From PCWorld.com: Tyler Olson, President of HelpMeTy.com, blogs for PCWorld Magazine. 

Facebook continues to evolve as it strives to master its own business model. With the latest evolution, Facebook makes its service more valuable to businesses. With the updated Fan Page, businesses now have the ability to send updates straight to the news feed of any person who has chosen to be a fan of that business.This will help companies make their online marketing strategies more viral.

Additionally, Facebook is adding an analytics tool called Insight so you can better understand the demographic of your fans. If your business currently does not have a Facebook fan page, now is the time to jump on the opportunity for maximum early exposure.

Be aware, however, that millions of Facebook users are complaining about the latest changes and Facebook has been known to make quick decisions based upon user feedback. Additionally, it currently appears that people who became fans of business pages prior to March 20 will not receive newsfeed updates from fan pages unless they “opt-in” to it, which is uncommon for many Facebook users. We will have to wait and see if Facebook makes further alterations based upon recent feedback.

Tyler Olson has a vision, a passion for technology, and a love for entrepreneurship. Tyler’s current business, HelpMeTy.com, started out of his dorm room two and a half years ago to fix computers and make Web sites. The company now provides remote IT support as well as web services for many people and businesses.

In order to conceptualize how Facebook can be used as a marketing tool, it is important to understand some of its key components: profiles, “the wall”, the news-feed, status messages, groups, pages, applications, advertising opportunities, and privacy concerns. Each of these can be used as a tool to spread the word about your business.

Build Your Profile

The profile is the centerpiece of who you are as an individual or as a business. It’s your proclamation to the world to let them know what you want them to know about you. We’ll discuss privacy later, but your profile is only viewable by the people or networks you chose to give access. Your friends and colleagues will visit your profile more often than you might think, so use it wisely. Many entrepreneurs and business professionals will post more than simply that they are the CEO of XYZ. They will use it to create an interest in the product or service they provide to viewers.

Use the Wall

Anybody who you have chosen to be a friend on Facebook will be able to write comments on your wall. You, in turn, have the ability to write on other people’s walls. As a result of the popularity of Facebook, it is sometimes faster to find a contact there than searching through old contact databases. As the founder of an IT company, many of my old friends will find me through Facebook and ask for computer repair through that channel. In addition, Facebook is regarded as one of the fastest communication tools.

Review the News Feed

With your permission, anything you do on Facebook will be broadcasted to your entire social network. For example, if you chose to become a fan of Microsoft Windows, all of your friends will be able to see that when they look at their news feed. In return, if you can get your employees and friends to become a fan of your business, the viral impact of all of their friends seeing that they became a fan will cause some of them to also become fans. This can provide another opportunity to put your brand in front of wider audiences.

Write Status Messages

Facebook (and other social networks like Twitter) are making short status messages the cornerstone of instant news. Whether you are looking at your news feed, your wall, your friends list, your chat window, the piece of information that always catches your eye first is the status message. As the CEO of a company, your friends and employees will naturally be interested in what you have to say.

Many entrepreneurs use the status message as a way to get their PR messages out faster, to inform people about blog articles they have written, to ask for referrals, or simply to stand up for political or social issues.

Create Fan Pages

Many large businesses create intricate fan pages that can allow people to do anything, ranging from watching shows, to purchasing music, to downloading the latest program, to creating a downloadable collage of images. As people become fans, the owners of the page have access to send messages to whoever became a fan… creating another effective channel to spread your brand. Pages can achieve a number of business goals including collecting email addresses, phone numbers, increasing brand awareness, direct purchasing, and more.

Build Applications

Applications can be installed onto people’s profiles, onto fan pages, and sometimes onto other social networking platforms. Applications are powerful tools that can help spread awareness of your products, services, and brands through the social network. Many applications provide social benefit to users to encourage them to tell others about the application, thus widening the reach of the applications.

Find Advertising Opportunities

Facebook’s advertising platform gives advertisers the opportunity to reach directly to their target audience. For example, if a business wants to target 18-25 year olds who live in Minneapolis and are interested in technology and entrepreneurship, it takes about 5 minutes to setup that marketing campaign. Facebook’s advertising system has only seen marginal success to date. However, that means it is still very cheap to advertise on Facebook.

Privacy Concerns

Facebook has instances where privacy concerns by its users run rampant. For the most part, Facebook responds to these concerns and grants power to the users to control their own privacy settings. Very recently, Facebook made a decision that it will not delete data from users who drop their Facebook accounts which has caused an uproar. We will have to wait to see if Facebook changes its mind like it has in the past.

The purpose of outlining these key components of Facebook is to present a foundation of how Facebook works. In future posts, I will give additional examples of how businesses have achieved particular goals and made money from these components.

Business owners across the country are beginning to see a new marketplace: Online social networks. They are pulling in new clients, servicing current clients, and making money through the use of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and LinkedIn. This attention to new technology greatly increases the image of the brand, provides faster and more effective service, and allows for a high-level of targeted marketing.

Many businesses have used Facebook to pull their fan base, customers, and potential customers together. Facebook provides tools that allow users to play videos and allow businesses to send marketing messages directly to targeted audiences. One of the greatest benefits of utilizing Facebook for business is its viral effect. If any person becomes a “fan” of your page, a message is sent to all of that person’s friends telling them about it, providing a great channel to get your message out to many people over a short period of time.

Even if your business is not on Facebook, you can see how Target, Microsoft, and President Obama utilized the power of Facebook to attract tens of thousands of fans, push their brand and products, and ultimately profit from these strategies.

Last year Comcast started utilizing Twitter to quickly respond to customer complaints, and the company has received significant media attention for this strategy. As a result, Comcast has saved numerous customers on the verge of dropping their service.

If your business is not actively pursuing a social networking strategy, you are likely missing out on a huge opportunity to find the clients you want and to service the clients you already have. Even if you do not have a Target-sized marketing budget, there are many tactics you can use to help you increase business.

My next post will examine some of the strategies and tactics that can be used to generate new business from each of these social networking tools. Because each of these tools operates differently and has its own set of goals, the specific tactics will vary greatly for each of the sites. We will cover each of them with increasing depth over time.

As a young entrepreneur who has passionately invested time and money into various fields of technology, I look forward to being able to spread the joy of technology through this blog.

Throughout my youth, I started numerous businesses and I spent the majority of my last few years growing a small tech company in Minneapolis, Minnesota. HelpMeTy.com, my current company, was named after clients repeatedly would call my cell phone and say “Help Me Ty! My computer is broken and I need your help!” It started out of my dorm room at the University of St Thomas. A year into business, I woke up one day with two technicians working on the ten computers sitting in my bedroom (which was a mere 10 feet by 14 feet). That day I left my bedroom and started to search for an office. Two years later, HelpMeTy.com continues to grow and provide computer repair, outsourced IT services, and websites for many small businesses and individuals.

Some of my recent achievements include being in the Global Student Entrepreneur Awards (GSEA.org) program, which placed me in the top 24 student entrepreneurs in the world for 2007. I also received the “Small Business Success” Award from the Saint Paul Area Chamber of Commerce, and I will be featured in a soon-to-be-released book on entrepreneurship.

In the coming years, I intend to start more technology-related businesses. Armed with the experience of growing HelpMeTy.com, my goal is to build scalable businesses more quickly.

From this blog, you can expect helpful technology advice geared for entrepreneurs. Some of the topics I will address will include subjects such as social networking, software as a service (SaaS), efficiency through technology, and emerging trends.

Tyler Olson has a vision, a passion for technology, and a love for entrepreneurship. Tyler’s current business, HelpMeTy.com , started out of his dorm room two and a half years ago to fix computers and make Web sites. The company now provides remote IT support as well as web services for many people and businesses.