So what are social networking sites?

Welcome to the next instalment of our Marketing Monday for August. This month we’re focusing on growing your business using social networking.

In my last post, I discussed the benefits of using social networking in your business. However, in order to get the most benefit out of this valuable new tool, you need to focus your efforts across several of the top sites. It can become confusing when you first start out, and so here are some of the top social networking sites, and how you can use them to grow your business.

Twitter

Twitter.com is a free micro blogging service. Members can ‘tweet’ updates to their network in 140 characters or less, thus the term micro blogging. Tweets are displayed on your profile page, and delivered to your followers, which are people who have chosen to automatically recieve your updates on Twitter. These could be business associates, clients and customers, friends, or just those who’d like to learn more about you.

Squidoo

Squidoo is a free system of interactive pages, called lenses, each pertaining to a diffferent topic of interest. These user generated web pages are based around just about every topic under the sun, and can be a great showcase if you’re wishing to establish yourself as an expert in a particular area. You don’t need to know any code to create a Squidoo lens, and pages on Squidoo can give you valuable links back to your site, as you are allowed to link and promote your own business on your Squidoo lens (just don’t go overboard. If you’d like to create a free account on Squidoo and see how it can benefit you, click here.

Facebook

Facebook is also free to access, and has members in the millions. Used as a social networking site, any member can join multiple networks and you can even create your own fan  page within Facebook to showcase your business. You can add friends, request to be added to other’s friends lists, and send messages, all within Facebook. It’s a great tool to keep in touch with prospects and up date everyone with the latest happenings in your business.

Hub Pages

Hub Pages are designed primarily around advertisement sharing revenue for high quality content. In teh same vein as Squidoo, it allows members to create individual pages on specific topics of interest. However, Hub Pages differs in that it uses the Google Adsense program to automatically manage revenue sharing among writers. Members submit articles in a magazine format, which when posted can generate income for the writer if they have their own adsense account.

These, and many more social networking websites and platforms, can make communications with your customers, prospects, friends and family, as well as your broader target market not only more accessible, but also faster, cheaper and easier than ever before.