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With the development of the Internet, Social Networking means its possible to communicate with people worldwide in seconds and often at no cost.  20 years ago this simply wasn’t feasible and so small businesses and start-ups tended to concentrate on their own local markets. Today however, its a different story. This article will focus on ways you can use the web and some of the most popular social networking sites to drive your business forward and grow your company.

Grow your business online

Anyone with a good business idea can set up a website and reach millions of people through a single point of entry worldwide. A website allows you to sell promote your products and services online 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Of course, you can’t just build a site and expect people to know about it. You need to get the word out to people. This is where social networking excels.

Social networking – an explanation

You may have heard the term ‘Social Networking’ before, but are unsure what it is and how to go about using it? Basically social networking involves using a website or online service to interact with other individuals. The sites allow you to post messages, ideas, offer your services and promote what you do to other people. The idea behind it all is that people tell other people about you and your business, you gain more followers on the website and eventually the followers can turn into real customers. Some of the most popular social networking sites are listed below:

Twitter (visit twitter.com)

VERY popular service that allows you to send, read and receive messages from anyone using the service. Twitter is fast becoming the most powerful marketing tool on the web with businesses using it attract new customers daily. It’s an effective and simple way to allow you to keep people interested in your product informed of developments, sales, new offers etc. It’s also great for learning from other business owners. Twitter restricts the length of messages that can be posted to just 140 characters. Whilst this sounds very limited it means that you get concise updates from people and don’t have to wade through paragraphs of text to get to the information you’re interested in. Twitter can also be used on a wide range of mobile devices including iPhone, Blackberry, Nokia and other phones. In fact, most people interact with Twitter on their mobile.

Twitter software for PC/Mac/iPhone/Mobiles

There are several twitter desktop clients (software) available free of charge, these allow you to view, post and reply to messages from your desktop computer or laptop. A list and explanation of some of the best ones can be found here: http://lifehacker.com/5368817/five-best-twitter-clients

If you own a Symbian OS mobile phone such as a Nokia n95 then Gravity is a great twitter client

If you want to follow me on Twitter you can do so by clicking here

LinkedIn (visit LinkedIn.com)

This site offers networking for businesses, allows them to share ideas with each other, post advertisements for work opportunities and to post referrals from other LinkedIn users they may have conducted business with in the past. It’s free to sign up to and you can post images showcasing your work to others. Groups are also prevalent on this site. For example, I’m a member of several web development groups on the site, because that’s the industry my business is in.

Digg (visit Digg.com)

Digg is a little different than the other sites. Basically if someone has found something interesting on the web that they think may be useful to others they can ‘Digg’ it. The more a web page is referred to Digg, the higher up the rankings it will appear on the Digg website. Essentially this makes Digg a great place to check out the latest news and happenings on almost anything. You can use this service for your business by integrating the Digg technology into your own website. People visiting your site who like what they see can then refer it to Digg and help promote you.

Facebook (visit Facebook.com)

Facebook is also a very popular social networking site. Almost everyone I know is on it for personal use, but it can also be an effective way of keeping people informed of your business activities. You can create a page for you business within Facebook at no cost. People can then view details when they log-in to the site. Of all of the social networking sites listed here, Facebook is probably the one you’ve heard of the most.

All of the above sites offer their services for free and when used in the right way they can be a powerful marketing tool for your business. Yes, the web provides free ways for you to advertise your business to others. Can you imagine the TV companies or radio stations ever giving you that opportunity? Even the local newspaper charges you for every ad you place!

Some words of warning

Don’t spread yourself too thinly on the sites. Have a look at each of them and what they offer and then decide which one would be the most beneficial for the type of business or service you’re looking to promote. There’s nothing worse than telling someone to follow you on Twitter and then never posting a single update. It doesn’t instill much confidence in your brand. Make sure you inform people of the site(s) you’re on and then keep updating your pages/profile on the site(s) regularly.

Give it a try

Hopefully you’ll now know a little more about social networking and will feel confident enough to try it for yourself. As you may have guessed, my favourite is Twitter and this is the one I’d recommend you start with, mainly because of it’s short, simple message system. It’s by far the easiest to get to grips with and is the most popular social networking tool around at the moment.

Written by Ian Hazeldine, Managing Director of Yellow Circle Web Solutions Limited, a web design and hosting company based in Staffordshire, UK