In this day and age social networking is becoming ever more popular with most people active on at least one social network. Social networks such as Facebook and Twitter are a great place to catch up with friends,share photos and broadcast a message to a lot of people at any one time. For this reason Facebook is now worth billions of pounds without charging users to use it.

However social networks are not only great for personal use, they are now one of the best marketing tools available for a business and can be a great way to establish your small business. Social networks have seen the uprising of many new small businesses, particularly clothing companies and other businesses that can operate online as well helping larger businesses find new customers.

For a lot of people social networking for business can be a new thing and therefore a lot of people are unsure of what social networks they should be active on and how to get the best results from  them so in this post I am going to share five of my favourite social networks for business.

Facebook

Facebook is currently the biggest social network of all time and therefore the best place to find masses of potential customers for your business. Facebook allows you to create a brand page for your business where you can post updates,photos and polls. Furthermore people can post onto your brand page so you can easily help out customers and answer any questions they may have.

What I personally like about Facebook is the ability to add a cover photo to the top of your brand page. This is a great place to advertise your latest products for free. I also love that when someone likes your post then their friends can see what they have liked which makes it easy for your business to go viral on Facebook.

Twitter

As far as being social is concerned Twitter if your best option for social networks. With Twitter you can get talking to just about anyone and this is a great opportunity to network with other businesses and influential people in your niche. With Twitter you can easily build a following by starting to follow other people and therefore following people back. Following people back on Twitter is key if you want to gain a lot of followers.

Another reason why I love Twitter for business social networking is because of the amount of traffic it can drive to your business website. Compared to other social networks, I find that people on Twitter click a lot more links and therefore this is a great way to drive targeted traffic to your website.

Google+

Google plus may not be peoples first thought when it comes to social networking. However this new social network can actually be very effective for business marketing. For local businesses Google+ is key because Google now shows your page in local searches.

As well as this I love the Circles feature in Google+ and you should make sure that you use this when networking for your business. In a way Google+ Can be seen as a cross between Facebook and Twitter. As much as I do not use this for personal reasons, I would highly recommend it for business.

Linked In

Linked In is the social network designed specifically for business.Its well worth filling in all of your personal details and previous jobs on Linked in as it can be a great place to find new sources of work for your business. What I also like about Linked In is that it is a great place to meet other business professionals that you can network with. Joining groups on Linked In means that you can easily find others with similar interests.

YouTube

Now many of you may be confused when I say YouTube as a social network. However I find that YouTube is one of the best social networks for business marketing and it can be a great way to create a viral campaign. For some businesses I know that video marketing may not be something for you, however it is definitely worth a try and you could easily see some great results as your video gets shared across other social networks such as Twitter and Facebook.