After reading the comments from our Small Business Marketing Workshop last week, I promised to do some blog entries on social networking, particularly Facebook, for people who are just getting started.  So here are the fundamentals:

1) Why use social networks like Facebook?     
    Social networks provide a space for people to contact and stay in touch with other people. Used socially, that means you can find and stay in touch with your high school classmates, your family and friends, members of your organization, or people with whom you share a common interest. Many social networks let you post text, links, pictures, videos, and documents to share with your fellow networkers, which Facebook calls 'friends'.
    If the social network idea had never expanded farther than that it would still be a great communication tool, but it did expand into . In addition to a standard account, Facebook allows you to create a page specifically for a business, band, celebrity... whatever you want to promote. This way, you can keep your new Business Page separate from your personal account.
    
2) So what makes Facebook so great?
    It is estimated that there are somewhere around 200 million websites available on the Internet. According to Alexa.com the most popular website in the world is Google (no surprise there...) and the second most popular website in the entire world is Facebook. 
Like many social networks, it's free to use. They do have paid advertisements if you're interested, but the service is free. The only thing you must have is an email address.

3) Alright, how do I 'get on Facebook'?  
    By going to http://www.facebook.com and signing up. The main page will look like this: 



Fill in the necessary information (First Name, Last Name, Your Email, New Password, Male/Female and your birthday) and click the Sign Up button.
    The next screen will probably be a 'Captcha' screen, which is to prove you are human (as opposed to a program trying to gain access) It will look something lke the picture below. In order to prove you're a real person, simply type the words you see in the picture with a space between them and click the button.


Next there are some wizards designed to help you get started, You can walk through these now, or deal with this stuff later by editing your profile. Once you've finished, take a look around the site and familiarize yourself with the default pages which come with your account. They are:

The Home Page
 

...and the Profile Page



Take a look through them. I'll cover details on each in my next entry.
Until then, enjoy!