Still confused on how Facebook’s new “Like” button works? You’re not the only one. The recent announcement of a Web-wide “Like” button from Facebook has taken the Internet world by storm. Facebook explains the way this innovation works on their Facebook developers page.

“The Like button enables users to make connections to your pages and share content back to their friends on Facebook with one click. Since the content is hosted by Facebook, the button can display personalized content whether or not the user has logged into your site. For logged-in Facebook users, the button is personalized to highlight friends who have also liked the page.”

But, what does that really mean?

Simply stated, the “Like” button will allow a person to share their unlimited Web interests will their Facebook friends. By “liking” a website, photo, article, blog post – what have you – the website will be posted on their Facebook page, and will become visible to their friends.

“Liking” a website has transformed a website into a “social link.” The Internet is being reinvented into a gigantic social media network and this is the first step to connecting the myriad of links. Since its April 21^st introduction, more than 50,000 websites have joined Facebook’s new social plug in, including CNN.com, abc.com, Pandora, The New York Times, and Yelp.

There is a huge difference between being a part of the social media world and integrating it successfully into your business. To use social media effectively, one must constantly communicate with viewers and stay true to your word.

Amber Naslund from Radian6 shares what she has learned as Director of Community to manage social media into your business:

1. Communicate Frequently

This seems simple, but its rarely done well (and I am continually trying things and improving how and when I communicate and via what channels). I like digest updates via email that are succinct: What are we doing, what’s the status, what challenges are we facing if any, what’s our estimated next step. Ultimately, you need to use the medium that’s comfortable for the person to whom you’re reporting. If they’re a phone person, update calls might work best.

Know when you need to take a conversation to a more private channel, too. In general, I’m not a big fan of disagreeing over email (and NEVER put someone in a difficult position by copying their colleagues or team members on an email of that nature). Instead, I use email to say “I’d like to talk with you about this issue because I feel/think X, Y, and Z. Can we have a phone call to discuss?” It sets the stage for the topic of conversation, but says very clearly that this is a conversation that requires higher touch than an electronic channel.

2. Celebrate Success

Little victories are quite important, as they can illustrate indicators toward the bigger goal, and make the huge objectives seem much more attainable on a day to day basis.

This isn’t to say you shout from the rooftops about everything you did that was awesome. Instead, take opportunities to point out the great work that your team or colleagues are doing, and specifically point toward small milestones that represent progress toward your goals. If your team has done a great job of laying bricks, be sure you demonstrate and highlight how those bricks will create the bigger, more beautiful wall.

3. Hypothesize Failures

Stumbling blocks happen. They’re healthy, in fact. The key to making sure they serve you instead of hinder you is to understand a bit about why they happened, and what the alternative is. The best way to communicate these up the ladder is to say “this didn’t go the way we planned. Here’s why I think that happened, and what we can do to change our approach moving forward.”

If you communicate calm and control in the face of failures, it’s easier for your manager to have faith that when something goes awry, you’ll handle it with a level head. Failures are scariest when they’re unanticipated and when they’re met with reactionary, panicky people. If the project is burning, what you want is someone with a hose, not a can of gasoline.

4. Illustrate Guiderails

This comes with having a well-outlined plan. Plans don’t have to be complicated to be good, but they need to articulate what your main goals are, and then the projects underneath them that will help drive them forward along with who is responsible for and participating in each.

That framework will always give you a place to go back to and say hey, we agreed on this plan of attack. If we want to take on this new thing or shift the course, we have to revisit these priorities and our workloads and make decisions accordingly. It helps keep things on track without having to be the stick in the mud to throw cold water on every new initiative OR say yes to and take on a bunch of stuff that’s just not workable.

5. Create an Idea Parking Lot

When you embark on new territory, small successes tend to breed lots of “you know what we could do?” ideas from the enthusiasts on your management team that aren’t trying to herd the cats of the day-to-day. Some of them are easy to implement and do, but others are loftier, harder, or downright impossible.

Instead of stifling creativity, create an idea parking lot where you can house all of those ideas, and revisit them as a team on a regular basis to see which could move from the parking lot to the actual roadmap. It keeps the ideas alive somewhere, makes the idea folks feel as though they’re being heard, and gives all of you a place to go when you’re seeking inspiration for what’s next on your path.

6. Use Their Language, Not Yours

If you’re speaking to management, you need to spend a great deal of time listening to them and asking questions in order to understand what’s important to them. Then, when you’re discussing your social media strategy, everything you present should be in the context of those things and how they relate. Speaking about social media using jargon, buzzwords, and unfamiliar language can undermine the credibility of your program. Use clear words, and always point to the what, so what, and how of what you’re doing (hat tip to the brilliant Tamsen McMahon for labeling those elements so well).

But be wary of condescension. No one likes to feel like an idiot, and it can be easy to slip into that mode if you’re the expert in a subject and you’re trying to explain it to someone who isn’t as experienced. This goes for down the ladder as well as up, but it’s particularly sensitive when talking to someone who technically outranks you. When in doubt, ask a colleague or a friend to listen to you first to see how you might be perceived.

7. Pick Your Battles

Not everything is worth resistance, even if it’s frustrating or annoying. Ask yourself if the battle you’re about to wage is actually an issue that’s going to fully derail your projects or plans, or if it’s a minor inconvenience or a style/taste issue that you can work around in favor of keeping the larger project on track.

Here are some questions you can ask yourself when you’re wondering whether your challenge is worth the fight.

8. Employ Empathy

Managing up requires being mature enough to put yourself in someone else’s position. Remember that your boss has people that she’s answering to, too, and they might be asking tough questions. As a matter of fact, you might even consider asking management what *they* are being charged and challenged with, so you can understand how what you’re doing impacts upper levels of the business.

Social media can be intimidating for some folks. It’s easy to just spout off and say that they “don’t get it”, but there’s often a deeper reason for resistance, be it a human or business one (and more often than not, the former). If you can be more mindful of reading people, situations, and taking a step back far enough to see the project from a different vantage point, it can help you understand the issues and motivations that might be in play, even if they’re not articulated.

8 Ways to Manage Up for Social Media Success

Jessica Konopa of Hill Holliday started a food blog, The Hungry Mouse, with the intention of trading recipes with her friends. Her blog transformed unexpectedly to having between 60,000 and 70,000 viewers every month and featured in Bon Appetit and Saveur magazines.

Although Konopa has no official coding, designing, or SEO training, she has taken the blogging world by storm and offered up a few tips to help others start up their own blog based on her own experiences:

1. Blogging is a DIY labor of love. Read everything that you can on blogging—and on your niche. And when in doubt, look it up. When I ask him for advice, my coder friend usually says, “Google it. Someone’s already figured out how to do that.” You know what? He’s almost always right.

2. You gotta have the content. You don’t start blogging to get rich. Trust me. You do it because you have something to say. And, it has to be interesting. As Copyblogger’s Sonya Simone put it, “The first rule of Copyblogger is you do not publish content that sucks.”

3. Less is more. It’s cliché, but it’s true. Resist the urge to stuff your sidebar full of junk that’s not relevant to your readers.

4. Learn to love Twitter. If you’re blogging, you’ve just joined a big community of like-minded folks all connected by 1s and 0s. Creating quality content aside, being a blogger is also about reacting in real time as things happen in your little corner of the interwebs.

5. Be genuine. Your readers will know when you’re not. The internet has a pretty good built-in BS detector. The other day, Adii, co-founder of WooThemes, tweeted, “You can’t buy loyalty and awesomeness.” He’s dead on with that.

6. Have a point of view. It doesn’t necessarily have to be unique, but you should be able to get behind it 110%. Stay focused.

7. Your blog is about you. But it’s also about your readers. If your audience is interested in what you’re saying, your blog will naturally evolve into one big two-way conversation.

8. Give stuff away. Giveaways are fun and engaging. People like treats and a chance to win something just for joining a conversation.

9. Make friends. A lot of them. But you have to be for real. Five-thousand fans on Facebook don’t matter much if you don’t know who any of them are.

10. People click the flat belly ads. No really, they do. At least they do on my blog. Pay attention to which ads get clicked and get rid of the ones that aren’t working. Apply the same principle to your content.

10 Things I’ve Learned About Blogging

Twitter can seem overwhelming for those unaccustomed to the site. Thousands of updates are constantly pouring in and conversations are always tweeting back and forth. It may seem impossible to keep current and potential customers intrigued. However, this interaction is the most important way to use Twitter as a business tool. Engaging in conversations helps improve brand awareness, keep current customers informed and excited about the brand, and communicate to other Tweeters with similar interests.

Leyl Master Black, the Managing Director at Sparkpr, offers some advice to the inexperienced Tweeters on improvements to your interactive conversations

• Anticipate Conversations

The first tip is to predict which trending topics will become most popular. Then, engage in the topics that are sure to boast high involvement with all Twitter users. If the topic has a large following and you have made a significant contribution to the topic, your audience becomes larger and gives you a better chance to gain followers and future customers.

• Don’t Just Post – Engage

Tweeting is almost unlimited. Besides the 140 character maximum, the amount of tweets you post in a day can be endless. But in this case, quality is valued over quantity. Viewers are more likely to engage in a conversation if there is something significant or interesting to them. Constant tweets to simply increase your presence on Twitter will possibly annoy viewers and cause them to shy away from conversations with you.

• Move Fast

Although anticipation of trending topics is key, being able to react quickly to surprising or unpredicted conversations is just as important. The unexpected trending topic may not last long or may update rapidly, and to keep interest of viewers, you must know how to respond and do it fast.

• Be Relevant

Again, this tip stresses quality over quantity. Simply responding to respond is not beneficial to you or your viewers, and they will recognize that immediately. It is imperative to be able to contribute to conversations, but your contribution must be relevant and appropriate in order to get valued attention.

To read these Tweet Tips in further detail, check this out.

Social Media is everywhere. Restaurants, stores, small businesses, giant corporations; you name it and chances are they’ve adapted. And probably not just to one type either. Facebook and Twitter alone can fill an inbox in no time, and it doesn’t stop there.

Internet has changed the way everyone communicates and social media has taken it one giant step further. Now, communication is so fast and frequent that it can almost be overwhelming.

Social media has interrupted the typical work day by screaming for reaction. This reaction is crucial to maintaining a thriving social media presence, which has developed into a core business strategy. However, simply reacting to the masses of communication does not generate new thoughts and ideas.  It may help in the short run, but does little for the long run and future of a business.

So, as a social media user, how can you filter the incessant communication to keep it as a useful medium for doing business?

The Founder and CEO of Behance, Scott Belsky has determined some methods for overcoming this reactionary workflow…read his 5 Ways to Reduce Social Media Distractions and Be More Productive.