Editor’s note: This article was first published in April 2010. Its step-by-step instructions for Facebook business pages and LinkedIn describe the 2010 interfaces, such as the “Create a Page for my business” link and the “What are you working on?” box. Current menus and feature names are different.
One way to promote your business or website, or even to find a job, is through social networks, which go well beyond sharing things with friends and family. Today we explain how to do it.
Facebook gives you the chance to promote yourself, not only as a private user but also as a self-employed professional or business owner, or as a calling card for a company.
Create a page for your business or activity. Go to the option at the bottom of the left-hand panel, where you’ll find the link Create a Page for my business. You’ll see several options there; choose the ones that best match the kind of page you want to create.
Open the Info tab and click Edit information, then click Save changes once you’ve finished.
Advertise your page. As soon as you’ve created your business page, a link called Promote with an ad will appear. It opens a page where you can start building your ad. You can change the image you want to show, and you can even choose which kinds of people you want the ad to be shown to: you can target by sex, age, education, location and type of user (companies, private individuals, self-employed people…).
Create an event linked to your page. This is the easiest part, and I think everyone knows how to do it: just go to Create event and set the details (type of event, date, and so on).
Once you’ve done all this, you’ll know the advantages of a social network like Facebook: you’ll reach a huge number of users.
Another site, perhaps more specialized in job hunting, is LinkedIn.
On LinkedIn, all you have to do is go to www.linkedin.com, sign up with your first name, last name and email address, and click Join.
You can then start building your professional profile: your photo and your company’s sector (or your former company’s). Next, click What are you working on? and describe your occupation in a few words. After that you can build your CV on the page they provide, where you can enter the last company you worked for, your start and end dates, and add a previous position, and keep going until your CV is as complete as you want it to be. You’ll also have the option of adding your Twitter profile.
An interesting option is your online CV. To set it up, click customize your URL and enter an address that’s easy to remember. Your introduction can then be as simple as sending that link to the company you’d like to look you up.
As I said at the beginning, this kind of social network is geared more toward professional relationships than friendships, which doesn’t mean you can’t add and keep in touch with employees of companies in your sector.
Another social network aimed at professional contacts is XING, perhaps more focused on the Spanish market. It has everything you need to build your CV and to ask for and give recommendations, and its most striking feature is its job search engine. Signing up is very simple: just go to xing.es and follow the intuitive steps.
Companies and self-employed professionals can also create groups related to their activity, set up events and much more.
See also: Hiring mistakes at Spanish companies
Don’t forget to check out Twitter as well. And if you live in Spain, there’s a website called Eventosfera (eventosfera.com) that hosts events for professionals, business owners and the self-employed.
These are some of the most interesting options online for promoting a business and for finding a job over the internet. One more way to find what you’re looking for.
Further reading
- Promote your business online with AdWords
- 5 ways to grow your business
- How can I finance my business?
- The businesses of the future
- The 10 most in-demand jobs of the future
Featured image: home thods, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr.
