Still feeling confused by Twitter Hashtags- those words that start with a # symbol that you keep seeing on Twitter?

Wondering how to start or use a hashtag for your own purposes? Want to find out what a particular hashtag means?

Trying to figure out how to use hashtags for a particular purpose – to share information, to unite around an event perhaps?

Twitter hashtags are a great tool for finding, following and participating in topical discussions relevant to you.  Here I’ve put together a collection of articles with information and advice on using Twitter Hashtags.

There are three sections – How-To Use Hashtags, Tools to help you use them, and examples of ways to use Hashtags.

Hashtag Tutorials & How-To’s

• Ultimate Guide to Twitter Hashtags
  From Search Engine Journal: Here Ann Smarty provides a thorough guide to hashtags including solid tips and resources for making the most of them.
• An Introduction to Twitter Hashtags
  From Wild Apricot Blog: Nice step-by-step tutorial on hashtags- what they are and how to use them.
• Tweet Your Message to a Larger Audience with Hashtags
  From Twitips: Sherice Jacob (follow her at @sherice) from iElectrify explains what hashtags are and how to use them.
• How to start a Twitter hashtag
  From Contentious: Amy Gahran provides helpful advice on using hashtags including a discussion of the types of situations where she has used hashtags (breaking news, events) along with tips on choosing a hashtag and promoting it.
• HOW TO: Use Twitter Hashtags for Business
  From Mashable: Josh Caltone provides advice on how to utilize existing hashtags and how to start your own.
• Where To Find A List Of Twitter Hashtags
  From Twitter Tips Central: Where and how to find to find a list of Twitter Hashtags using Hashtags.org.
• HOW TO: Get the Most Out of Twitter #Hashtags
  From Mashable: Short guide from Benn Parr details how to identify, track, use, and organize hashtags in an efficient and useful way.
• Twitter Hashtags – What Are They, How To Create Your Own
  YouTube Video from Internet marketing and Facebook specialist Mari Smith that explains hashtags – for those who prefer video explanation to text.
• Twitter Tips: How And Why To Use Hashtags (#)
  From CIO: Nice overview to help you understand the hows and why of using hashtags.

Hashtag Tools and Resources

• Tools for Monitoring Conversations in Twitter
  From Bub.blicio.us: Discussion of how to use Hashtags.org and Twemes to find relevant topics and join productive conversations on Twitter. Especially important if you are a representative for a company and/or brand seeking solutions for effectively listening to the community in order to help them answer questions or provide them with useful information.
• #hashtags.org
  All Twitter updates that include a valid hashtag are indexed at Hashtags.org.  Here you can search and see trends for that hashtag as well as a list of recent tweets with that hashtag.  This means that you don’t have to be a Twitter user to follow the conversation — it’s visible to anyone.  Hint: you can also see all the tweets for a hashtag by adding the hashtag name at the end of the site’s URL: http://hashtags.org/tag/ for example: http://hashtags.org/tag/followfriday for the #followfriday hashtag.
• What the Hashtag?!
  A wiki-based user-editable encyclopedia for hashtags found on Twitter. They have a bot that actively monitors Twitter for trending hashtags and creates new pages as they grow in popularity. Then it’s up to the users to fill in the details. They offer a bot service that allows you to ask them what a hashtag stands for. Then they send you back a short description plus a link back to the page they’re hosting for the specific hashtag. There are also some Firefox and Greasemonkey tools for use.
• Tagalus
  Ever find yourself looking at Twitter and wondering what all this talk about #motrinmoms means? Searching Flickr and not understanding why someone would tag their photo #ip4?  A real-time dictionary for hashtags, Tagalus lets users define tags so that others can understand what they’re talking about. Other users can vote on definitions and decide which best describes the given tag. You don’t need to log in to browse the tags and definitions, but if you would like to contribute a tag, vote on a definition’s authority, comment, etc. you have to use an OpenID to log in. You can also use Tagulus on Twitter (@tagulus) to get and set definitions by sending one of two commands that @tagalus understands. You can also get a bookmarklet for your browser.  For a nice review of Tagulus see this post from ReadWriteWeb:  What Does that Hashtag Mean? New Service Tells You.
• TweetChat
  TweetChat is a tool that helps you monitor and chat about one topic. Each tweet you make automatically gets a hashtag added for the room you are in – no need to worry about hashtag typos..The room auto-updates with new posts using the hashtag you are following – no need to reload…Good tool for anyone wanting to create or contribute viaTwitter around a specific tagged topic.
• HashTweeps
  Find Twitter users by hash terms
• Twitag
  Twitag is a #tag finder for twitter that helps facilitate and organize the most recent content tagged by users.
• What the Trend
  
  What the Trend helps you find out what’s trending on Twitter and why

Different Ways to Use Hashtags

• The different uses of #hashtag
  From Fresco 2.0: Rundown of the multitude of ways that Twitter hashtags are being used from Events to products to services.
• Use Twitter HashTags To Increase Your WebSite Traffic
  From Internet Home Business Help: Some tips for getting the best use out of your Twitter hashtags to help boost traffic to your website or blog – including keeping your hashtags, memorable, short, and unique.
• Using Hashtags and Twitter to Build Website Traffic
  From SEO, Web Development, Internet Marketing, and Product Reviews: Advice on how to use Twitter hashtags to build traffic and backlinks to your site.
• Hashtag Happy Hours: How Moms Party Down on Twitter
  From Mashable: Jessica Smith fills up in on how some moms online are using Twitter hashtags to convene virtual parties.
• How To Selectively Integrate Your Personal And Corporate Twitter Accounts Using RSS And A Hashtag
  From Corporate Dollar: Nice How To instructions for organization that want to copy selective tweets from many personal Twitter accounts to a single corporate Twitter account.
• Use Hashtags To Grow Your Community
  From FeverBee: Creating a hashtag for your community and creating a community from a hashtag.
• Beyond #FollowFriday: 24 Daily Twitter Memes
  From Mashable:  Brian Wallace offers a rundown of 24 daily Twitter memes to help you meet new Twitterers and discuss common interests from the wildly popular #followfriday to #musicmonday to #thankfulthursday and more
• What Are the Most Effective Ways Nonprofits/Foundations Can Use Twitter #Hashtags?
  From Beth’s Blog: Beth Kanter reviews three good ways nonprofits can use hashtags – events and conferences, knowledge sharing, and for advocacy.
• Twitter Hashtags and Groups « American Pai
  From American Pai:  How to use Twitter Hashtags and channels to filter all the information on Twitter.
• How To Create Successful Chats on Twitter with Hashtags (Video)
  From John Haydon: In this video, John outline the basics of managing a hashtag chat on Twitter.
• Quick Ways to Plant Some Roses in a Hashtag Potty
  From Twitip: Joi Murugavell provides advice on how to use hashtags effectively.

Facebook has certainly garnered a lot of attention these past weeks- first with it’s new vanity URL feature and then with it’s changed privacy features.

Facebook’s vanity URL feature – particularly for Facebook pages – is of particular interest to businesses.  As Facebook continues it’s explosive growth heading towards 250 million active users, more and more businesses are hoping to leverage Facebook for serious business purposes.   Facebook’s new feature allows businesses to create a custom url for their business page – something that wasn’t possible until now. (If you haven’t gotten your custom name, read Facebook expert Mari Smith’s post: How To Secure Your Facebook Username (Vanity URL).)

Want to sharpen your skills and learn how to really leverage Facebook to grow your business?

Below I’ve put together a comprehensive collection of resources, tips and advice on how to use Facebook for business purposes including:

1. General Guides, Tutorials and Help
2. Facebook Pages and Groups
3. Events and Causes
4. Tips and advice from a range of experts for making the most of Facebook
5. Advice for Non-Profits
6. Other Facebook tools, applications & features (including Facebook Connect)
7. Facebook Statistics

Let us know if there are any resources we’ve missed.

Comprehensive Guides and How-To’s

• How To Use Facebook for Business
  From Hubspot: Free downloadable 22 page E-book – very comprehensive with advice on setting up your profiles, setting up/promoting a business page, groups vs. pages, setting up a group, advertising on Facebook and measuring/analyzing.
• Facebook for Grownups
  From Butterscotch- 10 part video with step-by-step instructions for how to sign up for Facebook and how to create a Facebook profile.
• Facebook Help Center - official Facebook Help
• Facebook’s Complete Privacy Presentation
  From Mashable: Check out all the details provided by Facebook on their new privacy settings.
• Books:
  • The Facebook Marketing Bible: The Guide To Marketing Your Brand, Company, Product, Or Service Inside Facebook
    From Justin Smith: Provides an introduction to what’s possible on Facebook to the spectrum of marketers from brand advertisers to volunteer grassroots evangelists. The Facebook Marketing Bible contains three detailed sections: Tools for Guerilla Marketers, Tools for Advertisers, and Tools for Application Developers. Each part outlines the best available channels and strategies for reaching your audience inside Facebook.
  • Facebook Marketing: Leverage Social Media to Grow Your Business
    From Steven Holzner: In Facebook Marketing, best-selling author Steven Holzner reveals new social marketing techniques that do work, and shows you exactly how to make the most of them. Using true case studies, Holzner introduces powerful new techniques from today’s smartest Facebook marketers…and helps you avoid pitfalls that can cost you money and credibility.
  • I’m on Facebook–Now What???: How to Get Personal, Business, and Professional Value from Facebook
    From Jason Alba, Jesse Stay, Robert Scoble and Lee Lorenzen: This book explains the different parts of Facebook and helps you understand how you can get the most out of your Facebook account. It helps you understand what you could or should do in Facebook to further your career, business, or job.

Facebook Pages and Groups

Please see our more recent post:  Ultimate Guide to Facebook Pages – a comprehensive listing of resources to help you create a more effective Facebook Page.

• Facebook | Pages
  Official Facebook Page that walks you through the steps of preparing and setting up a Facebook Page. Also links to Facebook Ads to find new fans.
• Facebook Pages Product Guide
  Official Facebook PDF document providing an overview of how to use the new Public Profile Pages.
• 7 Tips To Getting Started On Facebook For New Businesses
  From Krishna De’s BizGrowth News: Basics for new businesses who want to get started with a Facebook Page to build their brand online.  Includes tips on registering your Facebook page, choosing keywords, creating an about page, setting a default page, designing the look of your profile, setting privacy setting and finding fans.
• Should a Facebook Page Be Part of Your Digital Marketing Strategy?
  From Marketing Profs Daily Fix Blog: Paul Chaney explores advantages and disadvantages of using Facebook as part of a marketing strategy. Also looks at Groups, Events and personal profiles for businesses.
• Facebook Pages vs Facebook Groups: What’s the Difference?
  From Mashable: Howard Greenstein clarifies the difference between Facebook’s Pages vs. Groups and reviews the factors you should consider when choosing which is right for your organization.
• Facebook Group and Brand Pages Best Practices
  From Social Media Explorer: Review of best practices for organizations who want to create group and/or brand pages on Facebook.
• Building A Facebook Fan Page
  From Janet Fouts: Easy-to-follow step-by-step instructions for building a Facebook page. Also read part 2 with additional tips on how to “dress up” your Facebook page by adding applications, content, tagging and more.
• Killer Facebook Fan Pages: 5 Inspiring Case Studies
  From Mashable: Callan Green provides five mini case studies of brands that are doing everything right when it comes to Facebook fan pages – Pringles, Coca-Cola, Starbucks, Adidas, and Red Bull.
• How To Create A Powerful And Engaging Facebook Page
  From Corporate Dollar: Advice on creating a compelling facebook page for your business from branding the page with a custom image to making use of the new features available including the tabbed interface, direct feeds for fans, multi-media integration, discussion groups and more.
• How To Develop A Facebook Page That Attracts Millions of Fans
  From AllFacebook: Suggestions for making the most of the new Facebook Pages and their updated features.
• What, Why, and How of Facebook Pages: An Expertise Roundup
  From Beth’s Blog:  Beth Kanter provides a nice roundup of expert advice from folks like from Mari Smith, Jesse Stay, Collin Douma, and others on using Facebook pages.
• 5 Elements of a Successful Facebook Fan Page
  From Mashable: Rundown on the 5 things that contribute to an effective Facebook Fan page from “networking with other platforms” to “creating a resources” to “creating contests that encourage participation.”
• How to Develop a Successful Facebook Page
  From MarketingProfs: Mark Ivey provides success strategies and highlights some of the key features of Facebook Pages.
• 8 Essential Apps for Your Brand’s Facebook Page
  From Mashable: Alison Driscoll review eight essential apps for your brand’s Facebook page – from Facebook Notes to Blog RSS Feed Reader to Twitter App and more.
• Two New Ways to Update Facebook Pages without Using Facebook
  From ReadWriteWeb: Discussion of services from hellotxt and Ping.fm that let Facebook administrators update Facebook Pages.
• 4 Reasons Why Marketers Should Choose Facebook Pages Over Facebook Groups
  From Inside Facebook: Advantages of Facebook Pages vs. Groups for marketing your business.
• 5 Tips to Revive a Fading Facebook Group
  From John Haydon: Advice on how to inject fresh life into a fading Facebook group – from “getting in touch” to “freshening up the page” to “throwing a party” and more.
• Facebook Tips: How to Use the New Business Page Layout
  From E-commerce Guide: In-depth look at recent changes made to Business Pages plus tips on how to use new features, such as status updates and Wall feeds to better connect with your Facebook fans.
• New Facebook Pages: A Guide for Social Media Marketers
  From Mashable: Curtis Hougland and Kristen Vang of Attention write- As more and more marketers use Facebook as a key conduit for brands online, it is important to note some of the new changes to their Business Pages. Following last fall’s overall redesign, these pages will now migrate to the same Wall and tabs design that personal profiles have used. You can explore the new format and follow Mashable on Facebook at Mashable’s Facebook page. Following is a rundown of what you need to know:
• The 30 Most Popular Pages on Facebook
  From Inside Facebook: Since Pages launched in late 2007, they have become the easiest way for brands to get started marketing on Facebook. Today, 3.5 million users become Fans of one of the several hundred thousand Pages on Facebook each day. Here’s the list of the 30 Most Popular Pages on Facebook.
• How To Develop A Facebook Page That Attracts Millions of Fans
  From All Facebook: Review of the the primary benefits and changes for Facebook’s new and updated branded pages.
• Now, Any Business Can Tap 53 Million Facebook Users (For Free)
  From Hubspot: Stats on Facebook along with basic how-to on creating a Facebook Business Page.
• Facebook Fan Boxes: Embeddable Facebook Pages
  From Mashable: Adam Ostrow discusses Facebook feature that allows Page administrators to embed the latest activity from their Page on their own website.
• 10 Key SEO Strategies Every Facebook Page Owner Should Know
  From Inside Facebook: Strategies for employing important SEO tactics within your Facebook Page to help your Page reach more and more Facebook fans.

Events and Causes

• YouTube – Setting up a Facebook Cause
  From My Charity Connects: This video provides an overview of the Causes application on Facebook and provides a step-by-step guide on how to create one.
• 50,000 Members In 6 Days
  From Feverbee: Advice on using Facebook for Causes (and more).
• Wild Apricot Blog : How to promote your non-profit’s cause on Facebook in five easy steps
  Wild Apricot Blog : More advice on using Facebook’s Causes application.
• Effective Fundraising with Facebook Causes
  From The Nonprofit Technology Network: Advice on getting started using Facebook causes.
• Top Ten Tips For Creating BUZZ With Facebook Events
  From Why Facebook: Facebook guru Mari Smith explores the art of using the Facebook Events feature effectively to generate buzz for your event.
• Facebook Events and The Power Behind Them
  From SocialMediaBlogster.com: Advice on using Facebook events to power up your marketing.

Tips and Advice

• Inside Facebook Blog
  Inside Facebook is an independent blog based in Palo Alto, California, focusing on Facebook and the Facebook Platform for developers and marketers. Provides agencies and marketers with information to help them understand the opportunities and risks associated with investing in both Facebook and Facebook applications. Provides reports and insight on the campaigns marketers and brands are deploying inside Facebook.
• The Facebook Marketing Bible: 24 Ways to Market Your Brand, Company, Product, or Service Inside Facebook
  From Inside Facebook: Review of different Facebook opportunities for marketers, advisers and application developers.
• Facebook Marketing Solutions | Facebook
  Official page from Facebook run by Facebook employees intended to help brand marketers market their brands using Facebook. Includes case studies from a number of large brands using the tool, tips and how-tos, and discussion with marketers.
• Facebook Week: Facebook Resources, Analysis and Insights
  From Mashable: Collection of articles providing resources and analysis of Facebook. From building a better Facebook page to making a truly viral Facebook meme and more.
• 32 Ways to Use Facebook for Business
  From Web Worker Daily: Meryl Evans outlines 32 ways you can turn Facebook into a highly effective business tool.
• Facebook Tagging For Business | Social Media Explorer
  From Social Media Explorer: Jason Falls provides advice and 5 rules for using Facebook’s “@” tagging feature for business purposes.
• How to build a Facebook community (14 “levers” you need to be pulling)
  From John Haydon: Excellent article with tips for growing your fan base organically.
• The Anatomy of a Facebook Meme
  From Mashable: When compared to other social media sites, Facebook has a much larger potential reach for “memes” (ideas that people can’t help sharing with their friends) but is quite restrictive on the ways in which these memes can spread. To identify the characteristics necessary for a meme to thrive on Facebook, we must look at what the restrictions demand from them
• 20 Facebook Tips/Tricks You Might Not Know
  From HongKiat: Post covers some interesting things you can do on (or with) Facebook; inclusive of tricks that are not documented or unknown to many, as well as tips to stay connected better with your friends – includes tips such as sharing flickr photos to Facebook, scheduling Facebook messages, choosing what Friends show up in your Friends box, and more.
• HOW TO: Use Facebook for Professional Networking
  From Mashable: Boris Epstein provides advice on how to setup your Facebook for professional use, how to find others to network with, Facebook features that work for professional networking, and ways to maximize the value from those features.
• Facebook’s New Privacy Features: A Complete Guide
  From Mashable: Ben Parr offers an overview of Facebook’s new privacy features.
• Seven Steps to Graphing Your Facebook Strategy
  From Tech Crunch: Review of seven major aspects of Facebook you can use to increase the visibility of your startup, business, product or service: from Setting up your Profile to making connections to sharing your content.
• The Facebook Marketing Toolbox: 100 Tools and Tips to Tap the Facebook Customer Base
  From Inside CRM: long list of 100 tools and tips for leveraging Facebook as a business tool.
• Using Facebook for Marketing – 10 Company Examples
  From Dave Chaffey’s Right Touching Blog: Showcase of businesses from a range of sectors who are using the Facebook pages.
• HOW TO: Build Your Personal Brand on Facebook
  From Mashable: Personal branding expert Dan Schawabel provides a guide to building your personal brand on Facebook.
• How to Build an Impressive Social Networking Presence, Beginning with Facebook
  From Social Media Power: Advice on how to build your presence on social networking sites starting with Facebook.
• What to Do if You Forgot to Register Your Facebook Trademark URL
  From Advertising Age: Steps to take if your trademark was taken by someone before you had a chance to register it.
• 5 Tips for Optimizing Your Brand’s Facebook Presence
  From Mashable: Tips to optimize your presence on Facebook, including the right way to create profile and thumbnail graphics , how to show different content to Fans and non-Fans, creating DIY vanity urls, and how managing what and when you post can lead to greater success.
• 5 Tips for Optimizing your Facebook Marketing
  From Marketing Profs Daily Fix: Paul Dunay offers up options to consider when it comes to the tactics of marketing on Facebook – from advertising to applications to content syndication and more.
• How To Use Facebook “Notes” To Get More Traffic
  From Corporate Dollar: Advice on leveraging Facebook’s Notes application to drive web traffic to your website.
• 12 Ways to Use Facebook Professionally
  From Web Worker Daily: Discussion of how you can use Facebook to benefit your professional career from hooking up with old co-workers and current connections to setting up your profile and security settings to incorporating your other social sites like Twitter or even your own blog.
• Focus on Facebook: Interview with Kristin Foster, Digital Strategist
  From Ogilvy PR: Discussion of Facebook strategies for brands.
• Facebook for Business: Can Brands Ever Get It Right?
  From ClickZ: Anna Maria Virzi explores how brands can translate their Facebook initiatives into tangible results (e.g. sales) with some advice on getting it right – from deciding “if you branding is willing to make the investment” to developing “modules for core activities such as contests, coupons and videos/photos” to maintaining “content to keep engagement high” to “buying media to drive traffic.”
• FACEBOOK FAIL: How to Use Facebook Privacy Settings and Avoid Disaster
  From Mashable: How to use Facebook features that allow you to choose what you show and to what type of people. By using friend lists and playing with your privacy settings, you can create different views for each segment of your life.
• 10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know
  From Mashable: How to use Facebook features that allow you to choose what you show and to what type of people. By using friend lists and playing with your privacy settings, you can create different views for each segment of your life.
• Finding and Engaging Your Brand Evangels on Facebook – Left The Box
  From Left The Box: A technique for easily finding people that are already publicizing your brand to their friends on Facebook.
• HOW TO: Create Branded Promotions on Facebook [500 FREE Invites]
  From Mashable: Discussion of Wildfire’s web tool and Facebook application that can help you create branded promotions on Facebook. With a few simple steps, Wildfire will help you create a comprehensive promotional campaign for your brand on Facebook, Ning, MySpace, and your website involving sweepstakes or a user contest.
• How To Remove An Application From Your Facebook Profile
  From Make Use Of: How to get rid of a Facebook application when you find you no longer have a need for it.
• Getting the Facebook Crowd to Spread Your Widgets
  From eMarketer: Interview with Liza Hausman who heads up marketing for widget platform and ad Network Gigya about how advertisers use widgets and the future of the applications on social networks such as Facebook.
• Facebook Search Tips
  Advice from Facebook’s help pages on searching for people and their content.
• Ten Facebook Tips for Power Users
  From Macworld: Here are ten tips to tweak your profile and get more out of Facebook. These tips go beyond the typical and include ways to stay better connected to your friends and look good doing it.
• The 30 Standard Facebook Profile Photo Styles
  From All Facebook: Trying to decide what type of photo to post in your Facebook profile (or any other profile for that matter). Here Nick O’Neill offers a rundown of 30 profile photos styles that you’ll find most often when exploring your Facebook friends list. If you’re looking to portray a professional image, check out Nick’s pick for Personal Branding Master- social media nonprofit expert Beth Kanter.
• How to Grow A Useful Network with the Social Media Site Facebook
  From The Baby Boomer Entrepreneur: Advice on using Facebook as a tool to grow your business network.
• To-Do List for Facebook and E-Mail Integration
  From ClickZ: Advice from Ed Henrich on how marketers can properly integrate their Facebook presence (Facebook Connect, Pages, Groups) with their email programs.
• How to Friend Mom, Dad, and the Boss on Facebook…Safely
  From Read Write Web: Oh no! Your mom just joined Facebook and what’s even worse, she wants to be your friend. More and more people are finding themselves in this situation today and unsure of what to do. Friending mom and dad, the boss, or other work colleagues opens up the details of your private life for the whole world to see – and you might not be entirely comfortable with that. What’s to be done?
• 10 Things All Businesses Should Do to Market More Effectively on Facebook
  From Inside Facebook: Here are Inside Facebook’s top 10 ways business owners can more effectively leverage Facebook to reach their target audience and drive more business.
• How to “Friend” Someone On Facebook Without Showing Your Status Updates | MakeUseOf.com
  I’m sure that this has happened to you before. Someone you have ties to, whether it’s a co-worker, your boss, or even worse, a parent, has finally discovered social networking and wants to be your newest Facebook friend. Imagine for a moment that I worked at Domino’s Pizza and that I don’t want my boss to know that I just became a fan of Papa John’s (writing this one’s gonna make me hungry). Here’s what I would do to keep that fact confined to my closer friends.
• Facebook Etiquette: Five Dos and Don’ts – PC World
  From PC World: Suggestions for managing your Facebook profile and your overall social networking persona, and warnings about places where you can get into trouble with people who matter to you personally and professionally.

Advertising on Facebook

• Facebook Ads 101 – How to Set up and Track Facebook Ads
  From Subliminal Pixel Labs: Rundown of how Facebook ads work, how to set them up and what tracking and optimization features they offer.
• How-To Guide: E-Commerce Marketing on Facebook
  From Internet.com: Leveraging Facebook business options can provide a new channel for your customers to interact, and at the same time help you acquire new customers as your Facebook fans spread the word about your business to their friends. In this Facebook how-to guide, learn how to use two of the business solutions offered by Facebook. First- the steps you need to take to create your own Facebook Business Page (also called a fan page) and then, the tasks involved in creating a Facebook Ad campaign, which can be used to send visitors to your Web site or new Facebook Business Page.

Advice for Non-Profits on Facebook

• Non-Profits on Facebook
  Facebook’s official page with advice for non-profits on using Facebook.
• Using Facebook for Your Non-Profit
  From Techsoup:  Helpful range of resources for non-profits who want to use Facebook to connect with their supporters including a beginners guide to Facebook, promoting your cause on Facebook, and more.  Also includes links to outside resources.
• Facebook’s New Public Profile Pages: Good News for Non-profits
  From Wild Apricot Blog : Facebook just got a lot more friendly for non-profits with the announcement of Public Profile Pages. This means non-profits now be able to “share all types of content with an unlimited number of users” and Facebook users will be able to comment on the posted content, just as they would on the personal profile page of any Facebook friend.
• Video Tutorial: How To Embed A Social Or Fundraising Widget Into Your Facebook Page
  From CorporateDollar.org: One of the most effective social media tools available to small non-profits are embeddable widgets. Youtube videos, fundraising widgets and social networking widgets can empower your fans to take action for your non-profit. Video tutorial on how to do this on Facebook.
• So you want a Facebook Fan Page for Your Nonprofit? Here’s the Scoop!
  From Beth Kanter: Recap of NTEN Webinar featuring Randi Zuckerberg, Director of Marketing at Facebook and Adam Conner from the DC Office on the emerging best practices for nonprofits who want to set up Facebook Fan Pages. Includes list of best practices and links to a good collection of solid how-to articles on Facebook pages.
• 4 Facebook Tips for Nonprofit Success – See What Others are Doing
  From Beth’s Blog: Guest poster Frank Barry offers up four tips to help non-profits make better use of Facebook and some great case studies

Other Facebook Tools, Applications and Features

• 30+ Apps for Doing Business on Facebook
  From Mashable: Here are over 30 Facebook applications to help promote, network, communicate, collaborate and accomplish more with your business.
• Facebook Powertools: 150+ Apps, Scripts and Add-ons for Facebook
  From Mashable: Rundown of the the leading browser extensions, desktop applications, Greasemonkey scripts and applications for Facebook – more than 150 in all.
• 20+ Great Greasemonkey Scripts for Improving Your Facebook Experience
• Facebook Connect:
  • Facebook Connect
    From Facebook Developers: Explanation of Facebook Connect which enables integration of Facebook Platform into websites. Allows website users to: Seamlessly “connect” their Facebook account and information with your website, connect and find their friends who also use your site, and share information and actions on your site with their friends on Facebook.
  • 10 Great Implementations of Facebook Connect
    From Mashable: Ben Parr reviews some implementations of Facebook Connect that stand out against the rest. Some are on this list because of the seamlessness of their integration, while others for their usefulness.  And here are even 10 more.
  • HOW TO: Add Facebook Connect to Your Blog in 8 Minutes
    From Mashable: Video tutorial for adding Facebook Connect to A Blog.
  • Six Months In: 10 of the Most Interesting Cases of Facebook Connect in Action
    From Inside Facebook: Review of 10 interesting Facebook Connect uses including CNN, Bravo.com’s Real Housewives of NYC and more.
  • Facebook and The Washington Post: More Than Meets the Eye
    From Mashable: Adam Ostrow explores the Washington Post’s implementation of Facebook Connect into it’s website including future opportunities this integration might offer.
  • Facebook Connect Comes to Digg
    Once Facebook Connect has been activated, you’re able to publish your Diggs, comments, and submissions back to your Facebook News Feed. You can also quickly invite your Facebook friends to Digg.
• Facebook Application on Delicious
  Add the Delicious application to your Facebook account and publish information about your bookmarks to your Facebook profile.
• Selective Twitter Status on Facebook
  Selective Twitter Status lets you update your Facebook status from Twitter – BUT you can choose which tweets you want – just end a tweet with #fb when you want to post it as your Facebook status – simple! * Avoid confusing your Facebook friends * Don’t swamp your profile with too many updates * Leave certain updates on Facebook for longer.
• Five Things You Can Do With This New Facebook RSS App
  From ReadWriteWeb; Review of Chia’s Facebook application that allows users to grant permission to pull theor Facebook newsfeed out of the site and publish as an RSS feed.
• Facebook Video 2.1.1
  The popular Greasemonkey Facebook video script is now a full-fledged Firefox addon that lets users download or convert Facebook videos, and embed videos outside of Facebook.
• SocialToo Vanity URLs for Facebook: Better Than the Real Thing?From Mashable: For organizations who have fewer than 1000 fans and can’t get official vanity URLs, SocialToo is offering vanity URLs that redirect to your Facebook profile (with support for pages coming soon). A bonus too: analytics are offered.

Statistics About Facebook

• Statistics
  Official statistics from Facebook
• Facebook Pages Statistics
  Statistics on Facebook Pages
• Facebook Marketing Statistics, Demographics, Reports, and News – CheckFacebook
  CheckFacebook.com is not affiliated with Facebook. Each day, CheckFacebook.com tracks data reported from Facebook’s advertising tool to help marketers and researchers understand how Facebook is spreading across the globe.
• Why Facebook is growing wrinkles
  From Telegraph: Older users are jumping on the social networking bandwagon as if their lives depended on it – and in some cases, they do.
• Women Over Age 55 Fastest-Growing Group On Facebook
  From MediaPost: Results from survey showing that women age 55 and over are the fastest-growing U.S. demographic group on Facebook. The number of women on Facebook is growing faster than men in almost every age group, and women now make up 56.2% of users (as of 2/09).
• Facebook Users Are Getting Older. Much Older.
  From Mashsable: Analytics company iStrategyLabs has examined the demographics stats from Facebook’s Social Ads platform, and they’ve reached some very interesting conclusions. Facebook usersbase, as a whole, is getting much older very fast.