It is not What you know, but Who you know!

I love to talk. Anyone who knows me, knows I am rarely at a loss for words.  Despite this, I have been rather slow getting onto the on-line social bandwagon.

Social is one of the new phrases on-line.  Social networking, search, bookmarking, sharing videos and photos and so on, is everywhere you look on-line.  When the term social is used, it is referring to sites or services that allow its members to drive the content and interact with one another. Probably the biggest one, that I assume most folks have heard of is MySpace.  I heard that MySpace is getting nearly a quarter-million new accounts each day! That is  a lot of traffic.

Networking is critical for small businesses, whether it be on-line or off-line. With these in mind, the small business owner needs to take advantage of the social aspect of the Internet.  The business owner can use it to find new customers, network with others in their field, build links to their website, increase their reputation and so on.  Now I am not saying that every business needs to have a YouTube video, blog, or a MySpace page but they should have some sort of social presence online. Remember the name of the game is visibility.

In my next post, I will go over some of the options out there for small businesses to use.

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So what do I do socially?  First I am a member of LinkedIn. (You can see a link to my profile on the sidebar on the front page.)  I did this to increase my network with other professionals.  So far, it has produced excellent results.

Another thing I do, is have a couple MySpace pages (you can see my main profile here) . Right now I have about 80 friends. I created this page to provide another avenue to promote my web services, and get some links.

I am doing a few other things too and as I see the returns on these, I will let you know.