Now people are making public (checking in) their location in social networking sites. It means that you, as a manager or business owner have a phenomenal chance to see who are those people that visited your “Place”, keep in touch with them and also, by having your company registed in these sites, more people will naturally find you.

Facebook Places has launched already in the US, UK and other countries. However, we don’t see businesses taking action, so here’s the opportunity:

At the moment, when you check into any “Place” on Facebook (or will check-in when it’s available in your region), here’s how it will look. Simple, not too appealing:

We have registered officially our “Place”: Channelship Web Agency. London and here’s how it looks when anybody checks in

HUGE difference: You get to include a picture, a description and users can also see a link to your company’s website. Also, depending on what type of Facebook page you opened, the link to your “Place” will show on the “Information” tab and on the left sidebar as well. Currently those location links point to Bing Maps but they’ll be connected with Facebook Places very soon.

Another great benefit of Facebook Places, that will help your company get more exposure, is the fact that you can geo-tag other people and vise versa.  Here’s how it looks:

Don’t panic. Those of you that don’t want to get geo-tagged, can do so from your Security Settings.

How do I register my company in Places?

First, you need to check into the place you want. If it doesn’t come up in the list,  click on “Add a Place”. Then you’ll see a link at the bottom of any Place page that says “Is this your business?“.

Simply click there and follow the instructions. Facebook will request that you attach with your application any business document (bill, statement) that verifies the name and address. That’s it!

Your “Place” page will look like this

Finally

By registering your company with Foursquare, people will be able to also find you through Facebook Search! Another way to easily to get found.

Facebook Places hasn’t fully launched yet worldwide. That’s why there are a lot of unanswered questions. For example, Dennis Taylor asked on our Facebook page: “Can you merge your Facebook business Place with your current business Page? It seems creating a new page just for location based users is silly – rather have all my likes in one place“.
For now it would make sense to register your business with Facebook Places (plus other geolocation sites) and what’s most important: use it to check in and analyse the insights to find new people (possible customers) and keep your community growing. Yes, it would take a bit more time based on Dennis’ question but it’s worth it. Hopefully Facebook will come up with a nice “blended” option in the near future.

Will you take action? What do you think?
Best
Fred

The first one was : “How to build your business network with social media” and as promised, we compiled all the relevant info below:

• Full recording of the webinar
• The slides
• The conversation thread under the Twitter tag #sm4biz
• Some questions…

Subscribe to Channelship’s You Tube channel

The slides are already available on our Slideshare account!

My Power Point slides also contributed to the Twitter conversation
Have a look at what was said during the webinar by clicking on the image below:

Thanks very much to everyone that helped us spread the word in the different social networks.
We’re looking forward to have you on our next free monthly webinar:  “Social Media for Sales & Marketing Departments“.

Got questions or comments? Add them to the thread below!