The craze in social media networking is a race between Facebook and Twitter, but how can this help your business?

As a new entrepreneur, you have to find ways to relate to your consumers, and 9 times out of 10, they are on Facebook. View yourself as a consumer and research how many  companies  you buy products from are on Facebook.

In the past, we would use Facebook simply  to connect with our high school and or college friends. Now it has expanded to connecting with your favorite clothing boutiques and hair stylists. The goal now is to flip the script and become the company and embrace your consumers.

By revamping your personal profile to be more professional, you will be able to create a stronger bond with your consumers. Utilize Facebook as a marketing tool to promote your business and create a direct connection with the products or service to the customers.

Here are few steps to putting a new face on your business’s book:

Create Your Profile - Develop a personal profile for yourself if you haven’t already done so. Be sure to plug your company’s information under your occupation as well.

Create Your Company Page - After creating your personal profile, create a separate page for your business. This page will be used to display pictures of your product, videos of your service, upcoming events or discussion forums. You can also upload RSS Feeds of your Twitter stream, website or YouTube page.

Friends that you may have on your personal page can now “Like” your company’s Facebook page. This can be used as another contact base. This page can also be promoted via email, your blog and the Facebook network to drive traffic and build your fan base.

Join and Create Groups- This is another form of networking through Facebook. The trick to it is that it’s only accessible to Facebook members. You can create the group around trends that relate to your product or service or a group focusing on who uses your product or service. By using the “bulk invite” of group settings you can invite your friends who can invite their friends, which create a viral promotion campaign.

Develop a section in your business plan for social media networking. This can be used to build your overall network and reputation over a period of time by providing value to other people.

Every small business should invest the time to understand how to effectively use Facebook to fit its marketing efforts. So use this networking site to put a new face on your business book.