The big question on everyone’s mind is really how to promote their business through social media channels.

About two years ago everyone was desperate to have some SEO value so they’d show up in search results. While still important, the focus has been shifted to generating excitement about your brand through a social network. ClickZ posted an article a few days back stating that ads on Facebook that contain social context are 68% more likely to be remembered by users. That is, when Heineken posts an ad on Facebook that links to one of their videos, when I ‘like’ or share the video, my network is 68% more likely to remember the Heineken brand (within the context of the video). Since word of mouth referrals generally hold more weight than search results or email campaigns, a social network would be the best place to cleverly advertise so your fans/users/potential customers will ‘like’ or share your content.

In theory, it may be more cost effective and powerful to focus all of your online marketing efforts on a social media campaign. Having a website is – or was – a standard or rite of passage, much like having a business card. Buy a domain name and have it redirect over to your Facebook page. You’ve undoubtedly seen brands that are using social media platforms for customer service, sales and other communication like all-important Rugby World Cup news.

If the value of a well executed social media strategy is higher than that of the website, why not just ditch the website?

Take a moment and evaluate why you have a website: for customer contacts, to showcase products and services, to provide a resource for customers to get assistance from your brand and what else? Facebook’s platform has a core purpose of allowing users to share information with their network. Is there a difference between what Facebook facilitates and what your website facilitates? For small or local businesses, trying to complete in search results is a painful and sometimes expensive ordeal – competing against companies and campaigns with a broader reach than your small town cause increases in the price for Pay-Per-Click advertising. Larger companies and campaigns also have multiple people guiding and monitoring the interactions and often small businesses cannot dedicate a staff member the same way. On social networking platforms you can even target ads at specific regions and demographics (based on social data stored on the platform). A fine-tuned Social Media presence could very well be the replacement of the website.

On the other hand, having a website for a small business is still a rite of passage. I have yet to find a client or business who has a social media presence and does not have a website. The baseline for establishing a brand online is still a unique URL for your products, services etc. That said, the challenge is now about keeping your website content as fresh and updated as your social media presence. Search engines are constantly crawling your website for new content, users want new content – so why keep it all to the social networks?

Facebook has a series of social plug-ins for your website. Plug and play code you can drop anywhere on your site and it will pull the latest from your Facebook page. Twitter also has a large number of third party plug-ins that allow you to post your latest tweets or even query their search API for trending topics.

I would recommend for small businesses to get their website to a self-sustaining point through social media. The website will have the baseline product and service descriptions, pricing etc – that’s great – but then add social plug-ins for the networks where you’re actively engaged with customers and fans. Keep your fans happy through the social networks – and at the same time your website will be updating with relevant content as your brand’s on the social network will be syndicated through your plugins to your website.

I watch a post proliferate late last week about the top 50 branded Facebook Fan Pages from back in July. The nice thing is the post presents a ton of data and then tries to interpret the data and guide readers to action after learning from the data. The trouble is the data.

The data comes from a web app created by Vitrue which boasts to have the ability to quantify Social Media into Return on Investment (ROI) figures. Before you go run and try to calculate your page’s dollar value know that the point of a social media presence isn’t dollar value. I’m not the only one uneasy by Vitrue’s misleading ROI calculations and dollar values for fans.

MySpace is a ‘technology company connecting people through personal expression, content, and culture.’ Facebook gives ‘people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.’ The point of these two major social networking sites is to connect people.

How do you value a relationship? Is it pure dollars? How would you calculate any form of ROI based on relationships, in this case between a brand and followers/fans? Let me throw two thoughts out there: (1) communicating through social media channels is the same or similar to driving traffic from a blog: you provide something your readers/followers want, they identify and discuss around your content. (2) Besides very few, how many people are purchasing goods and services from a Facebook page, or as a result of traffic from a Facebook page to an eCommerce website? How can any Facebook page or social media campaign even guess at potential ROI?

I’m throwing hypotheticals out there to guide you to my point: the bottom line is Vitrue adds false dollar value. Their calculations are not based on analytical data translated into dollars and sense but made on unsubstantiated speculation. The real problem ends up not being with Vitrue’s faking ROI values, the real problem exists with the Web Analysts at corporations (Fortune 200′s to small businesses) who buy into the idea that fans X daily interactions X percentage of annual revenue could equal ROI.

Despite how upset I may be with the concept of ROI association with social media interactions, we should probably ask: Are the folks at Vitrue jerks for obscuring social media value or are they geniuses taking advantage of naive Web Analysts’ and large-scale companies who don’t know better?

Facebook in the last 12 hours launched Universities on Facebook, a page geared to encouraging interaction between people attending universities. The page also provides deals on goods and services from popular brands like Utrecht Art, NewEgg.com and Eddie Bauer. While some of the offers still need to be ironed out, the prospect of network-specific content starts to rise.

For a enterprise level Facebook Application I’m working on, I have been trying to use the Open Graph API to determine where a user’s network, current city or states (of interests) exist and then serving up content based on the the response. If you’ve seen anything from popular fast food chains such as McDonalds and Burger King you’ll know that not all goods, services and specials are offered nationwide. McRib is a good example: despite availability of ingredients, labor for processing etc, the McRib is only ever around for a short period of time and in certain markets. If a brand like McDonalds wants to promote the McRib on Facebook – they can but they have to add a ton of disclaimers saying ‘price and participation may vary.’

Facebook Ads can be targeted at a particular user group, why not target your custom applications’ content? At the end of the day, a lot of brands utilizing Facebook‘s platform, like Yelp, are trying to provide more accurate, socially relevant and locally available content. While I want to be the first to provide the service, we can all benefit from network-relevant content. Universities – and Facebook’s other programs attempt to target types of users with relevant content and best practices.

I ‘like’ Universities and I have a major take away from this campaign (albeit only a few hours old):

I can target the set-up of my content on a demographic and then through carefully planned code I can target sub-groups of my desired demographic.

I keep harping on Facebook campaigns, but what are some of the focuses of your Facebook campaigns? Is it to be informative and interactive, present fun things for your clients and fans to do, cross-promote products or brands?