It’s easy to add links to your Facebook page or LinkedIn profile to your website. It is simply a matter of adding some HTML code within your design.

Of course many of the social media sites offer widgets that will create a custom badge on your website that pulls in content from your profile. We are just discussing the basics today, getting those social media links on your site with the appropriate icons.

1. You need the images that you plan to use for your links. I recommend using images directly from the social media platform. Here are the links:

Facebook. http://www.facebook.com/pages/manage/promo_guidelines.php

LinkedIn. http://developer.linkedin.com/docs/DOC-1101

Twitter. http://twitter.com/about/files

YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/t/creators_downloads

If you looking for something with a little more style, please check out the enormous amount of social media icon sets found at Smashing Magazine. I like some of the sets in this post about free icon sets.

2. After you have the image, you plan to use, you will need the actual link for your profile or page. The easiest way to find the link is to navigate to your profile and copy the URL in the address field of your browser. From there, you will probably have some editing to do.

Facebook. The address in your browser bar will show additional information that you don’t need for your link. If you have a Facebook page with less than 25 followers, your link should look like this:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/<town>/<page name> /<string of 12 numbers>

Depending on the type of page you have set up, you may not have the <town> field. If you have at least 25 followers, then log in to Facebook, after login, navigate to http://www.facebook.com/username. Be sure to select “Set a username for your Pages.” This will give you a new simpler URL of your choice, as long as it is available.

Doesn’t http://www.facebook.com/laurabcreative, look better than http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sterling-VA/laurabcreative/26156294968?

LinkedIn. From within LinkedIn, navigate to Edit My Profile. If you haven’t already set your custom URL, do this by selecting Edit following your existing URL in the Public Profile field. Your new URL will look like this:

http://www.linkedin.com/in/<your name>

My LinkedIn profile is http://www.linkedin.com/in/laurabpoindexter

Twitter. Twitter is the easiest site for URLs. Your URL is:

http://www.twitter.com/<your Twitter handle>

Your handle is the 15 character username. For example, my URL is http://www.twitter.com/laurabcreative.

YouTube. YouTube also has inherent URLs that are already customized. All users have channels, whether you post videos or not. You will see the URL is:

http://www.youtube.com/user/<username>

You can remove the “user” in this URL and it will still work. For example, one of my client’s YouTube channel is http://www.youtube.com/loverugbycompany.

The media hype, warranted or not, over social media sites can be overwhelming especially for small businesses. Where to start? How to keep up? It seems like it could take up all your spare time and it can. This is why I recommend a well thought out strategy for small businesses that includes social media as part of an online strategy which is just part of an overall marketing strategy. However, if you have a retail location, I have one social media site that you can take advantage of with only a few minutes a month of time and the rewards can be immediate. What is this magic site, you ask? foursquare.

The definition. Foursquare is a mobile application that helps you find new ways to explore your city. Foursquare helps you meet up with your friends and lets you earn points and unlock badges for discovering new places, doing new things and meeting new people. Users can also choose to have their Twitter and/or Facebook accounts updated when they check in

The company was founded by Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai and is based in New York City. The service launched in March 2009. There are currently nearing 1.6 million users and with 10+ check-ins per second. And the numbers keep climbing. They have been called the next Twitter in regard to meteoric rise in users and influence.

It’s part social networking site, city guide and game – all in one. Users check in to local establishments and earn points for checking in. Their friends can see where they have checked in. Users can also unlock certain discounts and tips that other users have left behind. And it’s not just discounts; tips include what to order at a restaurant and what not to miss at a museum. This is word of mouth at its best. Since the application uses the GPS location of the user’s mobile phone, a user can find places and discounts that they would not have been aware of otherwise. For a quick overview, visit the demo video on the home page.

I’ve noticed that foursquare is currently being used by restaurants, bars and coffee houses. Most discounts I have seen are for the mayor of the location (the foursquare user who has checked in the most times at that location in the last 60 days). This is where the game aspect comes in as users earn points and badges for checking in. Right now Starbucks is offering $1 off Frappuccino to the mayor of each of their locations.

It is nice to entice foursquare users to compete over the mayorship of your location; however, I think many businesses are missing the boat. I would offer a discount or special offer to any foursquare user who checks in. You can still offer a super special discount for your mayor.

What kind of investment will this take? Unlike social media sites like Facebook or Twitter where frequent updates help you stay in front of your fans and followers more often, foursquare users see your specials when they are in your neighborhood. A modest investment of a few minutes a month to change the special and you are on your way to participating in this new online trend. Don’t stop there; promote your special on your other marketing platforms along with in-store materials provided by foursquare. Find out how to access your listing and get in-store materials on the business page.

Foursquare is also sharing info with local merchants who use foursquare to share discounts. So you can keep track of your best customers and get an idea of their habits through foursquare.

If you are a retail location like a restaurant or retail store, I would get online right now to verify your location information and add a foursquare special. It’s easy and you can start tracking results right away.

Social media is all the rage in the marketing world, especially the small business marketing world. I know this because it is what I do and what I hold seminars on. And I talk to business owners everyday who say “oh, I already have a Facebook page”. As if that were enough. I often equate it to a decade ago when businesses thought they could just build a web site and their sales would skyrocket. We all know how successful businesses were who had a site with no strategy.

I use this blog to give you real world examples of good and bad marketing which I tag as “Brilliant” or “Daft”. This is not to highlight or criticize the companies in my example, but rather to get you to think. Are you doing something similar? How can you make it better? If it’s a good idea, can you use it in your business?

I encourage my clients and audiences to look at what is working in other industries and apply it to their business. I absolutely love this example below by a guy looking for a job in advertising…

Does that give you any ideas on what you could be spending your AdWords budget on other than fighting for those hot keywords?