Today’s guest post is by  Linda Daichendt, Founder, CEO and Managing Consultant at Strategic Growth Concepts, a consulting and training firm specializing in start-up, small and mid-sized businesses. She is a recognized small business expert with 20+ years experience in providing Marketing, Operations, HR, and Strategic planning services to start-up, small and mid-sized businesses. Linda can be contacted at linda@strategicgrowthconcepts.com and the company website can be viewed at www.strategicgrowthconcepts.com.

Like most small business owners, I’m always looking for new ways to promote my business and make people more aware of what I do. And like many of you who are at least somewhat  “social media savvy”, I’ve had a personal profile on Facebook as one avenue meant to promote my business. However, I found myself becoming increasingly frustrated with it, as it really IS much more of a “personal/social-oriented” medium and that’s not what I was looking to gain from it. So, I took a couple of basic steps – first, I started a second Profile under my company name (http://profile.to/strategicgrowthconcepts), and then I also started a Group under my company name (http://groups.to/strategicgrowthconcepts). Both of these have given me additional opportunity to provide more focus on the business, though not quite yet to the extent that I wanted. The “wall” page is still very “personal/social-oriented” because that’s what it’s designed to be, and what most people use it for. The “Group” has allowed me to do a better job of “controlling content” in order to insure that it stays business-focused. But, I still wasn’t happy with it.

So, I did as I normally do, and I started conducting research; in this case on the ways other companies are utilizing Facebook – and I found the answer I was seeking. It turns out that Facebook has recently implemented changes that are designed to solve exactly the problem I was having. They have developed a “Page” concept that is meant to focus on different categories of businesses. Each category comes with a specific template of included sections that you can then customize as you like. The “Pages” allow you to include a lot more detailed information about your company, as well as any events you want to promote, discussions you would like to initiate, various applications that you would like to attach, as well as uploading files you want to share, video, photos, etc. It also allows you to customize the Tabs included on the page so they are best suited to your company’s purposes.

I recently set up my company’s page though I still have work to do on it, but I thought the concept was so great that I wanted to share it with all of you. Check out my “page” at: http://companies.to//strategicgrowthconcepts to see if it gives you ideas on ways your business can utilize Facebook “Pages”. Also, to help you learn about this new offering from Facebook, I was able to track down a Facebook location that takes you thru the process, as well as providing additional information and resources; see this at: http://www.facebook.com/advertising/?pages .

Also a great supplementary article on the same topic is located at:  http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=69194224781&h=fPAf4&u=Xld_F

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