Facebook is an interesting species – it’s got the most users (by far) of any Social Network out there – yet – when you chat with Social Media professionals and marketing reps, there’s a collective head scratch when it comes to maximizing the potential of ‘the Book’.

Facebook is still a more ‘personal’ space – whereas Twitter is very social and community-oriented, LinkedIn is outstanding from a professional standpoint, Facebook remains that place where you keep in touch with your old buddies from High School, you waste half your day looking through photos of that one guy’s bachelor party or fight off your Mom’s invitations to FarmVille and Family Fued (sorry Mom).

One of the biggest obstacles is how to overcome the issue that Facebook remains, for many, a very personal space. And, even if you have built a community around your brand or business via your ‘Like’ page, the question remains, “How do you get people interacting with you, and maybe more importantly, with each other”?

I’ve been wondering how to capitalize on the 1,200+ ‘likes’ of my personal blog, Life Without Pants, and after attending a session at the latest Social Media Breakfast in Chicago, here are 10 key take-aways and ideas you can and should be putting into action when it comes to effective Facebook marketing:

1. Ask Questions

This was by far the biggest takeaway from our discussion at Social Media Breakfast, and it’s the one thing I’ve seen as most effective in my own Facebook marketing and even personal interaction. Questions are calls to action, you are explicity asking your community to answer something, which makes it much easier to actually get a response and see interaction. Instead of using Facebook as a pedestal to shout opinions from, ask questions and let your community do the opinion sharing.

2. Don’t Give People Too Much to Think About

Facebook isn’t a blog – if you’re throwing too much at your community, if you’re posting updates with multiple questions and several links, you’re going to lose them. The best way to illicit response is to keep things simple and tackle one thing at a time. You may be crowd-sourcing feedback on many different topics or promoting a lot of different things, but space out your PR and don’t give people more than they can (easily) handle.

3. Understand Your Audience

If you’re Facebook account is anything like my own, it’s probably made up of very different people from who you’re connected with on Twitter, LinkedIn, and other places around the web. It’s important to know WHO you’re talking to before you do any talking. If you’re automatically feeding your Twitter stream through Facebook, my advice is to stop. Take a little extra time to craft your marketing strategy on each platform to meet the culture of that specific community.

4. Stay Consistent

As with everything else you’re doing online, consistency is the single most important thing. Yes, life will get in the way. Yes, they’re are other more pressing projects that come up and force you to push Social Media to the back-burner. But, since you know those things will indefinitely come up – start planning for them. Social Media Marketing takes time, just like any other form of marketing you pursue, with third party applications like HootSuite and others, it’s easier than ever to schedule your Facebook updates in advance. If you can’t be present, take advantage of the tools out there. Set it and forget it…

5. Post Exclusive Content

Your Facebook ‘Like’ Page wall should NOT be a regurgitation of content. Yes, you can and should use your Facebook wall to promote current projects but it needs to be more than that. Run a Facebook-exclusive contest, instead of simply feeding your latest blog posts to your wall, post things manually and pair it with a question that gets people talking. While maintaining brand consistency is important, keeping things ‘fresh’ on every channel is what makes me want to follow you on Twitter, read your blog, AND connect with you on Facebook.

6. Target Your Ambassadors

If you have a Facebook ‘Like’ page already set up. Ask yourself this: Who are my ambassadors? Do you know who your most active Facebook community members are? That guy or gal who ‘likes’ just about everything you post? These are the people you need to specifically target and interact with. In the marketing world we talk a lot about building brand evangelists. Why? Because people (you and I) are much more likely to trust our friends, family, and colleagues than we are to pay much attention to a brand. Target your ambassadors and let them do the promoting for you.

7. Be Yourself

This applies to everything you’re doing on the web and it really is as simple as it sounds. Your fans/likes/followers don’t want to talk to a brand – they want to talk to an actual person. We, as humans, want that human interaction – so yes, even if you’re a clothing retailer, it’s OK to poll your community on how many more centuries it’ll take for the Cubs to win the pennant. Be funny, be engaging, be you.

8. Create Alliances

This is something I’ve done and know many others who have tapped into this concept of building ‘strategic alliances’, Facebook ‘tribes’, whatever you want to call them. Basically, I’ll promote and ‘like’ your Fan Page and recommend it to my personal community with the understanding that you’ll do the same for me. Use your current community and friend-base to your advantage!

9. Focus on the ‘Big Picture’

At Social Media Breakfast we talked about this in detail. Take Starbucks for example; instead of focusing on everything directly Starbucks related on their Facebook page – they focus on the love of coffee, they focus on the concept of the ‘third place’, the home away from home. When you go to a coffee shop, it’s usually about the experience  - you’re meeting a friend, conducting a business meeting, or have your headphones on, listening to your favorite tunes getting things done. Rather than using their Facebook page as a sounding board for deals and announcements, they focus on that overall experience, and, for the most part, let their ‘likers’ do the talking. If there’s a concept or idea you can focus on outside of your brand – take that and run with it.

10. Respect Privacy

As was mentioned initially, for many, Facebook is still a very private place – it’s important for you to recognize and respect the privacy of others – don’t go spam their inbox, don’t send a mass message to all of your ‘likes’ every day – don’t post on your wall 100x per day. If you’re trying to piss people off and lose your ‘like-base’ by all means go ahead. Promote tastefully and respect that for many, Facebook is their personal space on the web.

Facebook doesn’t have to be the “What the hell am I supposed to do here” platform. There’s a lot of value to be had from a personal and professional standpoint through each channel.

What are you currently struggling with on Facebook? What’s worked well for you? What advice would you give to those reading here?

Good customer service is the foundation of any sound business strategy. If you’re not treating your customers right, you won’t have any customers to treat.

Today’s lesson is simple: A little bit goes a long way. It takes (very) little to make a dramatic impact on your customers and clients – a small gesture can turn your ordinary customer into a brand ambassador and evangelist – someone who will promote you and recommend you to their own community.

If you’re not tapping into the potential of your consumers, and the impact they can (and do) have on your business – you’re missing out on a massive opportunity to generate new business and life-long ‘raving fans’.

Don’t believe me? Check out the video above (Can’t see the video? Click Here) to learn more about how EMMA, an e-mail marketing company based out of Nashville, with a simple gesture, inspired me to dedicate an entire post to their outstanding customer service.

This is how you get people talking – this is how you turn ordinary people into customers – it’s not about giving away free stuff (although free stuff is always nice) – it’s about making your customers feel valuable.

Why? Because they are.

DISCLOSURE: EMMA in no way asked me to post this video or sing their praises. I believe in what they do and highly recommend them to my clients (and all of you) because they do outstanding work, their customer service is top-notch, and their product is one of the best out there in the e-mail marketing biz.

(To learn more about EMMA and what they can do for you, check out their website)

What examples of outstanding customer service can you share?

There’s a lot of great stuff out there that you can tap into (without paying a dime). Here are some of the best tools/applications I’ve found and use regularly in my webpreneurship…

Launch List

I stumbled across this free tool a while back and absolutely love it. Launch List is an outstanding tool for website designers and developers – providing you (in a super sleek and sexy way) with a list of things to test and double-check before launching any website, including everything from cross-browser testing to spell-checking the copy. You can also add your own fields and then e-mail the completed list directly to your client (or yourself) for confirmation.

Right now Launch List is 100% free, but very soon they’ll be releasing a more versatile and customizable version for a small fee. Check it out and never again worry about forgetting something before launching a site.

• How I use it: Launch List serves as a great reminder for what I need to do before ‘going live’ with any site I develop. It’s also prompted me to create my own personal ‘launch list’ as part of my client relations process. With both the client and I knowing everything has been taken care of, it’s a win-win.
• Bonus Tip: Don’t be bashful about adding your own Custom Fields. You may have project-specific items and Launch List makes it VERY easy to add those into the checklist before sending it off for client approval.

Freelance Switch Hourly Rate Calculator

“How do I value myself”? This is a question that EVERY SINGLE freelancer and entrepreneur mus ask him/herself and it’s one of the most challenging things to figure out, especially early on. Service costs are extremely subjective and have a very wide range, so it’s difficult to base off of an ‘industry standard’.

The Freelance Switch Hourly Rate Calculator is a wonderful tool that asks a series of questions to help you determine both what you need to make, and what would be ideal, and then provides you with the hourly rate you need to make to match those needs and wants.

• How I use it: I stumbled across this recently and it really helped to validate where I currently am in terms of pricing. Any tools that make the numbers game easier to handle are good in my book.
• Bonus Tip: Don’t rush it! I tried to zoom through this at first glance and got a totally ridiculous final number. Take your time and think about your responses carefully. You’ll be glad you did.

Evernote

This is a new one for me. I tweeted recently that I was finally giving Evernote a try, which represented a giant leap for mankind, being that I am through and through a pen and paper to-do list maker and note-taker. But, I have to say, even after a brief time of playing around with Evernote, I’m already hooked.

Evernote allows you to take notes virtually, take pictures of your hand-written notes and receipts, bookmark sites, articles, and links seamlessly, and much more. Best of all? While it does have a sweet desktop app, it’s also 100% accesible from anywhere via the web. Also, you can tag every single thing you upload and search your entire database based on those tags. Pretty sweet. For someone as anal about organization and efficency as I am, it’s a dream come true.

• How I use it: I’m a noob with Evernote, but I’ve already made myself an awesome (organized) to-do list for the week ahead and took a couple snapshots of concept ideas for clients I had written out on paper.
• Bonus Tip: Check out this awesome article written by Amber Naslund of Brass Tack Thinking on the benefits of using Evernote.

Google Reader

You may be saying, “Wow, this is an obvious one” but you would be shocked by how many folks doing business on the web have no idea what Google Reader even is. Honestly, I’d be completely lost without it. In a time where we’re constantly inundated with content coming from every direction, weeding through the crap and keeping tabs on the good stuff is more important than ever.

Google Reader acts as an ‘online newspaper’ – allowing you to subscribe to your favorite blogs, comment streams, videos, etc and receive the latest updates all in one place. If you have a Google account, you can access Google Reader (and if you don’t have a Google account it’s free to set up and takes less than a minute).

• How I use it: My Google Reader is one of the first things I open in the morning – sticking with that whole ‘newspaper’ theme, I grab my cup of coffee, read through articles from that day, comment, schedule updates in Hootsuite to share on Twitter – it’s all one beautiful routine.
• Bonus Tip: Set up a special Google account for your company, encourage your staff to subscribe to relevant sites and blogs, and block out 30 minutes of the day to allow your employees to catch up on latest industry news and trends by reading through the companies Google Reader.

Clients from Hell

OK, guilty, Clients from Hell isn’t really a tool, but it is something that can absolutely keep you sane and provide you with some much-needed comic relief.

Let’s face it, there are always going to be some more ‘interesting’ clients. You’re going to get some wild and crazy requests but, as a service provider, it’s your job to make the client happy, whatever it takes (without of course getting walked all over). Clients from Hell is 100% anonymous user submitted ‘horror stories’ provided by designers and developers.

In short, maybe you won’t feel so bad when that client asks to throw up a picture on the home page of her from the 80′s holding a manicured poodle after reading through Clients from Hell.

• How I use it: When I need a good laugh. When I need to take a break. I go to Clients from Hell. It rocks.
• Bonus Tip: Check out this Oatmeal cartoon – it very well may be the best thing ever.

What would you add to this list?

I’m aging myself here, but I vividly remember the early days of Internet – I remember waiting for my AOL Dial up to dial in – the screeching and ringing of the phone wires connecting me to pure Internet bliss.

And what waited on the other side? Websites littered with animated gifs, flashing glitter backgrounds and midi files playing instrumental versions of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing”.

Let’s face it, the old style of thinking was that the masses wanted more, and more, and then maybe just a little bit more. Every website wanted to be bigger, better, and brighter than the rest…

But then, something changed, and today we’ve seen a fundamental shift in what people consider effective. Minimalism is so hot right now. Seriously. Take a look at some of your favorite websites. Gone are the days of “in your face” design. Now we’re seeing a love of white space, clean lines, simple navigation, and clear calls to action.

We have finally reached the breaking point

We live in a world in which we are constantly inundated with information. We are consumption whores, we take in data from every angle – it’s thrown at us from literally every direction and at times, it’s impossible to break away.

The challenge for marketers and designers in this day and age is to get their message across as clearly as possible, without confusion, without “noise” and clutter.

Minimalism isn’t only changing the way we live, it’s changing the way we do business. Here are a few extremely important things to consider when putting together the design of your website.

White space is not the devil

Our minds are taught to think that, when we see empty space, we have to fill it, with something, anything, we have to get rid of that “emptiness”. Step one is breaking free of this mindset. Every void does NOT need to be filled, focus on what’s most important and take it easy on everything else.

Make it easy to get around

The worst thing you can do to a new visitor of your website is to provide them with a confusing map to point “X”. It’s critically important that your website’s navigation is easy – and where you can, consolidate. The more pages within pages within pages you have, the easier it is for your audience to get lost. The KISS model applies here (Keep it Simple, Stupid)

Calls to action should be OBVIOUS

I emphasize the word “obvious” here. Want to build your e-mail list? Promoting a new product? Looking to increase event registrations? Your online marketing strategy needs focus and direction – decide what you primary call(s) to action are and stick with it. Don’t clutter your message and confuse your audience.

Above all, understand that we’re receiving a lot of messages out there, be aware of your customer/readers needs (this requires a bit of research on your part), and when in doubt, there’s nothing wrong with flat-out asking, poll your community, find out what they do like, don’t like, and what you can improve upon. Feedback is golden. You will stand out if your message is clear and effective.

What “looks good” and what’s “effective and functional” can be two completely different things. Substance beats style, every time. Without content to back it up, a stylish website will always fall short.

What are some websites that really stand out in your mind? How do you think you can improve upon your current site’s layout and design?