What is Social networking? – This is the term that covers online communities like facebook, myspace, bebo where people network with friends and businesses, or just with people who share a similar interest to you.

How you can use social networking to promote your business – You can create a profile for your business and begin using Events, Fan Pages and Groups to promote your business, let people know about things you have planned, sales that are on, sponsorships and charity fundraising that you have been involved with. Yoy can send out news updates about events, new products etc to draw more people into your website.

You can build more of a relationship with your customers by speaking to them, answering questions and finding out what they like and dislike, interacting in this way with your customers makes them feel appreciated and they feel that there opinions matter. You are able to perform market research that leads to brand loyalty by giving your customers exactly what they want.

Paid For Advertising – Many social networking sites offer paid for advertising. Advertising is focused on user demographics rather than search phrases. Allowing a businesses to target users based on a number of criteria such as age, sex, education and interests.

Social networking and social book marking sites allow people with similar interests to get together in groups and discuss the subjects and products they are interested in.

This can be of use if you are marketing your products and services on-line as you can also join these groups.

You can find out what people are talking about and what they are looking for when it comes to your products. This will help you with your keyword research and with producing tools or information to attract new visitors to your site.

When using these sites, you must be careful not to appear ‘spammy’ and just out to promote your site.

You should offer help and advice to members of the group and become recognised as the expert in your field. This will result in not only more visitors but also visitors who trust you and are ready to buy from you.

Social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace provide a forum where people with similar interests can get together.

Social networking and book marking sites are among the most popular sites on the Internet and they allow users to share information on the products and websites they like in an informal manner.

These groups can be arranged geographically and may only have the one subject in common. A member of the social networking site can join as many groups as they like, so someone in Dorset with an interest in dogs can join groups related to Dorset, beaches in Dorset, Bournemouth night life, dog grooming and anything else that might be connected.