customers alike.
• Add an image to help your listing stand out in Google Maps search results. You can use both snapshots and logos.
• If you have videos on YouTube, you can place them directly in your listing.
• You can also add relevant info that doesn’t fit anywhere else, such as delivery zone, house specialties, return policy, or whatever else you’d like to share.
• Verify your listing, by phone if possible. If you have easy access to the phone number on your listing, choose phone verification. Google will call you and, once you enter a PIN, your listing will immediately be verified.
• If you aren’t near the phone or have a voicemail system, choose postcard verification. Google will send you a card with a PIN for you to enter before mailing it back.

In this post I will focus on your Facebook Fan Page and will discuss the other properties in later posts.

So you took the time to create and populate your very own Facebook Fan Page. That’s great, but now it looks identical to thousands of other Fan Pages. If you look at the pages with the most fans, you will notice that nearly all have a custom welcome page that engages the user to browse through the posts, videos and other pieces of content you share. Facebook has a nifty application called FBML, which stand for Facebook Mark Up Language. FBML is a way for computer programmers to develop advanced pages and applications within a Fan Page. This is what you will be using to display you custom landing page. Now I know what your thinking, “Max I have never coded anything…HTML might as well be a long lost language.” And unless you have a medium-large sized business, you probably do not have a programmer and can’t afford to pay one for something like a Facebook page.
NAI Global Custom Landing Page for Facebook Fan Page

This is an example of a custom landing page I created entirely through photoshop.

That doesn’t matter! You can still create a custom landing page with only four lines of code, which I will provide for you below. All you need is Photoshop or something similar. Once you have the program you will use to design the page open, follow the below steps:

1. Take some time to browse through Fan Pages that have custom landing pages for inspiration.

2. Once you have done your research, return to your design program and create your masterpiece.

3. When you are done, make sure what you see is exactly what you want the potential fan to see.

4. Export the design as a JPEG file.

5. If you are using a program like Apple’s Pages, which doesn’t allow you to export as JPEG, use Grab/Screenshot to capture just the design.

6. Sign on to your Facebook account and add the FBML application to your Fan Page.

7. Now you need to upload the JPEG or your page to either your blog, website, Flickr or any tool that will give the JPEG a custom link to view it. If you use Wordpress.org for a website or blog, just upload it to the media center and the link will be provided for you.

8. Now copy the link to the JPEG and return to your Fan Page.

9. Click the button “Edit Page” below your page’s profile picture.

10. Below applications you will see the FBML app and under that click “edit”.

11. In “Box Title” enter the name you want for the Landing Page.

12. In the FBML box enter the following:

When talking about web 2.0 and social networks in particular, the first name that usually comes up is Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg’s brainchild currently has more than 350 million active users worldwide. The social networking giant acts just like all the others, in that users can create profiles, add friends, write on walls, upload photos and most importantly…POKE.

These applications do not separate Facebook from competitors, like MySpace, but there are several factors that do. Firstly, the clean user interface came as a breath of fresh air to all the MySpace users who became aggravated by their cluttered profiles. Secondly, Facebook started out as a college student online social network, where members had to register with a .edu email address. The security Facebook instilled in their members came just at the right time in the market, as MySpace was becoming a haven for stalkers. Finally, Facebook opened up its doors to outside developers, who have created over 50,000 applications for the community. Applications have been developed, which allow members to send bumper stickers or find real estate listings. Their incredible success and mass utilization makes it a perfect web 2.0 tool for all types of businesses.

Everyone understands the concept of Facebook, but few business professionals understand how their company can capitalize on utilization of the platform. This article will be your step-by-step guide for unlocking the hidden value of Facebook.

1. Registration: The first thing to do for all new members is obviously registration. Once logged in, take a look around your home page and become familiar with the new feed. Your news feed will keep you up to date with all the actions of your friends. The setting can easily be changed if you only want to be notified of certain actions.
2. Friend Requests: Once you have your bearings it is time to invite partners, friends and colleagues to become your friend. Now it is time to get down to business.
3. Complete Profile Info: Fill out all the information in your profile exactly how you would with your LinkedIn Profile. Search engines are going to crawl this page, so you want as much professional information as possible, as it will help with your ranking.
4. Add Application: Browse through the application gallery and add apps that you see useful. I recommend adding the RSS reader to your page and then linking your personal or corporate blog to it. This will drive traffic to your blog and will add another link to your blog. Another useful app to add is the Twitter app, which will directly feed all your twitters to your profile.
5. Create Groups: Create a group for your whole company, departments or project teams. You can set these groups to private or leave them open for the public based on the reason the group was created. Applications can be added to groups if needed. Use the discussion forum and wall to quickly communicate with team members on specific projects or problems.
6. Create Product/Service Fan Page: Establish your brand by creating a large following on Facebook. Fan Pages are vital because they allow consumers to communicate directly with the company and/or other consumers. If you just released a new product, your fan page can give you a great deal of value feedback, as most likely your fans will start discussions on the page. These pages also allow your consumers to be very hands on because they can upload pictures and videos.
7. Advertising: Facebook makes all of its revenue from advertising and has developed quite the impressive ad platform. Depending on the size of your company, you can choose different types of advertising. Anyone can buy ads at any time by number of clicks or by number of impressions. When you run this type of ad, you choose what you want to advertise, type in the text of the ad, upload the photo for the ad, choose a social action, pick the location (worldwide, state, city), pick the sex, pick the age, type in keywords, set a daily budget, pick your max bid and finally choose your schedule. The social actions are stories about a user’s friends that are related to and displayed alongside your advertisement. You can select which pages or applications provide relevant social actions that can be paired with your ad. Another type of advertisement that larger companies use, links actions taken on a company’s website to actions taken on Facebook. If your friend rents a movie on Blockbuster.com, he/she can choose to share this on Facebook. If they choose yes and one of your friends likes the genre of movie you rented, an ad will appear in that friend’s news feed stating X rented Y movie from Blockbuster.com. The level of personalization Facebook has created for their advertising platform separates them from other social networks.
8. Insights: Along with the superior ad platform, Facebook has developed a powerful research platform to track the performance of your ads. You have access to data on activity, fan demographics, ad performance and trends. With this information, you are better equipped to improve your custom content on Facebook and adjust your ad targeting. Their robust database of authentic demographic information provides you with deep understanding of exactly who is engaging with your business and how. Best of all, this service is completely free.
9. Application Creation: Another great way to promote your company is to develop a powerful application. With Facebook Platform, you can create applications that integrate deeply into Facebook, harness the power of the social graph and create new opportunities for you business. The platform provides you with all the necessary tools to quickly create custom experiences for users to interact with your business. There is currently over 400,000 registered developers on Facebook, so don’t wait any longer.

As you now know, Facebook should not be taken lightly. It is one of the most powerful web 2.0 platforms available in the current market and all businesses should be implementing a few of these discussed steps. Social networks are not just for fun anymore, which is why companies like Ernst and Young, Apple and Nike all have strong presences on Facebook.