You can go a few different ways with Facebook.  You can try and go “viral” and put up a fan page and see if you can generate a bunch of traffic for free.  You have to have some compelling content to put on the page.  You want people to tell two friends in this case.  This is not always the easiest thing to do.  If your business sells a product of service to your customers, you may want to offer discounts from time to time.  It gets people talking about your site, and if you throw discounts out there once in a while, people have a good reason to come back.  You could also try doing give-aways.  It’s the same thing; people will see that there is a reason to come back.

The other way to go, is to advertise in much the same way you do in Google.  Facebook has paid ads just like Google, but gives you a little bit more control of who you want to show your ad to.  You can choose gender, age, location, and other factors that you cannot choose with Google.  You are offered the choice of basing your spend on clicks or impressions.  You can choose based on the interests of the users you want to advertise to.  And, you can put up a logo.  These factors really allow you to zero in on the people you want to advertise to.

And, if you do it right, you can use both on tandem to really get your name running through the Facebook ranks.  With upwards of 300,000,000 users running through the system, it’s a powerful tool to use to bring users to your site.

Social Media has become quite the hot ticket in the last few years.  Twitter, Myspace and Facebook, to name a few have become a great way to get your (_fill in the blank__) noticed by literally millions of people.  People have become celebrities just for having something to say.  Look at Tila Tequila.  She is famous for being famous, and turned her Myspace fame into “legitimate” celebrity.  Social Media sites like Reddit, Digg and StumbleUpon allow any user to pass on websites and news articles to the greater populations of the site.  Done correctly, these sites are the internet equivalent of telling two friends, and them telling two friends, and so on and so on and so on.

So, which is better?  A recent article by Steve Logan put it this way, “Both techniques work in very different ways. You build links by making requests, payments (only to the right people – directories and the sort) and creating content that causes a stir. Networking can of course help this process. When you get noticed by more people, they may be inclined to link to you; there’s no guarantee of course, but social media is a way of raising a profile and showing off your expertise to the world – prime link bait conditions.

“Of course the main reason most people create an article or release, at least in an SEO capacity, is to get it picked up and syndicated across a number of sites. The dream ticket is a major news agency picking up a story on their newswire and sending it global; this of course is extremely rare. To do this, it needs to be relevant, it needs to be interesting and it needs to offer something new. Regurgitating the same stuff over and over again may save time, but that could well prove to be a false economy.

“But once again we’re thrust back into the realms of Web 2.0. If you want to get people talking about your content, you may first need to start shouting about it.”

In a nutshell, Mr. Logan is saying links are good, and sometimes you need to use Social Media to get the word out to as many people as possible.  But these two different approaches have their drawbacks as well.  For Social Media to be highly effective, it takes a lot of effort.  A LOT of effort.  The Average Joe can’t just get on to Facebook, tell his friends to stop by his website to check out the latest gizmo he’s selling and expect sales to boom.  However, if, in addition to telling all of his friends he creates a Facebook page for his site, goes over to Myspace and does the same thing, keeps in constant contact with his Twitter followers, puts out a blog entry that is picked up via RSS feed on sites like Blog Digger and Blogarama  and plugs his new gizmo on other blogs and outlets, he stands a good shot at really taking advantage of Social Media  But what these efforts do not do is make his site a better website by strengthening it and giving it credibility.

How does this fit into the scheme of things for the Small Business Website?  First, you need to identify your target market.  If you sell Twilight memorabilia, you can bet the majority of your target market is going to be 14 to 20 and female.*  Based on this assumption, you should look at those two main factors for an idea as to where you should focus your efforts.  BrianSolis.com recently published an extensive list of demographical information for the top 20 Social Media sites. His research shows that for the gender group we’re looking at, suggested sites would be Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Flickr, Friendfeed, Ning, Upcoming uStream and Yelp.  Combine that with our assumed age group, and Myspace is your big winner with 64% of their users being female, and 44% of their users under the age of 24.  Facebook, Ning, Upcoming and uStream are other sites that would likely provide good results for the effort you put in.  If, however, you were selling high-waisted plaid pants, you wouldn’t be hitting up the kids at Myspace to help generate traffic.  What this boils down to is finding your target, and not straying from it.

Links for the Small Business Website can be a little more challenging if looked at alone.  To obtain links you have generally 3 options; submit your sites to legitimate directories, request links from reputable sites, or purchase them from reputable sources.  There are other ways to do it, but those are the big three.  Unless you just stick to buying links, obtaining quality links can be a very time consuming process, usually garnering little reward for the effort you put in, if at all.  But, as mentioned above, obtaining these quality links will help strengthen and develop your site for the long haul.  The more you get, the better off you are.  But, quality trumps quantity any day.  When trying to find potential sources for links you want to think of two things; where they are coming from, and who will see them.  That is a bit broad, so let me elaborate.  You want to check on the reputation of the site in general.  Does it look like a site that you would want to attract visitors from?  An extreme example would be a religious site trying to get a link on a porn site.  Does the  site have  a place where a text link could be naturally placed?  If they would just throw your link up in some group of links, just keep on looking.  You don’t want that link.  At least from an SEO standpoint.  Is the site you’re looking at a .com?  Or is it a .gov, .org, or .edu?  These three types of sites carry a lot of weight with search engines.  But, that said, they are usually very difficult to obtain.

In the long run, arguments could be made for both Social Media and linking.  Personally, I don’t think Social Media can stand alone in the long run.  Eventually people get tired of telling two people, and so on.  But, if you combine your well-targeted Social Media efforts with solid link-building efforts, you’re likely to see more of a return for your efforts than if you chose one over the other.

*I pulled this demographic out of thin air to make a point.  But, come on, how far off can I be?