Social networking and social bookmarking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz, Digg, Delicious, LinkedIn, Stumbleupon, Mixx, FriendFeed, and a bunch of others give you the opportunity to interact with an incredible amount of people that can be a huge potential market for your business. Plus, they are all free and easy to use. Not to mention the fact that they are very popular and used by just about everyone nowadays.

The most important part of social media marketing is to NOT treat it solely as an internet marketing tool. You must build a following, build trust, build relationships, interact with your friends/followers, give more than you take, and become someone they listen to and recommend to others. Then, you will be able to promote things to them every so often. Create value first and market later.

Too many people use whatever means possible to try and get as many followers/friends as they can so they can blast out links to their sites/offers and hope someone clicks them. That doesn’t work. It’s called “social” media or social “networking” for a reason! You must be social and truly network with others for this marketing strategy to work.

Marketing on social networks can be a very difficult path to take, but it can be very rewarding in the end if you do it correctly. You definitely shouldn’t tweet more than one marketing message per day on your main Twitter account or post more than one per day on your Facebook profile, or whatever other social networking site you use.

Social bookmarking sites are a little different because it is expected that you will “bookmark” links on them. However, you should still build up friendships and followings on them wherever possible so they will help you to vote up your content. And you should definitely not only post your own content to them. Bookmarking links to your own sites should be done sparingly or you won’t get far with the majority of users. Also, social bookmarking sites such as Delicious are typically much better to use than Twitter or Facebook for getting backlinks to your site.

The basis of social media marketing is to create value for your friends and followers on your social networks — give them an incentive of useful information, tips, giveaways, help, support, friendship, and general entertainment value in order to secure their trust and keep them as followers to which you can market (lightly) to in the future. This is one internet marketing strategy that must be handled with care and can’t be abused at all, or it won’t help you a bit.

One thing that you need to remember when it comes to marketing on Facebook is that it is a public and social website. When someone likes a page on there it becomes public knowledge that they like that page and all their friends can see it. Therefore, some businesses, products, or services may not be appropriate for Facebook marketing.

I am sure you already know there are many potential benefits of having your business on Facebook, but you may not know how to promote your page for maximum exposure. So below I have outlined three of the best ways to promote your Facebook business page.

1) Hold a Contest – This is one of the best ways to gain fans on your Facebook page. You can hold a contest for almost anything and give people various ways to enter the contest (one of them would obviously be to become your FB fan) then hold a random drawing of fans who will get a prize. You can spend a lot of money on it out of your own pocket or get money/prize donations to give away. You could also give away some of your own products or something else as the prizes.

2) Give an Incentive – Sometimes just giving people an incentive to join your Facebook fan page is enough. For example, you could give people a free gift or product discount for becoming your fan or give away free information and resources only to your fans. Even though all people have to do is click a little “like” button to become your fan it often takes an incentive to get them to do that simple task.

3) Link to It – Linking to your Facebook page from your blog, website, emails, other social sites, and everywhere else you possibly can is a great way to get more exposure for it. You should quickly see your fan count increase if you do this.

Combine all the resources you have available to you in order to get more Facebook fans and you will start to see your efforts pay off. Using FB as one of your internet marketing strategies can be very powerful if done correctly and consistently, so don’t overlook it.

By the way, I recently started a new Facebook fan page for one of my make money online blogs. Please “like” it to help me out. You’ll benefit too because there will be certain things I only share with my FB fans. You can click here to go to it. Thanks!

Personally, I don’t think social sites are a very good addition to the internet marketing strategies I use for my business. But there’s no denying the popularity of these sites can help internet marketers bring in massive traffic to their websites.

Here are a few simple reasons why you might want to mix social sites in with your other internet marketing strategies…

1) Social sites are extremely popular

This is probably the best reason to use social networking and social bookmarking sites for your internet marketing business. They are so popular that a lot of traffic can be driven to your website by using them. Millions of people use these sites every single day which means there are millions of people who can be marketed to every single day.

2) Social sites are fun

The reason why social sites are so popular for the vast majority of people is because they are fun to use. That can be part of the advantage of using them in your internet marketing efforts also because it doesn’t feel like work when you’re building your internet business using social networking sites. Plus, using these sites can certainly help you make money, and that’s always a lot of fun.

3) Social sites are free

Another reason to use social sites for marketing your internet business is because they are free. Depending on the methods you use, it can get very expensive to market an online business. But social sites are completely free to use. This means that every cent you make from using social sites is pure profit.

One thing I feel I must add is that typically the traffic that comes from social sites does not convert very well. That means it’s a lot harder to make money from social traffic than it is from most other forms of marketing. They can also be a big time suck. Before you know it, you have wasted your whole day away on social sites. You need to use them in moderation. Don’t try to build your internet marketing business solely from social sites. Just use them as a small part of your overall internet marketing strategy.

Networking is a concept that has been popular for many years. In the classical world of business, networking meant getting known in prominent business and social circles. Now we are in the internet age, so how can you start networking online to help your internet marketing business to become prominent and well known?

First of all, don’t be shy to meet new people online who are in your business niche. Whatever your business niche is, go to the websites, blogs and forums in your niche and become a well-known member at them. Make sure that you participate in the discussions and get to know people. Don’t forget that forums are great places to exchange information and they are also perfect for gaining potential customers. Don’t be afraid to talk about the positive and the negative aspects of what you are marketing. Honesty and support works in internet marketing – people will only pay if you are worth it.

Make sure that you become a member of several social networking sites. As surprising as it may be, social networking sites can definitely help you gain the potential leverage that you need for your internet marketing business. Sites such as Myspace, Facebook, Technorati and many others can help you gain prominent contacts. Make sure you get to know a lot of people and thus lots of potential market partners and business contacts.

Once you reach a certain level of prominence in your market, then you can try more advanced techniques of Social Networking. For example, you can try to conduct webinars (seminars that are conducted on the internet to a larger audience) on internet marketing and mention your products and services that you are selling. The main purpose of conducting these webinars should be to create a social networking opportunity and to get to know potential customers. In fact, you can repeat these webinars at certain time intervals to create an even wider network for yourself.

Last but not least, do not be afraid to use your existing customers to create a social networking environment for yourself. Don’t forget that happy customers will be one of the best references for you and the people that you meet through them will have high potential to become customers for your internet marketing business. Don’t forget that networking can create a greater potential for you than most other marketing technique available when it comes to repeat business.