Hearing the term social networking, for most, brings to mind websites such as MySpace, FaceBook, and LinkedIn. These are the main staples of social networking, but there is far more to it than simply putting up a FaceBook group or building a MySpace page for your company or the products and services you provide. Social networking goes beyond profile based social networks, and includes any forum, chat room, or mini blogging site.

The internet allows people to find groups who share interests, no matter how obscure. There are groups for Twilight readers, Dungeons and Dragons players, and collectors of air sickness bags. No longer is it possible to be 'weird' or 'different', because you will find someone just like you out there who has your same passion. These groups come together and develop relationships and trust between each other. Tapping into this stream of trust is the key to social networking. If you're in - you must be accepted by the tribe.

So, imagine you sell rulers. Find a way to improve the product's 'spreadability' or its viral effectiveness.  For example, join with a non-profit charity and give 20 percent of ruler sales to educate children in 3rd world countries. Now, find the most popular social networks for teachers online. A to Z Teacher Stuff Forum is one of many. Don't jump on a social network and become a noisy spammer. Build trust first. Visit frequently for many weeks or months until you are well known, and most importantly, contribute to the group. Once you achieve a relative sense of 'belonging', you can now introduce your product to the group with a link to where they can instantly purchase it, and you can watch sales take-off. Partnering with a non-profit charity is not the only way to achieve a viral product, but it makes your work a bit more fulfilling, in my opinion. If you need help developing your product for viral effectiveness, contact me today.

If you are writing an article or posting a blog that promotes your products or services social networks can vastly multiply and accelerate your efforts to spread the word. Developing these relationships within social networks gives you a springboard from which to launch these new ideas and articles. Getting to know popular blogs, will give you a better idea on what you would have success in pitching these bloggers. Submit an original idea that fits their blog's intention, and you get powerful back link and subsequent traffic driven to your site.

So, your article gets into the social networks, what does that mean for SEO? Well, bloggers and forum members will share this information with their networks by providing a link to your site. These links pointing to you give you 'link juice' which is Google's way of saying you are important. Just how important your website or page is - is stated by Google as "Page Rank", a number between 1 and 10. The more quality links you have to a page, the higher its Page Rank. The higher the Page Rank, the higher that page will rank on the Google search engine results page for its target keywords.

The direct traffic generated from Social Networking doesn’t really fall under the umbrella of SEO, but the fact that people are talking about and linking to your site tells Google you are more of an authority on the topic and that affects SEO. Sounds like a lot of work, right? It's really not if you have a plan. We would be happy to provide you with a roadmap to easily accomplish your social networking goals without it consuming your entire life.