The following was presented by Steve Patterson to the St. Louis chapter of the American Marketing Association on April 8, 2010:

Marketing is about getting your product and/or service in front of potential customers. You must be where their eyes are! Used to be a sign out front and an ad in the phone book was sufficient. Today it is more complicated, the list of social networks is long (http://ping.fm/networks/).  A decade ago having a website was the minimum requirement for businesses but today your business must also be on Facebook & Twitter – not just one or the other, but both.

Facebook:

• Use the “Fan Page” to promote you business.  You cannot change the page name so get it right the first time!
• After 25 fans you can set a custom URL such as facebook.com/UrbanReviewSTL.  Just go to Facebook.com/username to set the URL. Don’t mix up your personal setting with your page.
• Never set up your business as an individual or as a group.
• See Mashable’s Facebook Guide Book

Twitter:

• Never allow Facebook to post to Twitter.  Folks on Twitter want nothing to do with Facebook
• Register on wefollow.com
• See Mashable’s Twitter Guide Book

Bringing them together:

• The question is not which do you chose but how do you efficiently do both?
• Make sure your website has a web feed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_feed) as this helps
• Free blogging sites to use: ning.com, tumblr.com, wordpress.com, blogspot.com