For today’s 12 Days of Blogging post, I decided to feature a topic that’s perhaps even more popular than Twitter: Facebook! I found so many blog posts on this topic that I had a hard time deciding on just seven posts to highlight – so along with these seven, you can scroll to the bottom to read tons more about Facebook.

Oh, and as always, please leave a comment with a link to your own post if you’ve written about Facebook this year. Come on – when else are you encouraged to comment with links? The more people who add links, the better this series will be for everyone!

And now, today’s posts:

1. R.I.P. 3 Ways Facebook is Killing Your Website by Jay Baer at Convince and Convert

Jay Baer’s presentation at BlogWorld 2010 (with Amber Naslund) was easily one of my favorites, and I was happy to meet him briefly at the UnMarketing Tweet-Up the day before BlogWorld started. He always has something interesting to say on Convince and Converge, so I wanted to highlight his unique take on the topic of Facebook. Jay writes:

The game used to be relatively simple. Build a website. Make it useful and at least moderately pleasing to the eye. Keep it updated. Make your content at least semi-friendly for search engines. Bingo! A digital marketing success story.

Not now.

Like print newspapers, basketball players under 6 feet tall, and the McRib sandwich, the website as we know it will soon be a thing of the past – a quaint reminder of the original Internet era.

Who killed the website? Facebook, of course.

If you aren’t subscribed to Convince and Convert already, I highly recommend it! It’s definitely one of those blogs on my must-read list. You can also follow Jay on Twitter @jaybaer.

2. Facebook Advertising – Soup to Nuts Guide by Jeremy Schoemaker at ShoeMoney

There are two main approaches to Facebook, in my opinion – use it to make money or use it to build your fanbase. The best bloggers combine the two! In this post, Jeremy Schoemaker (you know, ShoeMoney) gives us the presentation he gave at Affiliate Summit East this year. He’s an Internet marketer more than a blogger, so he approaches Facebook from a business perspective – and those of us who are bloggers first and moneitzation-ers second can really learn a lot from that. This is a video rather than a post, so head directly there to check it out, and make sure to spend some time on the ShoeMoney blog while you’re there – he has a lot to teach bloggers about making money online! You can also follow him on Twitter @shoemoney.

3. How Myrtle Beach Double Their Facebook Fans in Just 5 Months by Mike Stenger

I had the pleasure of spending time with Mike at BlogWorld, and when I was compiling this series, I knew I wanted to highlight this post by him. He worked with Myrtle Beach (a popular vacation destination on the east coast of the United States) during 2010, and this post is a case study of sorts (and I love case studies), showing you who he got crazy results for their Facebook page in just a few months. From the post:

When it comes to Facebook pages, they weren’t doing bad at all necessarily. The page wasn’t being updated consistently and there wasn’t a ton going on, but they were averaging anywhere from 1200-1500 fans per week organically.

However, they had a goal to build it up and get it growing. Now, being that they had around 110,000 fans when we got started, there was definitely a need to build up engagement and interaction with the existing community.

Not only that, but if we could simply get a small fraction of the fans to share with their friends, we could get the page to grow more.

To read the entire story of how he helped their Facebook grow, check out MikeStenger.com, and don’t forget to follow him on Twitter @mikestenger. Seriously, folks, you want to follow this guy. He’s hands down one of the nicest people I’ve ever met and super smart when it comes to social media.

4. 10 Top Facebook Pages and Why They’re Successful by Amy Porterfield at Social Media Examiner

Amy is the Facebook manager for Social Media Examiner, so what better person to write about this platform? Like I’ve said before, I love a good case study, and this post has ten mini ones! Writes Amy,

Each of these pages has incorporated unique features that have attracted hundreds of thousands (sometimes millions!) of fans and attracted the notice of major media publications. That’s a pretty big feat, considering there are thousands of new pages popping up on Facebook daily!

There is no need to reinvent the wheel. Instead, check out what others are doing and tweak these strategies to make them your own!

You can read more great posts about new media at Social Media Examiner, and make sure you stop by the nomination post for their second annual Top 10 Social Media Blogs list. You can follow Social Media Examiner founder Michael Stelzner on Twitter @Mike_Stelzner and you can follow post author Amy on Twitter @amyporterfield. She also blogs at AmyPorterfield.com.

5. Facebook Contests: Seven Tips for Flawless Execution by Gini Dietrich at Spin Sucks

Facebook contests can really help boost your traffic, but so many don’t work very well. I’ve tried to participate in some of them; I know. In this post at Spin Sucks, Gini Dietich talks about a recent Facebook contest their site held for fans, and what went wrong. These tips can help you run a contest that works well on your page. From the post:

All-in-all, it was a great contest and lots of fun (my face on a body builder’s body is really pretty funny!) and we had a TON of community engagement. But we also learned that if the contest isn’t executed flawlessly, it won’t matter what kind of prize you give away or how much fun people are having, you’ll end up losing some of your fans.

You can read more at Spin Sucks and follow the site on Twitter @spinsucks.

6. Google and the Rise of Facebook by Brian Solis

I used to joke that someday Google would own the Internet. Not dominate the Internet. Own it. Now, I’m not so sure because there’s another force to be reckoned with – Facebook, of course. In this post, Brian Solis talks about how Facebook is slowly gaining momentum to crush Google – and why this is important to you as a blogger, business owner, or social media manager. Writes Brian:

Facebook started out as a social network, but it is officially growing into a full-fledged personal OS, where friends and experiences are interconnected inside and outside of Facebook. And, at the center of everything is you. Facebook is a platform where relationships create the construct for the 3C’s of information commerce. The acts of sharing and consuming content in social media represent the social dealings between people and set the stage for interaction and education.But, it is the platform that offers a sandbox for development and also a solid foundation for social architecture. It is the sites that feature Facebook interconnects that weave the fabrics of relationships and the ties and interests that bind us.

Check out the full post on BrianSolis.com and follow him on Twitter @briansolis.

7. 10 Ways to Rock Your Facebook Campaign by Deb Ng at Kommein

This last post is by a name you all hopefully know and love, BlogWorld’s conference director Deb Ng. Her post on Kommein is all about combining promotion with engagement to actually get results on this platform. It simply isn’t enough to sign up for a page and wait for thousands of fans to run it for you! These are ten quick tips that can take your page to a whole other level. From the post:

Now that your business is on Facebook, what are you doing with it? Did you just set up a “like” page and hope people click your button? If that’s all you’re doing, you may as well not have a Facebook presence at all. When it comes to the social networks, it’s all about engagement, interaction and promotion. With the right combination, your Facebook campaign can become a major success.

You can read more about social media on Kommein, and make sure to follow Deb on Twitter @debng.

Like I said at the beginning of this post – we aren’t done yet. Although the above seven posts were some of my favorite Facebook-related posts of the year, dozens of bloggers are talking about this topic. Here are some more that are definitely worth reading (in alphabetical order):

• 3 Images I Never Want to See on Facebook by Ken Mueller at Inkling Media (@inkling_media)
• 6 Facebook Search Engine & Data Visualization Tools by Lee Odden at TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog (@toprank and @leeodden)
• 7 Tips for Facebook Posts for Small Businesses by Jill Celeste at Hound Dog Social Media (@HoundDogSM)
• 7 Tips To Explode Your Facebook Fan Base (guest post) by Tory McBroom at Quick Online Tips (@qot and @lowcaloriediet)
• Boost Your Facebook Page with Apps by DJ Heckes at Full Brain Marketing (@FulBrainMrktr)
• Does An Author Need a Facebook Page? by Warren Whitlock at BestSellerAuthors.com (@warrenwhitlock)
• Face Off Facebook? by Martijn Linssen (@MartijnLinssen)
• Facebook Marketing Lessons from Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Alison Driscoll (@alison)
• Facebook’s Fatal Flaw by Mark Schaefer at {grow} (@markwschaefer)
• How To Build Your Facebook Landing Page (If You’re Not A Programmer) by Francisco Rosales at SocialMouths (@socialmouths)
• How to Set Your Facebook Privacy Settings If You Don’t Want Your Personal Profile Searchable by akstout18 (@sayingitsocial)
• Is Facebook the New AOL? by William Stites at edSocialMedia (@edsocialmedia)
• The Antisocial Network by Tom Fishburne (@tomfishburne)
• The Lucky 7 Tips to Successful Engagement on Facebook by Lindsay Kniffin at Social Media Today (@socialmedia2day)
• Tips for Selecting a Page to Link to Your Profile on Facebook by Jennifer Fong (@jenfongspeaks)
• Writing For Facebook? Use Nouns and Verbs by Dan Zarrella (@danzarrella)

Ok – your turn. What awesome posts about Facebook-related topics have I misses?

Check out the rest of the 12 Days of Blogging:

12 Writers Writing
11 Tweeters Tweeting
10 Guests a-Posting
9 SEOers Optimizing
8 Affiliates Selling
7 Facebook Users Updating
6 Launchers Launching
5 Golden Rules
4 Podcasting Hosts
3 Ebook Tips
2 Ethics Debates
And a Partridge in a Pear Tree (ebook coming soon!)