Social media, also known as, social networking sites are all about creating online communities for people. They are generally web based and have created multiple ways for users to interact with each other from leaving comments, or private messages, to instant messaging.

It has become the new 'norm' for communication and information sharing. Millions upon millions of people use these sites daily all over the world. For commerce to keep up with this new form of communication, it has been shown to be very beneficial for businesses to get into the social media scene. Social networking, although online, is a more ‘human’ way of communicating to potential clients than direct sales or advertising. These sites have opened a way to find out more of what your audience wants.

Social networking sites include Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, and Linkedin. Then there are less international sites such as Bebo, Nexopia, Badoo, Xing, Friendster and Cyworld. It is truly beneficial to take the time to create profiles for yourself on the top 4 sites. Myspace and Twitter will allow you to create profiles for your business, while Linkedin is more about you and your work history. Facebook has a special area for businesses called PAGES where you can create a profile for your business but it is separated from regular user profiles.

These sites can be time consuming to keep up with, however, the results of having profiles on these sites and updating them weekly, speak for themselves. Linking your website to these other websites will help you with your SEO ranking as well. So be sure to do so.