Facebook and Microsoft have reached agreement to extend their advertising partnership by placing Live Search on Facebook. LiveSide News Blog included an email from Microsoft which read in part:

As part of the deal, Microsoft will work with Facebook to bring its customers Live Search-powered web search and search ads by the end of the calendar year. Facebook will work with Microsoft to design the best search experience for Facebook’s customers and advertisers.

This is a big step forward for Microsoft. With search results being returned within Facebook, Live Search is sure to add to Microsoft’s income. With the millions of users coming through Facebook each day it may even boost Microsoft’s share of search results – only marginally, however as Microsoft spreads its wings and grabs all these little margins, they eventually add up to being a big margin.

For once, it may even be Google that loses a little search traffic. For Facebook users, it may be a plus. Then again it may be the start of a much broader advertisement placement throughout Facebook. Either that or a Microsoft takeover. I am not sure which is worse?

Facebook has grown to be a fairly popular site for people of all ages and from all walks of life. One of the options within Facebook is to develop your own group/ This group can be based around any topic of your choosing.

For this reason many web entrepreneurs use Facebook as a form of social marketing for web sites, blogs or product/services. To do this successfully, you need to develop a strong profile and start a group based on that product/service or related subject.

These tips should help you to develop a successful Facebook group:

Get the basics right
Set it up right. Choose a title, category and description that is relevant to your product or brand. Enter as much information as possible about your group including contact info, location, purpose.

Add friends
Personally invite people – there is nothing like the personal touch. Include your friends who are already in Facebook. Your friends’ friends will then notice that they have joined a new group and may be interested in checking out the group as well.

Send invitations
Facebook allows you to send group invitations to all of the contacts in your Outlook, Hotmail, Gmail, and Yahoo accounts, so don’t forget to invite everyone who’s not already a Facebook friend.

Be Human
Welcome new members and send out periodic emails to your group. Don’t spam them with useless information – keep it focused on the topic of your group.

Keep the group alive by constantly adding information. Encourage others to do the same. Keeping it fresh and update will encourage others to return. Where ever possible promote your group including references on your web page, in your email footer and in your RSS footer.

Treat the people in your group as friends rather than potential customers and your new group will grow and expand – with it will comes the traffic and new customers.

Facebook has a feature that I find interesting, yet limited. Perhaps I have not got the hang of it. The MiniFeeds are handy to grab feeds from your blog, del.icio.us, digg and SU accounts (there are others).

I have not been able to work out how to get the feed from more than one blog into my account. It seems it has a limitation in that respect.

What is interesting is the introduction of comments on these MiniFeeds. This will have one of two effects – one: it will decrease the number of visitors to your blog or website – let’s face it if I can comment on one of your posts in Facebook, why visit your blog in person. Not only that, I can see all your posts and view them in Facebook.

Two: you may find an interesting discussion starting that can be used on your blog as a new post – it can be great to receive inspiration from your readers. That’s value added content.

Of course you need to get viewers in to your profile first and that is where joining groups can be a great asset. Join the groups, add some value and your profile views will grow. The traffic to your site may not.

Whilst you can use url’s in the comments, they are ‘nofollow’ so there is little in the way of link value – however they do sneak through occasionally – if not then perhaps viewers to these comments will follow. Just make sure the comments add value and the link extends the conversation to a higher level. Facebook Minifeeds with comments – and interesting concept little utilized to date.

Your profile is the starting point for your presence on Facebook, in fact, it is the window that allows others to look into you and your products. Your profile page is your landing page – the first thing that visitors see is that landing page so it needs to be optimized to sell you.

The profile page is one of the few areas you can control in Facebook. You control the design and the information that is contained. You can reveal as much or as little as you see fit. You can express your passion for any cause, any product or any brand. You need to take advantage of components including the Personal Info, Work Info, Photos, and applications to tell (sell) your story to the world.

Most people don’t realize how many page views profile pages generate. The more you network, the page views you can generate. The more your profile tells a story – the more attractive your message, the more people are going to want to see more.

Develop pages, which were launched by Facebook last year as a way for businesses of many types to easily establish a brand presence on Facebook, and you have a complete Facebook presence.

It can be difficult finding the time to be social on all these social sites and some, like Facebook and Myspace seem to take more time than many other. There are several ways you can manage your activities on Facebook that will increase your presence but don’t take up all your time.

1. Limit your contacts – With Facebook you will get a lot of people wanting to connect with you. Check them out first and only connect with those that are going to be of value.
2. Limit your activities to twenty or so groups – Thirty groups max. Select groups that are relevant to you and to your niche; getting involved with groups outside your niche just uses up valuable time.
3. Create a group or two – create groups that are under exposed and yet related to your niche. Become the ‘expert’ in that group.
4. Initiate discussion – move around the groups on a regular basis and start discussions. Over time you can use your own products or brands within those group discussions.
5. Work on your profile – make sure your profile is interesting without being a total sales pitch. Tell people a little about yourself – people will be interested in you – not your product.
6. Cross reference – use a blog or your web page to introduce discussions on Facebook. Use your discussions on Facebook to reference back to your pages. If you can work quickly, you can find a hot discussion, write a relevant article and publish it, then join the discussions where you can casually refer back tot your article.

Follow those tips and you will find that your time on Facebook is worthwhile and will over time start to develop trust, loyalty and traffic.