Social Networking helps individuals to interact online with people with common interests in their personal and professional life. It is not very different from traditional social networking where interaction was the best way to promote and spread information on any topic – online social networking just gets you to reach a broader audience and network with like minded people and is not limited by geographical boundaries.

Online social networking is used for job search, business promotion, advertising, sharing personal views and discussions.

A number of common online social networking sites used widely by all age groups are:

• Face book

• Twitter

• MySpace

• LinkedIn

• Digg

• Orkut

• Flickr

The most widely used social media sites are Facebook and Twitter.

How Does Facebook Work

Face book is a social media site where friends, colleagues and family get together to share news, views, information etc. Face book has over 200 million members and is used actively by a number of groups to spread and share information on topics, business, products etc.

How does facebook work to promote a business?

• First you create an account on www.facebook.com . It is quite easy and you have to just follow the instructions carefully.

• A personal profile is good for your personal online social networking.

• On the other hand, to promote a business you need to create a page that describes your company.

• To create a page first you must be logged in and then go to www.facebook.com/pages/create.php

• Follow the instructions and create a page and publish it.

• Pages can be maintained by others in the company. Pages have different categories to make things easier. Pages start ranking on public search results and also face book.

• Anyone can become a Fan on your page and does not have to take permission.

• When you publish or post any information on the page it would not reflect your personal information. It would reflect the information of the company.

• How does face book work to get fans on your page ?

o Post interesting topics to engage fans. Keep posting information about your business as newsfeeds.

o Make your page publically visible so that others can also view it and become fans. Draw out addresses from emails and blog comments and inform them about the page to become a fan.

o You could put up advertisements (by paying) for your business.

o Podcasts on face book also help to promote your business.

Other than face book, twitter offers a number of tools that are can be used to network

How To Use Twitter?

Twitter is an online social networking service that enables users to send and read other users updates known as tweets. It is a great way to keep in touch with your friends and quickly broadcast information about where you are and what you are up to?

How to use twitter to promote your business?

• If you are not a member with twitter create an account on www.twitter.com

• After becoming a member find people with common interest, people useful in your business, and friends too and follow them.

• Post regular tweets of your business updates and blogs and articles.

• Interact with your customers.

• You can join groups related to your business and exchange views and information.

• Make your tweets very interesting.

• Reply to the tweets of the followers and the ones you are following

• Be very interactive and share as much information you can.

• Do not post your tweets in one go, spread them over the day.

• Some interesting companies using twitter for their business are Dell, Starbucks, Kodak, Ford, Samsung etc. Check their profiles and case studies on Twitter within the business section.

There are a few directories and tools on twitter which tell you how to use twitter even more extensively to find relevant communities. See which ones can be used in your business:

• twibes

• wefollow

• Twellow

• Twitter local

• Twitter who

• Twits like me

• Twubble

• Twitscoop

• Search.twitter.com

• Twitterscope

• TwitterDir

So if you are running an organization and are looking for easy, cost effective and interesting ways of marketing your business then online social networking is worth a try.