Remember that clique in high school? That group of kids connected by some common interest or belief or personal characteristic? Or how about the Chamber of Commerce, your local church, the Rotary Club, or the Girl Scouts? These are all examples of social networks in our traditional world views. Now in the days of Web 2.0, we have numerous free online services that are allowing connections to be made between people and businesses and it can be hard to know where to begin or how you can use these services to promote your business. Many social networking sites are available and most target specific types of connections.

Here’s a short list of sites to explore and their intended focus:

• MySpace - Offers an interactive, user-submitted network of friends, personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music and videos for teenagers and adults internationally.
• YouTube - Allows people to easily upload and share video clips on their website and across the Internet through other websites, mobile devices, blogs, and email.
• Facebook - Users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region to connect and interact with other people. People can also add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profile to notify friends about themselves.
• Twitter - A free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.
• Bebo - A social media network where friends share their lives and explore great entertainment.
• Ryze - This service is designed to link business professionals, particularly new entrepreneurs.
• LinkedIn - A business-oriented social networking site mainly used for professional networking.
• Ecademy - A social network to connect business people.
• BlackPlanet - An online niche social-networking site targeted especially for the African American community.
• Broadcaster.com - Allows users to create personal profiles, post pictures, upload videos, and chat with the site’s other users through a live webcam chat feature.
• Care2 - A social network for activists around the world.
• Flickr - An image and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community platform. It was one of the earliest Web 2.0 applications.
• LiveJournal - A virtual community where users can keep a blog, journal or diary. LiveJournal’s differences from other blogging sites include its WELL-like features of a self-contained community and some social networking features.

How can you use these services to promote your business?
You’ll want to preview these sites for yourself and get a feel for their unique angles and features. Then develop an overall strategy outlining your objectives along with specific tactics for each service you want to employ. I’ve found several articles that do a good job of detailing the specifics and encourage you to read these over:

• My blog post concerning Twitter written by Susan Sweeney
• Ten Ways to Use LinkedIn by Guy Kawasaki
• Leveraging Social Networking Sites to Generate Business by Michael Jones
• Employing Social Media: 6 Ways to Put Social Media to Work for Your ECommerce Site Now by Jennifer Meacham
• Guide to Facebook Basics for Your Business by Brian Brown

Incidentally, I am listed on LinkedIn and Facebook and welcome all my clients to join and connect with me as we grow our businesses together. There is strength in numbers!