Pretty much everyone has heard of ‘social networking’ or social media but how can you use it successfully for your business and which networks do you use?

As a general rule I tell people to stick to three. Anymore and it becomes hard to manage for a small business.

Use Facebook. Why? Because it’s the largest, most used, biggest, best social network. There are many tools available within face book where you can acquire fans. From advertising, apps and recommendation through your friends. There will be a post on building Facebook fan pages shortly.

Use Twitter because it is real time and some of their ‘buzz’ will brush off on you. Any business in the know is taking advantage of being able to instantly update their customers about what happening. Through use of little applications and widgets you can embed you tweets anywhere! Wampit provides this service, the only business directory that provides real time information about the business and we’re pretty proud of that!

Go niche. If there is a network specifically about your area of expertise check out the community. Regular comments on posts and articles get you seen. The more effort you put in the more likely people will see you as an expert in the field and that’s great for referrals. However, don’t spam! Keep comments relevant and profiles clean.

If you would like more advice on social networking follow me on twitter @socialstone