Social networking is all the latest rage in marketing today. And for a good reason, too. It’s an extremely effective tool which, if you use it well, can really help your business. If you aren’t familiar with the term “social networking,” it refers to online communities and groups such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Ecademy, MySpace and so on. It’s a place where people share business and social news, incite discussions, increase their contacts and raise their online presence.

By virtue of being online you are able to make thousands of connections in a fraction of the time it would take to meet that many people in person. You are more likely to make contacts across the country and around the world that you could without an online presence. This gives you an even larger network, which means more people are forwarding your details to people who could use your services, etc. This also means that you have a wealth of information at your fingertips for other business services that you could utilise for your company (or your life!).

Another brilliant aspect of social networking is the multiplication of your information. So for example, if I post information about my online business services on Twitter, I have just over 30,000 people following me who will see it. And if even 1% of those people ReTweet me (re-post that information), then I have another 3000 postings about my business for the one I put up. And those 3000 postings are going out to all the people following the person who ReTweeted me. This means that one little post about my business is now reaching 100,000-200,000+ people. This is the power and the magic of social networking. And to answer your suspicions, yes I have gotten not only great contacts but also new business from sites like Twitter and Facebook.

A final and hugely important element of social networking is that it builds your online presence. This is very important to any business as the world today is online. People are more likely to go to the Internet before to look for businesses than they are to go out driving around. Since social networking includes various posts, blogs and listings, it vastly increases your SEO margin and makes you more likely to get noticed out of the sea of businesses. Also, each site can be used to point contacts back to your website to promote your business.

With the popularity soaring with Twitter everyone has come onto the band wagon and created 100’s of different applications to help you get the most out of Twitter.  Below are my favourite ones which I use and best of all they are all free!

The biggest problem with the standard Twitter web application is that you have to keep an eagle eye on your replies and Direct Messages as you only see the main Tweetstream on the screen. It is also limited in that it only displays about the last 20 tweets, so if you want to see older ones, you have to keep going back pages. So how can you make it more user friendly?

I recommend you  download Tweetdeck (which I use and is a godsend, especially if you have a large following!).

Tweetdeck is brilliant in that it displays the Tweetstream, your replies and your direct messages all on the one screen.  The message columns allow for 500 tweets as a default, so scrolling down allows you to go back a fair way or search for tweets you may want to refer back to.  You can also automatically send your tweets on Facebook and Myspace if choose too.

The screen has a continuous right hand scroll, so you can set up different groups and their tweets will appear in that column. You might have a group called best friends and another for gardeners for instance.  That way you don’t miss important tweets from people who are more important to you than others. At the time of writing, Tweetdeck is probably the most widely used application for Twitter and I would highly recommend it to you.

Twellow is another great way of finding people to interact with. People here are categorized into all different areas and you can search for those with similar interests to your own.

The main page shows you all the categories, which then have sub categories as well. You just click on a category and the list of people in that area are displayed. You don’t have to be registered with Twellow to be displayed, but at the time of writing there were nearly two million people showing on the site, so you will have plenty to choose from.  By all means though, register yourself and set up a profile so others can find you.

When you click on a category, Twellow displays a list of people in that category and they are ordered by the number of followers they have. If you are already logged into Twitter via the web, (not Tweetdeck) you will be able to follow people directly from the screens where the profiles are displayed.

I would also recommend taking the time to set up your Twitter background so that it doesn’t just look like the default Twitter page.  You need to distinguish yourself from the crowd and that attracts more followers, or at the very least impresses people with your professionalism.

If you’re a bit of a Photoshop whiz, then you can do your own background, full of bells and whistles and load it up to your Twitter profile. But if you’re not, or you just want to save time, then there are some sites out there that will do them for you automatically.  My personal favourite is Twitbacs where you can get some great backgrounds.

However, that said, if you want to do your own fiddling in Photoshop, you can get some great layouts in PSD format from Twitterbacks.

I hope the above tips help you, Twitter really is a great application that should be used as part of your marketing strategy and best of all, it’s FREE!

What is Twitter? Well, where have you been.. LOL?  Twitter would have to be the fastest growing site on the web today.  It is taking the internet by a storm and there are around 10,000 new users per day signing up to participate in this internet revolution.

Twitter is best described as a micro blogging platform.  You are limited to 140 characters each time you do an update, which initially, may seem a small amount.  However, as you become more experienced, it’s just amazing what you can fit into 140 characters.

That said, Twitter is much, much more than that.  It is like one huge global chat room, but then again, it doesn’t have to be.  It all depends on how many people you follow on Twitter.  If it’s in the thousands, then your “Tweetstream” will be running fast and furious with everything that’s coming in.  If you are only following a few hundred, or even less, then things are much easier to keep up with.

Twitter is also a great way to meet new people online, particularly those with similar interests to you.  I will show you how to do this more in other blogs, so stay tuned!

I just wanted to write a quick blog as I wanted to tell you all how powerful and useful Twitter can be!

As you will see from my free stuff page, I have a latest addition to give to you!  How did I get my new Ebook ?  Well, I simply posted a tweet on Twitter “has anyone got a good quality Ebook they would like to give away – Free PR for you!” and of course I received a reply.

If you would like to receive a copy of Leveraging Traffic Exchanges for Maximum results by the lovely Isaac G please click here.

Enjoy:)