How to Use Social Networking to Promote Your Business
It shouldn’t be news to anyone that social networking sites are dominating the Internet. From MySpace to Facebook, people spend a lot of time online interacting with others on these highly-frequented social utilities. But what you might not know is that you can and should be using these social networking sites to promote your business. The greatest thing about social networking sites is that they inherently create business leads. Just think, if I’m going to create a profile, I’m going to list what types of things I’m interested in, how old I am, where I live, where I went to college. Virtually anyone can access this information and therefore so can you.
The first thing to do is register an account with a social networking website (see the list of websites to consider below) and create a profile. Include information about your business: your website, what product/services you provide, etc. Include any marketing shtick in your profile.
Next, you’ll need to find “friends”. In order to do this, search for keywords that are relevant to your business and see what comes up. Chances are, the people that come up from these searches are going to be people who might be interested in your business. Request to be their friend.
The following websites are some of the most popular social networking and business sites:
Facebook - Create a “page” for your business that Facebook users can become “a fan” of. That way you can promote special deals on your Facebook page and all interested will be able to access them.
MySpace - Much like Facebook, this social networking utility involves creating a profile for your business and adding as many people as possible to become your friend so they can read about you.
Twitter - Find people to “Follow.” Once you follow them, they will be notified that you are doing so and might be interested in following you back. If people are following you, they will be able to see your status updates on their homepage. Update your status with special deals from your business or any other promotional text. Keep it simple!
StumbleUpon - Create a StumbleUpon account and begin stumbling your business’ website. Find others with similar interests and “Add them to your friends” so that they can see your stumbles. If you install the Stumble toolbar, you can send direct links to all your friends asking them to Stumble your website pages. The more stumbles your page gets, the more people will find it! Remember to Stumble other websites as well - you don’t want to look like you’re just promoting your business 
LinkedIn -LinkedIn can be a great tool for finding contacts. If you know someone in the right place, they might help you to expand your business. It’s also a great way of keeping people you know up to date on your business.
For more social networking sites, visit this list of social networking sites.
You might also considering creating an application that can be accessed through one of these sites. For example, Facebook allows any organization to make an applciation. If you are a recipe website, you can create a “Recipe of the Day” application on Facebook.
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