Social networks –
Virtual communities that allow people to build personal web pages and then connect with others to share content and communication. Some of these venues appeal to broad groups, (i.e. Facebook, MySpace), whereas others are built around particular niches and demographics (i.e. LinkedIn).

Forums –
Areas for online discussion, in which multiple users can create topics of interest and then comment on these topics. Forums came about before the term “social media” and are a powerful and popular element of online communities.

Blogs
Perhaps the best known form of social media, blogs (short for web logs) are websites that typically feature posts, by an individual or group, which readers can comment upon. Blogs may vary in nature but tend to be popular, as they often provide an unvarnished, insider perspective on a particular topic.

Microblogging
social networking combined with bite-sized blogging, where small amounts of content (‘updates’) are distributed online and through the mobile phone network. Twitter is the clear leader in this field.

Content communities
Sites that allow users to post and share particular kinds of content. Such communities exist around anything from videos and photos to stories and links. Some of these sites include voting functions that allow the community to determine the relevance of content. The most popular content communities tend to form around photos ( Flickr), bookmarked links
( del.icio.us) and videos ( YouTube).

Wikis
Wikis are community-generated documents and databases. Approved users can create content and augment the content of others in the interest of creating better resources. The best-known wiki is Wikipedia.com, the online encyclopedia which has over 2 million articles in the English edition alone.

Podcasts
Audio and video files that are available by subscription, through services like Apple iTunes.

Virtual Worlds
This represents one of the most novel areas on the web, in which users can engage in immersive worlds. Some of these spaces closely mimic real-world notions such as community and economics.

Twitter is a great social network where people share their interests and their daily activities.

As a member of Twitter you can connect with other people having similar interests to yours and share your passion your knowledge and let them simply know what you are up to or how you are going about your day.

Twitter is one of the most popular social networks and it gathered thousands of people from all over the world. Everyone finds his own purpose for using Twitter.

While some people are using it to share their hobbies and passion with others the other ones finds Twitter very effective marketing tool. Is it a good way?
Let’s see.

If you are network marketer and have some experience with social networking you have probably noticed that it’s saturated with individuals or companies aggressively promoting their businesses. Is it a good approach for using social networks?

I don’t think so.

Social network itself means that it’s a place where you connect with like minded people to build relationship with them, not to put your business opportunity or your product in front of their faces straight away.

Twitter is no different here. You can use it to promote your business but if you do it wrong way, you will be consider rather a spammer than valuable networker. So bear this in mind if you are about to start using Twitter as a marketing tool.

So how to use Twitter to connect with people and build your business at the same time not overusing it and risking your reputation?

Let’s have a look.

Well first of all let’s take a look how Twitter is working.

When you join Twitter you will be able to create your profile by updating it with a short biography about yourself, your website address and your picture. It might be your company logo or the picture of yourself.

Once you are done you can start networking.

The main concept of Twitter is to let people what you are currently doing. It’s done in the form of short text updates that will be visible for them on their main profile home page.

However to get those people you need to find them first.

The difference between Twitter and other social networks such as: Myspace or Facebook is that here you have so called followers (those who decided to follow your updates). instead of traditional friends you have on Myspace or Facebook. That means that your updates will be visible only for these Twitter members who decided to connect with you by following your profile.

The golden rule is: the more targeted followers you have the better for you.

So how you can find the ones?

You can use advanced Twitter search engine to type in particular keyword and generate a list of people who have this keyword on their profile or updates. This way you can find targeted followers with similar interests to yours and who will be more likely to read your TWEETS (updates).

Once you have found some people you can simply start following them. This way many of them will follow you in return.
So it’s that simple – follow people yourself in order to get followed and later on you will notice that new followers will be connecting with you without any action on your part.

Once you’ve got an audience of followers you can start posting updates. These are short text messages that you can combine with html code. If you enter your full website address into text field it will be automatically transformed into clickable link. So it’s that simple.

Now the most important thing.
Do not overuse Twitter for pitching your business. Twitter is a great place to share your knowledge not to try aggressively get people to buy your product.

So for instance instead of posting : “VISIT MY WEBSITE AND START MAKING $$$ RIGHT AWAY”
you can go like this:  “Just updated my website with new HOW TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE article.”
Every time you update your blog or write your article you can make a post on Twitter about it.

However keep in mind that tweeting isn’t all about making a posts on your business. Just to build relationships with people and show them that the business isn’t the only thing you care about here, drop them a simple post of what you are doing.

It might be even simple: JUST WALKED OUT MY DOG or JUST WATCHED INTERESTING MOVIE.
This way you can get people’s trust and sympathy as a person enjoying his/her life.

So don’t aggressively promote your business the spammy way, share your knowledge and interact with people, don’t be afraid to even drop them a private message with simple HOW ARE YOU and gently answer their messages. This way you will build a huge audience of people interested in what you are doing within very short period of time.

For more information on how to use Twitter to promote your business, check out the Social Media Fire eBook!

One of the most important rules in marketing your business is that you go where your target market is. With the growing popularity of online social networking websites, it’s a little wonder that more and more businesses are looking for ways to take advantage of the millions of members of these sites. With the use of several widely available tools and networking tactics, you will find that marketing your products or services through this medium is not that hard to do.

Make Friends before Making Money
One of the most common misconceptions of businessmen in marketing their products and services through this medium is considering social networks as just place to post their advertisements on. Contrary to popular belief, posting advertisements that look too much like advertisements are not very effective in this medium. As these social networking sites serve as friend-finder platforms, it is often better to maximize its intended function in order to successfully market your products.

Because of this, you have to start from scratch and collect friends as you go along. This may sound a bit hard to do at first but keep in mind that having a great number of friends in your network is the best way for your offers to be noticed. This doesn’t mean, however, that you are going to flood the bulletin boards with your products ads right after collecting your friends. Instead, it is advisable to develop real relationships and friendships with those who have become your friends by helping them with their concerns, posting your blogs, sending your testimonials, etc. This way, you can be sure that when you offer your product and services to them, they will be interested and you will have more chances of getting sales.

Thankfully, these social networking platforms offer a way to make your task easier by giving you search options in which to limit your potential friends to those who might be interested in your particular product or service. If you have a pet shop for example, you might want to limit your members search to those people who love pets. Similarly, if you are a car salesman, you might like to look for those people who are of working age rather than those still in college. In social networking sites, you can search by limiting your search criteria to members’ hobbies, interests, location, organizations and more. This will help you limit and focus your marketing efforts towards people who are in your target market.

Share Information
Blogging is a great way to reach out to people who might be interested in your service. Remember though that members of social networking websites are not actively looking for products and services so your advertisements would probably be not as effective as you might think.

Instead, try to post blogs that are informative and interesting. These blogs may not convince them outright to buy your products, but you will definitely stand out as someone who knows about this particular product. Thus, you will be one of the persons he or she will approach when considering a purchase in this product category.

Internet Surfers’ Choice
This factor may be more important than you think as more and more search engines are integrating the voice of the internet users in how it ranks the websites. Today, you can see this through social bookmarking wherein internet users can bookmark their favorite sites through an online bookmark website, social search engines and social driven content wherein the users’ preferences and outlooks are given importance in ranking the websites. Users of social networking sites are given the right to vote on how relevant websites or articles are in their search. All these sites are easily accessible and membership is usually free.

With these new set of tools, you can effectively market your products and services to the millions of social networking users.