The phrase ‘social media’ refers to a variety of different web-based applications including blogs, web forums, and social networking sites that allow people to interact with each other online. Social media tools such as blogs, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook can help you communicate with your customers, expand your network of contacts, and grow your business. Social media can help you promote your business to a larger audience, and it can also help drive more traffic to your company’s website.

Blogs
Adding a blog to your website will add interactivity to your website and it will also allow you to communicate with your customers by provide ongoing updates to your site’s content. Use your blog to promote your products/services, provide information on special events or promotions, or to provide informative articles on new innovations or developments relating to your industry.

WordPress is a free, open-source blogging tool that you can download, configure, and upload to your Host Server. WordPress will provide you with the ability to login and add posts to your blog in a simple, easy manner.

Publishing quality content on a regular basis will not only allow you to communicate with your customers on an ongoing basis, but it will also allow you to attract new customers and reach a larger audience. The best way to increase your exposure online is to feature content that visitors find interesting and informative.

By increasing the overall quality and scope of your site’s content, you will also gain better listings on Google, driving more traffic to your site.

RSS
Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is an easy way for Web sites to share blog posts and news articles from other websites. Web surfers can use rss readers to surf these blog posts and news articles using RSS aggregators. WordPress automatically generates rss feeds for your blog displaying a title and description for each blog post with a link to the full article on your website.

Your rss feed allows you to syndicate the articles in your blog worldwide. Your syndicated articles get backlinks from rss feed aggregator sites, allowing you to promote your blog to a wider audience. There are literally thousands of sites that use rss feeds to create dynamic content for their readers. You can submit your own rss feed and visitors to that site will see your blog postings with a link allowing them to click through to your website to read the full article.

Submitting your rss feeds to rss feed Aggregators will also create inbound links to each page of your site, allowing you to gain more listings on Google and increase the traffic to your site.

Facebook
With more than 800 million active users, Facebook is now the most popular Social Networking Service worldwide. On Facebook, users can create profiles with photos, lists of personal interests, contact information, and other personal information. Users can communicate with friends and other users through private or public messages and a chat feature. They can also create and join interest groups and “like pages”.

Facebook Pages are a simple, free product for businesses to create a Facebook presence and connect with new and loyal customers. Facebook Pages feature important information such as your business location, links to your website, and hours of operation.

Twitter
On Twitter, people read, write and share messages of up to 140 characters. These messages, or ‘Tweets’, are visible to the public. Twitter users subscribe to your messages by following your account. Followers receive Tweets from all the accounts they have subscribed to. You can use Twitter to build relationships with customers, suppliers, partners, and anyone connected to your business. Share photos and information on new projects and events, Tweet updates about special offers, discounts and time-sensitive deals.

YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website. Users can upload, share, and view videos online. Businesses can upload videos of their products or services to communicate their message in a visually captivating manner. You can also create your own Channel on YouTube and customize it to feature a look consistent with your company’s branding. You can also feature a link to your company’s site.