If you’re a social media-savvy creative professional — and since you’re reading this, I’ve got a pretty good hunch you are — you probably already have a professional profile on LinkedIn. But in addition to profiles for individuals, these days LinkedIn also offers pages for companies.

Figure 1: Peachpit Press’s page on LinkedIn is a good example of a well-developed company page.

Getting the word out has never been something you can do all by yourself: It takes a village. Even Paul Revere, as he galloped from town to town in 1775, needed to enlist the help of influential networkers in each community to make sure his message got to everyone who needed to hear it.

In the social media age, reaching the widest possible audience involves encouraging your audience to assist you in getting the word out — by making it as easy as possible for them to reshare your content with their own friends and followers.

I’ll admit it. A year or so ago, I thought Pinterest might be a flash in the pan. (Or maybe a “flash in the pin”?) Social media flavor of the year, the new kid on the block, the youngest who got all the attention. But I wondered if its popularity would last.

Sharing links is a big part of what makes Facebook’s social media world go ‘round. If you’re an active Facebooker, you may take pride in curating a steady stream of entertaining, informative, and thought-provoking articles, blog posts, and videos to share with your audience — in addition to sharing links to your own creative work from time to time.

Using Facebook’s handy scheduling feature for business pages helps you post more effectively by planning your content in advance.

Excerpted from Facebook Me! A Guide to Socializing, Sharing, and Promoting on Facebook, Second Edition by Dave Awl. Copyright © 2011. Used with permission of Pearson Education, Inc. and Peachpit Press.

Facebook tools like status updates, Notes, Pages, photos, and videos make it easy to grab the attention of your friends and fans—and give you the opportunity to reach out to their friends as well, without being pushy or annoying about it.

Facebook has had some ups and downs over the last few months. There was that little kerfuffle about its Terms of Use, which you might recall reading about, oh, everywhere. And a wildly unpopular redesign earlier this year left many users confused.

But despite those missteps, there are still plenty of reasons to like Facebook. It's not just that Facebook is still the single best online tool for reconnecting with old friends and keeping in touch with current ones.