June 10th, 2009

We hear the buzz words about the social networks from the News, Late Night TV, even the Whitehouse and your local politician how everyone is Tweeting and they have a Face book page and are hooking up with old contacts through Linked in. How can you use these tools with your business to help drive traffic to your site?

The first thing to understand about social networking is that it takes participation. You have to put yourself out there first to get a response back. Compare it to getting a new phone number but never giving your number out to anyone and then wondering why you are not getting calls. The first thing to do when you get a new phone number is to go through your list of contacts and tell they you are on a social network site.

Check out this site for some easy tutorials on social networking http://mashable.com/category/how-to-web/

For business I suggest using Linkedin,   this is where you list you professional credentials and you list where you went to school and where you have worked over your career. Complete your profile so people will know who you are and what you are doing now. The system is smart enough to find people and list them that attended the same schools during the same time and to list co-workers that worked at the same places you have. If you find people that you have know and may know you ask them to be part of your linked connections. The second thing to do is to load in your contacts from outlook, Google and MSN to see if any of those contacts are also on Linked in.

The next thing to join would be facebook this can be done as a business or a person. Go to this link to find out more about Face book business profiles: http://www.facebook.com/advertising/?pages
Face book is a little more toward the friend and social side of things but you can also now have a company face book page as well as a personal one. Do the same steps as above and complete your profile and connect with friends and acquaintances with a personal profile. Each social network has its own strong points and you want to leverage each one that you have time for.

Tweet up and connect. http://twitter.com One of the most talked about social networks sites and also a mystery for most people to fine a usefulness out of. Trust me even if you do not use your twitter account you will want to get on with one and start to play with the micro blog concept. Use it to learn what people, companies and social junkies are doing with Twitter. The same drill goes with Twitter, Sign up create a short bio and look for people to follow and you can invite people to follow you. The nice thing about Twitter is that you can get updates via your email, and text messaging on your phone. They only allow messages to be 140 characters long, however you can also attach images and link to sites and videos and full blog posts with your Tweet. Follow me at http://twitter.com/Scottk1234

Here is a good blog article I found with a case study of how small businesses are moving from traditional advertising to social network advertising for their services.

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