by Billyjo Rench

Created on: September 26, 2009

Social networking for business is marketing in a way a lot of businesses are unfamiliar with. Most business owners market in traditional ways such as newspapers and television and most business owners also experience the extreme cost of advertising in these media outlets.

Social media and social networking allows a business owner to create an abundance of techniques to tell people about your business, build a list of people to market to, and develop a level of marketing that relates to people.

Three social networking sites that are on an extreme rise are Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Facebook allows the user to create a profile. The user can upload photos to that profile, let people know what's going on by using status updates, connect or 'friend' people in your target market, and communicate with them. In addition, Facebook allows the user to create fan pages and groups. Groups are becoming more and more commonly used as another tool to market your business. Whether using a profile or group, whatever a business owner does to their profile then is shown on the home page of all their friends.

It is no secret that word of mouth is one of the best ways to market your service or product and when using social media, venue is no longer an issue.

Twitter is the infamous social media site that allows the user a 140-character space to post their status. With Twitter, you 'follow' and are 'followed' rather than 'friended'. Your status also appears on the home page of all of your followers. Twitter is a great way, along with Facebook, to refer your followers or friends to your website or other social media sites by pasting the URL link on your profile page.

LinkedIn is the site strictly for business. On Facebook and Twitter, it is highly common for people to have personal and business profiles. With LinkedIn that is not the case. When you sign up for LinkedIn, you create a profile and 'connect' with people that you know. The more people you connect with, the bigger your network and the more opportunities you have to market your business.

LinkedIn also allows the user to create groups much like Facebook. Groups are a great way to post discussions and news for your group members. Your members are also allowed to comment on your discussions and news and like the other sites, the things you do while on LinkedIn are on your friends' and group members' home pages and vice versa. This allows a much larger audience than can be afforded through traditional media.

Social media networking continues to grow and the strategies for maximizing your efforts are endless.

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