Social Networking: A social network service uses softwareto build online social networks for communities of people who share interests and activities or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. -Wikipedia

Social networking is the result of the Web 2.0 revolution. Where the need for a more human oriented search was needed for the Internet. Search engines have provided us with an awesome tool to research and navigate through the web, but as the web grows so rapidly it is getting harder and harder to find what we are looking for. There are now thousands of social networking site but I have divided them into three categories below. 

Bookmarking: Sites like Digg, Technorati, Flurl, etc. allow you to create your own space on the web dedicated to your favorite links, blogs and more. Then your favorites are shared with everyone else through tags. The more people who research or add a certain tag the more popular that tag is. It creates a sort of voting or popularity situation. 

Bonus Tip: You want to have the more popular tags within your industry to increase your chances of being apart of a popular network.

The Complete Forum: The second category of social networking sites include MySpace, Facebook, Yuwie, etc. “Almost 25 million people visit MySpace every day–about three times the number who visit Facebook daily–and MySpace racks up about 46 billion page views every month compared to Facebook’s 16 million.” (PC World) When created correctly profiles of these sites can create an influx of traffic to your site, an expert web branding and a higher search engine ranking.

Bonus Tip: Quality not quantity. To insure that your profiles are serving the purpose of getting quality traffic, it is necessary to optimize each profile created with your industry keywords. Having 500 profiles with no company info or keyword specific copy will be pointless.   

The Controlled Forum: The third category of social networking is your own personal blog. While using all the same technology and concepts of the above two it is a more personal, controlled environment and by far the easiest to get noticed. Blogging is amazing way to take away the cold feel of the web. It creates an interactive forum for you to show your expertise, reach out to your customers and have them reach back if they choose. It has brought a new customer services to virtual businesses that is necessary for business success.

Bonus Tip: Do not Set it and Forget It. If you are starting a blog or have a blog, just like anything you do, it needs to be nurtured. You can create and manage a blog on your own for free! But do not set it and forget it. It will defeat the purpose - as the more activity and quality information you provide the more successful your blog will be!

For businesses, while still a challenge to stand above the crowd it is easier to create appealing content to people then to try and appeal to a crawling search engine robot. But just think of the possibilities if you appeal to both! It is said that social networking is shifting the use of search engines and soon, if you are not taking advantage of the free social network marketing you will miss out on over half of Internet users.

Social Networking Profile Creation & Management