Facebook is for a business, a full business.

You can’t make a personal Facebook page and expect to get any business related offers or chat started. If you do want to impact Facebook on behalf of your whole business, you should look into creating a Fan Page. Facebook is a social website, not a business-professional website so this is the only way to draw a line between business and personal life.

If you want to create a Fan Page you can do so here. A Fan Page needs to be updated regularly and house plenty of information for Facebook users to understand what your business does. Take advantage of the “Info” tab on your page and list what services you offer. The last thing you want is for a potential customer to leave your page because they didn’t understand your message. Also, be sure you have your website URL listed somewhere convenient. The main point of the Fan Page is to drive traffic to your website. Other good things to list are the office address, a phone number, and hours of operation. You also have the option to upload photos just like on a personal Facebook page. I would definitely utilize that aspect of the page as well. This is where you can show some personality or maybe show off some of your best work. Pictures of employees make the company more personal and pictures of your work show viewers that you are good at what you do. Check out our Facebook page if you want an example.

I mentioned briefly that a Facebook page needs to be updated regularly, but now I’ll stress my point. By updating regularly, you are drawing the viewer in. You are keeping things interesting. Maybe link to a blog post, or write a small update about a new service you offer, or even something about your latest work like, “Just finished the Ramsey job! Great work everyone and thanks for the team effort!” To engage your audience, you could also make it a point to have some kind of weekly contest or question. Maybe ask your fans what questions they have about computers (an example appropriate for Keystone). Then take your favorite answer and write a blog post answering it. The more you involve other Facebook users, the better.

LinkedIn, on the other hand, is for the individual.

You create an individual, personal account where you represent your business. You can connect to others who work with you but the focus of this networking site is completely individual. By making business contacts (equivalent to “friending” on Facebook) you expand your influence; so the more connections you make, the better. When you have significant news, update your profile and all your contacts will see the update in their news feed.

Don’t be afraid to connect with people. Connect to anyone you have ever worked with and anyone who you have ever worked for. Connect with people who you could imagine needing your services. Maybe I find a young man trying to promote his start-up. I design websites and think I could definitely help him get some attention, so I connect to him. Just be careful to not get too random with your connecting decisions. Get too aggressive and people brush you off like a spam email. Here’s an article that describes more ways to make the most of LinkedIn.

For an individual with a start-up company, an unemployed individual, someone who works for himself, or any small business entrepreneur, LinkedIn is an excellent tool. These individuals just need to be familiar with the system and how to get the most out of LinkedIn.

Personally, I think LinkedIn is more for the entrepreneur and Facebook for the larger business or company. The main difference between the two  are intentions. LinkedIn is made up of people who are purposely interested in making business connections, while Facebook is made up of people interested in socializing with some businesses thrown in trying to grab their attention. While Facebook provides a larger pool of potential customers with over 500 million users, its users may not want your business updates as distractions. LinkedIn users know what they’re getting into. They know it is going to be work chit chat 24/7 on that website. So take your pick and good luck in your ventures.

Keystone’s Favorite Web Tools:

Netvibes – Part RSS reader, part start page, Netvibes gathers the feeds of all your favorite websites together in one place so you can instantly see new reading material without clicking through bookmarked sites. Netvibes also acts as a home page that you can customize to show only what you want to see. You can add a weather widget, your Twitter feed, a Facebook feed, email widget, etc. It provides one-stop-shopping for your Internet news needs.

WuFoo – This form builder is not a free service but takes the hassle out of online forms. They offer all kinds of tools around a basic form building outline. Wufoo can even provide payment integration into your form.

TweetDeck – One of my personal favorites, TweetDeck is a Twitter management tool that allows you to update your Twitter and spread that update across Facebook, LinkedIn, GoogleBuzz, Foursquare and more. This is a great tool for any business trying to break into social media marketing. It puts all of your social media on one platform.

Flickr – Flickr is a free photo hosting service to store your photos and edit them with Picnik online. Flickr also allows for photo sharing and it’s all free.

FileZilla – Free FTP program to transfer files from one computer to another through the Internet. Easy and free, this FTP program is perfect for a quick file transfer.

Support Details – SupportDetails is a very helpful service that instantly tells you the specs about your computer that your tech will need to know. For example, it will tell you what your operating system is, DNS stuff, etc. Not free, but awesome. It provides information on domain names and domain records as well.

PopScreen - This video bookmarking service lets you sign up and drag the PopScreen icon to the top of your browser… Then, whenever you see a video you like that you want to watch again later, just click that browser button and it’s added to your bookmark list. Outstanding.

Tumblr - Blogging boiled down to its simplest form. Also, the Tumblr community allows users to “reblog” any Tumblr post they like and it will appear on their own blog. Then you can view most “Tumbled” blog posts of the day or week, etc. Also, with tons of smartphone apps, your tumblelog can be updated very easily from your phone.

Google products – Google products include mostly free products and services that are as good or better than competitors that cost money. Analytics for site stats. Checkout for online payments that has special . Calendar (with sharing). Gmail (kicks all other free email’s butts). And gTalk for inter-office text, voice, or video chatting.

AdBlock Plus – AdBlock Plus is a Firefox extension that detects and then blocks ads on web pages.

Pandora – It is just fantastic. Lets you listen to the music that you really want to hear by creating personalized radio stations. Not only is Pandora free, it also suggests other music you might not have heard before.

Hulu – Hulu may not be the best for your workday, but we couldn’t forget it in our favorite online tools. Hulu gives access to online TV show streaming and some videos for free.

YouTube - YouTube might be more of a distraction for some of your fellow co-workers, but we think it deserves “best online tool” status. Not only does YouTube have tons of entertaining, random vidoes, but it also has tutorials and informative videos on almost any topic. Try your favorite video in XL.

WordPress – WordPress is free blogging software that is robust, always improving, and feature-rich. Plus it’s very easy to figure out.

Keystone’s Least Favorite Web Tools:

StumbleUpon – StumbleUpon is a Firefox extension that shows you random web pages based on the category of pages you choose. You can vote each page up or down and eventually, you’re on there so often that it begins to know what kinds of random sites you like to look at. We think this tool is entertaining if you like looking at random pages of the Internet, but it’s mostly just a time-waster.

Foursquare - What’s the point of “checking in” at different locations? So people know where you are every second of the day? We think Foursquare and any other mobile “check-in” service is a little too stalker enabling for our business.

LinkedIn - Even though most of us have one, LinkedIn has provided very little results for us. Twitter and Facebook are starting to provide more business connections than the “professional network” that is LinkedIn.

Delicious - This bookmark manager is good for scoping out the hottest websites right now, but not one we’re going to sign up for. It may be good for organizing bookmarks if you can’t organize your own bookmarks, but we don’t like the idea of other people looking through our bookmarks.

Yammer – Yammer is just like Twitter, a micro-blogging social network, except just within your company. This might sound like a great, innovative idea to some people, but we think Yammer is just unnecessary. Why would you update your Yammer when you could just send a gTalk to someone across the office in real time? For Yammer to be successful, all your co-workers must be logged in on all workdays, and that is just unrealistic.

Facebook - Now, we don’t all agree that Facebook is a “Least Favorite” (uhum, I do not agree that it is a “Least Favorite”) but I’ve been out-voted. Facebook has turned into more hassle than it’s worth. All the security setting, ads, and constant updating make Facebook not worth the work to some businesses.

We hope you will try out some of our favorites, especially if you’ve never experienced them before. If you have any suggestions or objections, you can email your comments here.

Looking for a job has turned in to a real struggle these days. But with networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and others, it is getting easier to meet other people, some of whom may be in authoritative positions. Job seekers in Bozeman, Montana, have been faced with a difficult decision between privacy and job seeking. The city of Bozeman created a policy asking all job seekers in the area to hand over their usernames and passwords for social networking sites such as those listed above.

The policy has created much uproar against city officials who support it. Announced just two days ago (Wednesday) on a local TV station, the news caused concerned citizens to bombard city officials with e-mails and phone calls. The city defends itself by saying that it would only be for verifying information listed on an application and that they don’t expect everyone to follow through with the request. They believe it will be most helpful in the hiring of public officials, police officers, and other positions of public trust.

The only thing that makes this situation a little less serious than it seems is that citizens are not held to this. They don’t have to do it. And the city won’t hold it against those who decide to not take part. I can say that I, personally, would not be one to hand over such information to city officials. That’s for sure. It’s a form of censorship at an early stage, which could lead to who knows what.