Facebook evolved into the social network de jour for business professionals who didn’t understand or missed out on the MySpace phenomenon, or who didn’t understand how to creatively leverage their LinkedIn contacts.

Since Facebook opened its network, the user base has grown exponentially. Its growth can also be directly attributed to the attention Facebook received during the 2007 F8 Facebook developer conference in San Francisco, where CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg opened its application programming interface (API) to third parties to build applications that run on the network. Personally, our contacts have skyrocketed along with new requests from “friends” (including people we might not know) pouring in on a daily basis.

It’s not just Facebook, however; networks such as LinkedIn and Plaxo are connecting business professionals while also promoting a packaged brand—the experiences, positions, and contributions we have made throughout our career. Our profiles on social networks say a lot about who we are and why people should connect with us.

What you invest in social networks—from your profiles, applications, and aggregated feeds to your relationships—is exactly what you will get out of them. Your network strategy defines your experience. It’s not a nightclub, buffet breakfast, picnic, or spectator sport. It’s a place for you to build and maintain relations with key contacts and friends, and it’s also the most effective way to package and present your online business persona, your accomplishments, and your expertise.

We’ve talked about three popular social networks for professionals: Facebook, Plaxo, and LinkedIn. And that’s just the beginning. New networks will come and go, especially those in the niche market segments where many of us specialize. In our case, we live in the world of marketing with many relevant social networks for us to join to learn and promote our own online brands. For example, networks such as MarcomProfessional.com, Junta42, Gooruze, SocialMediaToday.com, and dozens of others housed at ning.com are potentially valuable networks for anyone in the marketing world to showcase thought leadership.

Although many cringe at the thought of having to set up yet another profile with every new network that is introduced, you have to focus on building your relationships and sharing your capabilities and vision within the networks that foster the visibility critical to your real world. As communications professionals, it’s your job to stay on top of all the new applications and networks where the people you need to reach are participating and communicating.

Social networks are becoming primary mechanisms for connecting with people, ideas, brands, news, and information. However, thinking of social networks as just personal playgrounds will come back to haunt you and any company you work with in the future. Yes, beware of the things you share online because they’re indexed in search engines and live on the Web for a very long time. Yes, your activity appears in search engines such as Yahoo! and Google. And your blog posts, Flickr photos, comments, Twitter updates, and so on, show up in Google Alerts and also in Technorati. You need to think about online participation in an entirely different and more useful and productive way.

You are the brand. Use the power of search and Social Media to your advantage.

This is about leveraging your personal social graph and Social Media tools and channels to more effectively cultivate online relationships and, at the same time, leverage the network to increase visibility for your expertise, reputation, and activity. As a marketer, your collective “brand” can also impact and bolster the brands you might represent. The one thing that connects everything is you. You are on the frontlines for everything related not only to you, but also to everything you represent, now and in the future.

You are the hub of your online activity. With every comment, new profile, update, post, image, or video uploaded, you are intentionally or inadvertently constructing an online persona that, at the very least, contributes to and ultimately creates a personality that is open to perception and interpretation—with or without your implicit direction. Why leave pieces for people to find across the Web through searches and the various platforms you choose to engage in? Reel it in, package it, and present it in a compelling way.

It’s not just about the ability to connect with people. It’s about creating, cultivating, and promoting a strategic online presence and personal brand. Remember, participation is marketing. This is your online identity and your online brand. It’s yours to create, cultivate, define, and manage.

Think about it. Whether you’re an entrepreneur, part of a company, or a student, remember that your Web activity is an open book that remains open for all to read for years to come. Those who are strategic about how they participate online will elevate above the masses that choose to experiment and learn the hard way.

The bottom line is this: Whether you’re applying for a job, pitching a business prospect, or representing a bigger brand in Social Media engagement, you will be Googled for reference. That’s just the way it is. Besides, you know you Google yourself, too. It’s one of our guilty little pleasures.

We’ve maintained profiles on Facebook and LinkedIn for a few years and still do. LinkedIn was sort of Web 1.0’s version of a social network that attracted business professionals and connected them with each other (and introduced them to their extended contacts).

As PR professionals, LinkedIn will serve you well, enabling you to manage a virtual Rolodex, cultivate relationships, find people you need to know, promote your business and areas of expertise, ask questions to crowd-source qualified responses, and help valuable contacts to find you. LinkedIn’s core benefits are valuable as an online static resumé, combined with links and a list of contacts ripe for networking and pilfering. However, the personal network depends on connections and introductions to flourish.

In contrast, Plaxo started as an online address book and calendar that synched with all popular contact-management tools, not just for your own database, but for your contacts, too. It has evolved into a social network and also presents a feed that collects updates from the other social tools you might use outside of the service. For example, if you use Flickr or YouTube, write a blog, or send tweets on Twitter, Plaxo can receive those updates and present them on your profile so that connections can view them in one place. Facebook also offers this capability in the MiniFeed feature.

We can’t leave MySpace out of the discussion, as it is based almost on the same business model as Facebook but is executed differently and targeted at a pop-culture demographic. MySpace is the one of the most popular and successful social networks online, but Facebook is quickly becoming a dominant force in its own right.

With MySpace, profiles are completely over the top with animation, music, video, and atrocious template designs. But with Facebook, users can customize their profile with specific content, applications, and correspondence that further enhance their online aggregated presence. Facebook offers customization, scalability, elegance, and cohesion, collectively representing the tools, services, people, and activity that are important to you.

In terms of profile aggregation, many third-party applications can help you centralize your disparate online profiles and activity, and integrate RSS feeds for services you use that don’t yet have a Facebook application available—microblogs, blogs, pictures, videos, bookmarks, and so forth. Not only does this channel your activity, but it also promotes your brand in your own way and showcases your ideas and expertise. Think about it: You can cleanly package everything you do online into one strategically crafted profile for all to enjoy. It’s also a way of promoting your expertise and staying in contact with peers and other influential people.

Dedicated services are focused social content networks that aggregate all your online activity so that subscribers can tap into everything you (and others) do—all in one constantly updated and easy-to-read feed. These services include Tumblr, Jaiku, FriendFeed, Strands, Lifestream.fm, and SocialThing, to name a few. FriendFeed is becoming immensely popular because not only can people see everything that you do as it hits the Web, but they can also comment in the stream for you and others to see and reply. These feeds are called lifestreams or brandstreams because they channel all activity into one easy-to-view channel (or stream).

Again, social networks enable you to aggregate and promote your online brand while nurturing and managing important relationships.

We focus on Facebook because it’s one of the easiest and most versatile social networks for professionals today. Facebook is a profile and presence aggregator, channeling all your online activity through one main hub and combining almost every online social tool that can be used. And as a communications professional, especially in this social economy, it’s your job to monitor online conversations and the networks in which they take place. Although some say it’s the ultimate marketing tool, we believe it is the closest thing we have to navigating through our first life instead of contemplating starting a “second life.”

The core capabilities of Facebook enable you to e-mail, instant message, and comment on each other’s wall, leaving comments, links, and strategic propaganda on each other’s home pages. Robert Scoble recently asked whether the Facebook Wall would be the new press release. In this example, it’s your personal brand that represents the starting point for any outreach. He started this discussion on his blog.

In response to Scoble’s blog post about Facebook being the new press release, Brian answered the question and continued the discussion with his blog post.

We developed our top ten list of how to target people through Social Media or traditional media:

1. Determine your value proposition and the most likely markets that will benefit from your news.

2. Humanize and personalize the story. One version no longer cuts it.

3. Identify the people you want to reach and how they prefer to see information.

4. Read and watch their work.

5. Participate in their communities and use their tools of choice (but as a person first, not as a PR spammer). Don’t start pitching right out of the gate.

6. Monitor the vibe and how people share information within their communities. Learn the dynamics and the rules of engagement. Listen. Learn. Respect.

7. Don’t pitch. Stand out. Be compelling.

8. Use a variety of approaches but without spamming.

9. Don’t forget the traditional tools that work. Make sure that you cultivate relationships across the board.

10. Repeat the previous steps as you move across the disparate groups of people you need to reach. This is how to do PR across the bell curve of customer adoption and in the Long Tail.

Facebook might not be the next news release, but it’s certainly a place that can get someone’s attention. It doesn’t matter if it’s Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, FriendFeed, or some other tool. It all begins with you, your brand, and your expertise. The work you do and the attention you pay to the cultivation of your online persona will speak volumes about your credibility.

You can use many ways to communicate and gather information using Facebook. Another point of interest on Facebook is the Newsfeed that is on every profile page. It is a powerful and insightful glimpse of your, and your contacts’, recent activity. It summarizes recent applications that are added or deleted; new friendships that are made; groups that are formed, joined, or abandoned; upcoming events and RSVPs; and so on. It gives you everything you need to determine what groups to join, which events to attend, which new apps you should evaluate, and who you should know. And now with the newly announced Facebook Connect service, supporting communities, blogs, and social services can also feed back to your Facebook feed as you participate outside the network.

You can embed many other interesting applications in Facebook, such as these:

One of the main reasons we favor Facebook is that everything we need is in one place. It’s similar to a broadcast center where you can communicate with individuals or groups while also reading what your contacts are doing.

For example, aside from updating your status simultaneously across several outside platforms, you can manage your calendar to see what other events are coming up and where your contacts will be going. You can also join groups dedicated to a variety of topics and organizations that you support and follow, enabling you to communicate directly with other members without having to manage dozens of outside groups and links just to stay in touch. And if you need anything to help you accomplish a task, you can search the Facebook application directory and find the right tool for the job. You can communicate with everyone in one place, using a variety of embeddable tools that reach people in the manner they prefer.

Remember, this is about getting away from clutter, overflowing inboxes, contact spam, and unannounced phone calls. This is about building and maintaining personalized relationships. It’s also about a new take on marketing, enabling you to reach individuals and very targeted groups with specific information that is of value to them.

This is participation. This is personal branding. This is marketing redux. Note, listen, and watch before you begin any marketing campaigns within the network. We’ve said this a lot throughout this book, but as with all Social Media, you first need to think about who you’re trying to reach, how to reach them, and why your story matters to them. This is no place for spam or traditional marketing.

Your job is to not only promote your expertise, but also engage in conversations and discussions that matter to you and to your business. Facebook is one of many social networks that require your attention. To truly engage in Social Media, you need to be wherever the people who matter to you congregate, even if it requires your participation across many different locations. However, this isn’t a pass for you to start marketing blindly. Research, observe, and listen before even thinking about jumping in. Absorb the culture of the community and participate as a person, never as a marketer. Social Media requires respect and intelligence.

It’s about demonstrating expertise and reinforcing good ideas with mistakes and lessons learned. This is how you consistently build and support an online brand. It’s about what you share and how you participate. It defines not only your brand, but also the brands you represent. The rest is just the tools that facilitate the exchange of information and dialogue.