Just copy the link to the page, logout of Facebook and paste the link to check it out.

There is currently no limit on the number of fans for a custom landing page.

I agree that the quality of your views is much more important than the quantity, especially for local businesses.

It's nice to see smaller communities and groups stretching and doing creative things like this. Though coming from Billings, Montana we don't look at Nashville as being all that small. I think Nashville has almost as many people as our entire state. :-)

Having the guts to try something different and stepping outside of the box is a great way for smaller businesses and groups to get free publicity and go viral. I met with a client today who is a bail bondsman about doing some out of the box things, while we won;t see him doing a rendition of Fame anytime soon, he understands that there are many creative ways to build your brand and create name recognition.

Doug

The first 6 months or so that I was on Twitter I didn't get it for many of the reasons you state. But then I started using TweetDeck and that changed things. You can manage more than one account, you can have several columns based on different searchs, groups of friends etc. It helps manage the mess that Twitter can be.

A good way to manage questions and responses is to use a Hashtag for example #mtbiz is one that I follow. You send your tweet out asking your question with the tweet in it and you can follow the conversation on that Hashtag. With Tweetdeck you can devote a column to a hastag, I have several different hashtags that I follow. I would be surprised if there wasn't a way to display a hashtag on your blog, I know you can grab a RSS feed at hashtags.org or by using twittersearch for the hashtag.

Like any new tool Twitter is very good at some things and not that good at others, I've seen some great successes on it and have friends / clients who are seeing significant traffic from Twitter to ther blogs and sites. But I've also seen the bad, the auto-follow and DM spam the idiots telling you their every move throughout the day, "Yay you took out the trash." But one of the great things about Twitter is that you can simply unfollow those idiots and you never have to listen to them again. Now wouldn't it be nice if it was that easy in real life...

Doug

I appreciate your perspective as a journalist and agree that most social media is not "news." I believe that the future of social media "news" comes down to some of the same principles as responsible journalism.

I try to only tweet or share things that i have verified and only listen to others that I feel do the same. As Twitter and other social media matures I hope we'll find that most people will do the same. Because even though we chuckle when we read the Enquirer headlines smart people don't believe them until they read it in the NY Times or another reputable news source.

Doug

Hi Mike,

It's good to see someone else in Montana interested in Social Media Marketing. I too believe in social media marketing and believe that it is fundamentally changing marketing and that businesses need to learn to harness it's power or they will fall behind.

To help keep our Montana businesses up to date on theses methods I'm teaching several classes over the next couple of months both online and in person to help Montana's businesses learn how to use social media marketing.

I look forward to hearing more about your journey,

Doug

With the tools available today it is foolish for a company not to be monitoring what is being said about them online and in the social media space. But too many companies still expect to be able to control the conversation and simply do not understand social media. I believe the companies that truly grasp social media will grow to dominate their industries, because social media is the future.

Doug

Jim,

Thanks for the great info, I'm preparing for a series of local presentations on social marketing and may even have one for the local Chamber of Commerce. You've given me some great info to share.

Doug