Facebook is one of the most popular social networking mediums, and their membership numbers are increasing quickly. It is a great tool for networking; but like many tools available for networking on the web, promotional or marketing activities are frowned upon.

So be careful when using Facebook and do your online marketing activities under the radar, or you might miss out on a powerful tool to boost your business.

In this article, I’ll give you some vital pointers to maximize the power of Facebook.

1) Just like any other social site, be careful what you put in your profile.

You don’t want to be seen as a link spammer. And you don’t want to give away too much personal information either (unless you don't care that thousands of people may see your profile).

Just be careful with any personal details you put out there for others to see, such as where you live and pictures of your children. You do not want to pick up a stalker, especially when you are networking with strangers.

2) Don’t make the mistake of using your business name as your profile name, as this is against Facebook’s terms of service.

You are allowed to create other Facebook pages to brand your company, products or websites.

3) Respond to any friend requests and carefully send your own invitations. Make them personal and interesting.

Developing a great network is your long-term goal to generate a slow, but steady traffic stream to your websites. Use this tool to your advantage without being pushy or overbearing. Facebooks members hate spamming (who doesn’t?) and will carefully watch out for anything that violates their Terms of Service (TOS).

If you want to see profiles of those from another network, add them as your friends using the "Add to Friends" button. Follow the steps in the Edit tool to fill out any information you want others in your network, or others you accept as friends, to view.

4) Use various applications of Facebook.

Facebook has many applications which would make your networking experience easier or more enjoyable. Examples are applications for adding footage or photograph albums to your profile for others to see.

I’ll discuss two other powerful Facebook applications in a moment.

5) Use Facebook’s “My Questions” application to find out what people are exactly looking for concerning your niche.

This is where posters answer certain questions about themselves and what they are looking for on Facebook. They will also list their interests. Use this in your networking activities.

Unless they have expressed an interest in your field, do not invite them to join your friends list. Of course, you can still ask them if you genuinely want to be their friend.

But if you are there to network for your website business, then choose your friends wisely. This is how you are building your list and getting traffic to your website. So you have to manage your time well and eliminate non-productive activities.

Again, be very careful about Facebook’s TOS. Do not go against it because breaking the rules will get you banned.

6) Use “Facebook Discuss.”

It is Facebook's answer to instant messaging. Chatting, or IM'ing, on Facebook is truly quite easy when you use Facebook Discuss .

Just go to your Facebook page and you can start using Facebook Discuss immediately. At the base of each Facebook page, you may see your Facebook Discuss tools.

The first of the 3 Facebook Discuss tools is the online friends tool. This simply tells you which of your Facebook buddies is online at this time. The next Facebook Discuss tool is notifications that may let you know if you have any new Facebook notifications right from the tool. The 3rd tool in Facebook Discuss is the real discuss tool.

7) Create and join Facebook groups.

Just as they have subscribed to your blog, they're going to join your Facebook group. So people looking on Facebook for related groups would feel welcome to join.

Facebook groups are viral selling mechanisms. Search Facebook for groups on your topic and related ones. In each of these groups, you can post a message on the group Wall or debate board, or you may use the Post a Link feature to inform the group's members of your group and your blog.

By promoting your Facebook group at first, rather than promoting your blog, you decrease the chance the group director will remove your message. Any Facebook member can make a group and invite users on their pals list to join.

A form prompts you to give the group a name, passing outline and class. At the following stage, you can customize your group's available applications, upload a profile photograph and set privacy levels.

A secret group is fascinating for work-related activity, but it will not show up in search results. Choosing a closed group might be the best idea for you to protect your privacy. You will be inspired to choose members from your friends list to join the group.

When you start a group on Facebook, you can invite members to join the group and share their thoughts, viewpoints and consultations about your product, idea or start-up. Invitations to join a Facebook group can be through your Facebook buddies, your Yahoo contacts, etc.

8) Integrate your application into specific areas of the Facebook profile.

A Facebook application can take on a lot of forms; but in order to entirely implement the selection of integration points and deliver a full user experience, it is advised that you integrate your application into specific areas of the Facebook profile.

This permits millions of viewers to see your business everywhere on Facebook and attract potential patrons, who would naturally visit your start-up Internet site.

Remember to follow all Facebooks rules; otherwise, you’ll risk getting banned and your account deleted. This is not what you are looking for. Instead you want to use the group feature to promote your website within Facebooks rules. Do not overstep by thinking you can get around the rules. Use Facebook features to your advantage and you will see an increase in your website traffic.

1. Twitter Widgets

If you're just getting started with wanting to integrate Twitter into your site, than simply adding the traditional Twitter widget to your site's sidebar is a great start. It's not sexy, but it's a great way to show your latest tweets on your website. It's an effective way to get readers involved into your Twitter updates, without taking up too much screen real estate.

Twitter widgets can be used with virtually any site or blog, including HTMl-only pages. While they may not require the most exciting development hack to incorporate Twitter into a website (copy + paste), simplicity is not a bad thing.

2. Twitter Buttons

Twitter Buttons is a nifty little service that helps you quickly create a badge to promote your Twitter account. You can choose from over 40 different well-designed Twitter buttons, spanning different shapes and sizes. The service also allows you to automatically create the HTML needed to build the badge without any programming knowledge, not even a teensy bit. Easy peasy.

3. Twitter Tools

Thanks to Wordpress' dominance in the blog software world, many blog owners are using Alex King's excellent Twitter Tools to integrate Twitter into their blogs. Twitter tools is a Twitter Swiss Army knife for Wordpress, adding almost limitless functionality to an otherwise Twitter-less blog. The nifty plugin allows you to:

• Create a blog post from each of your tweets
• Create a daily digest post of your tweets
• Create a tweet on Twitter whenever you post in your blog, with a link to the blog post
• Post a tweet from your sidebar
• Pass your tweets along to another service (via API hook)

... and much more.

4. TwitThis

Twitter is a powerful promotional tool. Many influential Twitterers have thousands of followers, and an endorsement from one of the "Twitterati" could send a wave of traffic to your site. If you factor in that those followers might tweet to their followers, than you have a very viral social marketing tool.

TwitThis is a little button that you can place in your HTML or in your blog template to allow your readers to quickly and easily share what they're reading with their Twitter followers. Aside from an HTML button, users can also "tweet" their findings via a bookmarklet, and Wordpress users have a nifty plugin they can install as well.

5. TweetSuite

TweetSuite is one of the most compelling uses of the Twitter API in a blog plugin. TweetSuite is a Wordpress plugin that furrows among the Twitter API and finds the tweets that reference the current page. It adds another aspect to commenting, showing more of the total conversation around the blog post. Aside from that, TweetSuite boasts some impressive functionality like a Retweet button and a "Tweet this" button (like the famed "Digg this" button).

6. Chirrup

TweetSuite is currently offered only for Wordpress blogs, but there is another solution for pulling Twitter comments across

any

platform:

Chirrup

. Chirrup allows you to display all of the references from Twitter on a given webpage (much like TweetSuite), except it does this by only adding a Javascript snippet. Chirrup is a PHP/Javascript program that has to be hosted locally, but only requires a tiny Javascript include to work on any page. This means that any static HTML page can now have a Twitter-based commenting system.

That's a lot of marketing potential for sites wanting to tap into Twitter.

7. Tweet This

Tweet This is a Wordpress plugin that has much of the same functionality as TwitThis, with a few more bells and whistles. Tweet This automatically shortens your website or blog post URL with a URL shortening service, and also allows you to easily configure the look and feel of the service, without having to dig around in the template code too much. It's a simple drop-in solution for Wordpress blogs, but a powerful way to help spread your content among readers on Twitter.

8. IntenseDebate

IntenseDebate is one of the best 3rd-party commenting systems on the web. The service is famous for its threaded comments, user system and rating, excellent design and ease of installation. Yet one of the most progressive features in IntenseDebate's deep feature set is the ability to notify Twitter when you've made a comment. Not only does this feature help the commenter showcase what he's yakking about online, it also gives the originating site some more attention on Twitter.

9. Aweber

Prized for it's stellar email marketing features, Aweber has an excellent feature for any newsletter marketer: The ability to tweet the newsletter. The newsletter delivery service has actually created a way to convert RSS to Email to Tweet (if you can wrap your head around that).

There are many site owners who run incredibly successful email newsletters, so this feature is very useful for those wanting to bring that extra bit of awareness to a newsletter.

10. Twitterfeed

Last, but certainly not least, is a pioneer of website and Twitter integration: Twitterfeed. Twitterfeed allows you to automatically insert tweets into your Twitter stream from any RSS feed. Many blogs utilize this functionality to let their Twitter followers know when new content is available. You can tailor the format of the generated tweets, and it's a great way to keep your Twitter followers engaged on your blog.

Tweet this to your friends