Less than an hour east of Minneapolis and St. Paul lies the St. Croix River Valley, a land of rolling hills created by the waterway that marks the boundary between Wisconsin and Minnesota. One of the area’s jewels is Hudson, Wis., a small town packed with historic charm.

There, a mid-century creamery—this is America’s dairyland, remember—still occupies a busy intersection. But large banners proclaiming “Seasons on St. Croix Gallery” make clear the building’s purpose, as does the art glass gleaming in large windows: This is a wonderfully curated collection of North American art and fine crafts, deftly slipped into the old river town’s retail mix.

The gallery is the brainchild of owner Ruth Misenko, a 60ish woman with energy and charm to spare. Correction: Seasons on St. Croix is more than an eclectic, contemporary gallery that showcases handmade work by more than 160 artists and fine craft makers. Thanks to Misenko, this is a place where customers, artists and the community come together to engage with art, as well as to buy it.

For more of “An Artful Collaboration” pick up a copy of the Summer 2011 issue of NICHE magazine..

Let’s face it, maintaining a business page for your gallery on Facebook is time consuming. Is all the effort you put into it paying off? According to a study by DDB, 92% of fans who “like” a business page are brand advocates. That shouldn’t be surprising, especially if they sought out your gallery online. Of those fans, 49% feel very comfortable recommending your page to a friend, while 43% say they would probably recommend it.

The majority of polled fans found brand pages through an ad, an invitation from a friend or a web search. Once there, fans are looking for more than downloadable coupons (although that is certainly an incentive to visit the pages). Instead, they want to feel like VIPs through exclusive content and information about your products and services, and are also interested in giving feedback you will value and might implement.

To maintain your fans, consider them loyal customers and apply the principles of classic customer service, recommends survey leader Catherine Lautier, director of business intelligence at DDB France. “I was expecting brand page visitors to be a lot more benefits oriented, versus ‘I’m joining because I actively want to recommend it to friends,’ ” she explains.

The DDB “Facebook and Brands” survey, conducted in August and September, polled more than 1,600 respondents from six countries, skewed toward a female demographic (55%) with an average age of 31.

Public Versus Private

Many users got a wake-up call this spring when “Facebook” and “privacy concerns” became inseparable in the headlines. How private was the information they were sharing with their “friends”? Were they opening up a little too much of themselves to the Internet’s abyss? Apparently many thought they were. “How to delete Facebook” searches on Google have doubled since January.

And for good reason. Facebook has seen some pretty serious breaches in privacy. There was the snafu in early May that briefly enabled users to see their friends’ live chats. This happened around the same time elected officials were filing a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, stating that Facebook’s constantly changing privacy controls are too confusing. Back in December, Facebook changed its privacy defaults, making a lot of users’ information—status updates, lists of friends and interests—visible even to non-Facebook users.

Sounds like scary stuff. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg addressed the public outcry by pledging to simplify the settings, beginning with measures introduced in late May.

Easy Safeguards

There are some simple things you can do to make sure no sensitive information gets into the wrong hands:

Be mindful of the information you share. A recent Consumer Reports study found that the majority of people are posting risky information on social networks. Think twice before sharing your full birth date, children’s names or street address.

Take advantage of Facebook’s new security feature, aimed at keeping hackers away from your personal information by alerting you when your account is accessed by a computer you’ve never used. Log on to Facebook, and click the “Account” button on the top right. Select “Account Settings,” scroll down to “Account Security,” and click the link that says “Change.”

Check out a few of the independent tools that can help you control your Facebook privacy settings. There’s www.reclaimprivacy.org, which scans your privacy setting and alerts you if any have defaulted to public; www.untangle.com/saveface, which automatically sets all of your information to be viewed by “friends only;” and www.tineye.com, which makes sure an image posted on Facebook hasn’t found its way around the Web.

Most important, think before you post. Don’t air grievances about customers or coworkers on your personal page, and never post a picture that you wouldn’t want the president of your town’s small business association to see. Remember, nothing shared on the Internet can ever truly be deleted.

This past Christmas marked my one-year anniversary on Twitter. I thought I’d reflect on the tips and tricks I’ve learned about the social network over the past 12 months:

Three Is a Magic Number

Like exercise, walking your dog and drinking water, it takes time to add anything new to your already busy schedule. That’s why it’s important to make a concerted effort to tweet at least three times a day during the week. To do this, I’ve created a tweet schedule:

1. Send out my first tweet early in the morning when I’m checking my e-mail and catching up on the morning’s news.
2. Send out a second tweet during lunch, when I’m reading list serves that populate my e-mail box.
3. Send out a third tweet sometime during the day, whether it’s an observation, conversational tweet or another article that interests me.

Granted there are days when I tweet more than three times, but by scheduling tweets into my day, I don’t go days without tweeting, even when work and life get crazy.

The Power of Hashtags

A hashtag is any word in Twitter that is immediately preceded by the “#” symbol (aka the hash). By using a hashtag, you’re signaling that you want people to find your tweet and associate it with other tweets with the same hashtag. While this may seem esoteric, hashtags are a great way to target your tweets so they reach a specific audience. If you mark your tweet with #social media or #American craft, you’re labeling it as something that will interest people who follow these topics.

Direct Messages Aren’t Just Spam

For a long time, I thought Direct Messages (DMs) were just the annoying automated messages people sent to thank people for following them. However, recently I learned that while Twitter is all about conversation, there’s a second level of conversation happening behind the curtain. If you follow someone (and they follow you), you can send direct messages to each other. This is a great way to send a personal message to friends, pitch a story idea to a reporter (provided they follow you) or have a side conversation during a seminar where people are “live-tweeting.”

Sharing Is a Good Thing

You’ve probably watched the Verizon commercial that shows teens telling their parents they’re frustrated that their mom writes “I love you” all over their Facebook wall and their dad tweets about sitting on the porch. And while status updates are fine, they can make a boring Twitter stream. Instead, it’s more interesting to use Twitter as a way to share interesting articles, observations or engage in conversation with colleagues.

It’s Important to Retweet

Social media is all about listening. And retweeting is a great way to show you’re reading what other people are saying and find it worthy of sharing. Don’t feel bad that you didn’t find the article first—simply put a RT before the person’s Twitter handle (RT @riggrl) before or after the tweet so you can share information with your followers and acknowledge the person who originally sent the tweet. It’s a great way to form a relationship with other people on Twitter.

Sometimes You Don’t Have Anything to Say

And that’s okay. I’m not sure how coherent I am at 5 a.m. But since I work in PR and marketing, I spend a lot of time reading. That’s why I love sharing news stories with others. Or it’s another great reason to retweet someone else’s comment or tweet. Or maybe you can dust off your copy of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations and find an interesting quote that is relevant or thought provoking.

TweetDeck Can Change Your Life

Until I started using TweetDeck, it was nearly impossible for me to track conversation about topics that interest me, or see what my friends were tweeting. TweetDeck has made Twitter more manageable, allowing me to create lists of people I think are interesting and follow hashtags so I can see what’s being said about an issue. Now I feel like I’m managing my Twitter usage, rather than the other way around.

Manners Are Important, But You Don’t Have to Thank People for RTs

There are a lot of people who thank people for retweeting their messages. And while this helps to add content to your Twitter stream (and hopefully attract more followers), some people view it as spam. I read an interesting article by Valerie Merahn Simon that said that people RT information because it teaches them something, and that they are sharing the information because it provides value, not as a favor. So you shouldn’t feel compelled to thank others for RTs.