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The main aim for a business on Facebook is connecting. It doesn’t matter if it is new customers or current customers, the connection Facebook offers is the key. Before you even start creating a business fan page, you should learn how to connect with your personal profile. This way when you have your fan page, you have Facebook friends you can share it with, and hopefully they will share it with their friends etc...

The easiest way to start connecting is to find your current friends and colleagues. You saw the numbers from earlier in the report, with 500 million users there is a good chance you already have a couple of (if not way more) acquaintances on Facebook.

Another way to connect is by using the “Find Friends” steps from earlier. Make sure you check the contacts on all of your email and instant messaging accounts. You don’t have to choose to add everyone they suggest, just the people you feel more comfortable with.

Also make sure you use the tools that let you search by name and school. You might see people you didn’t even think to add.

In my experience the best way to find people to connect with is to look at your current friend’s friends. You will surely see mutual friends you can add.

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Another social media outlet that is often looked over in terms of the biggies of Facebook and LinkedIn fame is the humble blog. While the word “blog” might make you think of a teenager with an axe to grind and Comic Sans font or a geek writing about the latest coding language, blogs can also be used by responsible adults in order to connect with others and promote their offline - or online – businesses.

Undoubtedly there are blogs in your area that follow local events. Simply do a Google search on blogs in your area to see what pops up. As a local business with an actual physical storefront, you’ll be able to network with these blogs and maybe even get a link to your site. If, for example, you own a car dealership and you can find a local blog that’s dedicated toward cars, see if you can arrange to get an entry on that blog featuring your place of business. That way, every person who frequents that blog will look at – or even read – an article dedicated to who you are and what you do. Even better, many of these local blogs operate free, so you won’t even have to pay for this kind of exposure!

In return for the cooperation of local bloggers, don’t forget to keep your networking constant. Comment on their blog posts and reference them on your own blog – because you do have your own blog for your business, right? – in order to keep the networking relationship fresh.

Another great place to look for blog connections are the more traditional sources of media – namely, television, radio, and newspapers. Many journalists are asked to keep a blog as part of their job, particularly when it comes to local publications. Making contact with these journalists and establishing blog relationships with them is not only a great way to increase the social media standing of your business as a whole, but also a great way to make connections with people in your area. Journalists are valuable people to keep in contact with, as they’ll often know about big events where you can advertise, and if you start making friends they can even put in a good word for your in a potential customer’s ear.

Remember to keep in mind that you have a powerful advantage over an online business by having a physical storefront. Use this advantage to win over local social media contacts through mediums like blogs and then you’ll be able to fight the social media war on both fronts. Even better, if you can make face to face contact with the people who write the blogs and the people who publish the news, you can even get some of that personal interaction that’s so crucial while publicizing yourself. Not only can journalists write a blog about your business, they can refer a friend, as well!