This question comes up quite a bit: “I want to get my business on Facebook. Should I set up my business presence under an individual profile account, or a Facebook Page account?” Our answer is that you should definitely take advantage of Facebook Pages and all the amazing functionality they give you. Here is an explanation of the differences between the two, and why you should go the Pages route:

It’s never too early to start getting excited about South by Southwest 2010!

I’m a few days behind with this announcement, but the voting has begun for SXSW Interactive Festival panel ideas and I’ve got two in the running. I’d sincerely appreciate it if you checked out both ideas below. And (if you decide that they’re worthy enough) give them a “thumbs up” vote.

Saving Our Newspapers Through Community
With: Patrick O’Keefe, Julia Thompson, Jennifer Howze, Jason Falls, Nathan T. Wright
Many newspapers have online community features, but few of them have user interaction that is intelligent, responsible discourse. Can a newspaper set behavioral ground rules and still claim to be an open forum? What staff and time resources should be in place to effectively foster and moderate a thriving community? The panel will explore these questions and offer a step-by-step playbook for evolving the social newspaper.
Vote for this idea in the SXSW panel picker!

How to Fall in Love With Your Social Network Again
With: Greg Swan, Nathan T. Wright
We truly have love/hate relationships with our social networks. We complain when spam activity increases on Twitter, even though it’s an opt-in/opt-out/block culture. We moan about our friend streams getting out of control, but we don’t set ground rules for who we follow in the first place. Facebook offers some of the most robust privacy features, yet most users don’t even know they exist or how to implement them. This panel will help you fall in love with your social network again.
Vote for this idea in the SXSW panel picker!

For 2,200 other amazing panel ideas, you can browse the full list here. Have you submitted a panel? Drop a comment below and let us know – we’d love to check it out.

Below is a quick video tutorial on how to add a Facebook Fan Box to your website or blog. If you’re interested in what this all means and why it’s important, I wrote about the advantages of the Fan Box back on July 17 over at IowaBiz.com.

If you’ve added the Fan Box (or any Facebook Connect features) to your organization’s site, leave us a comment below and let us know how it’s working out for you.

Nathan was out of the office last Friday, so I decided to head to the Iowa State Fair to see what kind of trouble I could get into. It’s much easier to cause trouble when you have a P.I.C. (partner in crime), so I conspired with John Pemble to meet up and make some movies. You can see his version of our afternoon here. Here’s mine:

Music from Free Music Archive. Artist: Shake That Little Foot, Songs: “Turkey in the Straw” and “Western Country”