Facebook.  Flickr.  StumbleUpon.  Bebo.  Tumblr.  Digg.  Twitter.  If these words are foreign to you, beware: you’ve just aged yourself and your company 10 years.  Before you throw your hands up in defeat, however, here’s the good news:  even though it seems a new funny-sounding social networking site pops up every day, if you master just a few you’re already on-par with some of the most savvy web marketing companies out there.

I can hear you now – “why should I devote my precious time creating fluffy user profiles on Facebook when I could be out selling?”  Believe me, no one understood that better than our own Chris Schuler… until recently.

Like most companies, we have Monday morning meetings where we discuss current projects, internal news, and the occasional “wait’ll you hear this!” weekend story.  During our last meeting, Chris started off his story by saying, “Jamie, you’ll love who I met this weekend!” Turns out it was Jim Tobin, President of Ignite Social Media – a marketing company that focuses on social networking sites.  I did love this, because since day one I’ve fought for using social media to our advantage to expand our reach.  Chris has always gone along with it, but like most, never really “got it”.  As he continues to tell me about his conversation with Jim and how important social media is, it was like the sky opened up and the sun shone right down on our conference table!  Next thing I know he’s ordering Jim’s book (an Amazon best seller) “Social Media is a Cocktail Party” to learn more.  Fantastic.

You see, social media, although difficult to grasp initially, can be an easy to use and extremely beneficial to a business.  You don’t have to spend hours creating profiles at the hundreds of sites out there, and it probably wouldn’t benefit you anyway because they’d be too time-consuming to continuously update (which is so important).  Some of the most successful that we’ve utilized are:

1.    Twitter / http://www.twitter/com/GoMobileAds

Twitter is my favorite social networking site because it’s absolutely the easiest and has been very successful in terms of creating relationships with other businesses.  The concept is simple: you post, or “tweet” 140 character or less updates on what you’re working on, new projects, or anything interesting related to your company.  This can include recent press you’ve received, new blog announcements, or just what’s going on in the office.  Twitter gives your company personality and voice, and since followers (people or companies that ‘subscribe’ to your updates) know that your updates are guaranteed to be short, they’re more likely to pay attention to what you’ve got to say.

2.    Facebook / GoMobile Facebook Page

Facebook is the 5th most visited website on the internet (source) and second in social networking only to MySpace.  We love Facebook because it has business page formats that stay consistent and clean looking, but are still customizable via applications.  We add our YouTube videos, photos of our latest and greatest campaigns, and even have a wall where “fans” (Facebook users who are supporters of your company) can post their thoughts, ideas and comments.  This is more time consuming to keep updated than Twitter, but also gives more freedom in providing information to the public.

3.    YouTube / http://www.youtube.com/user/GoMobileAdvertising

The possibilities are endless with YouTube, a video sharing website.  We use the site as a hub for our campaign recap and promotional videos, but it can be used for video blogging, informational tutorials, or to show off news coverage that your company has received.  It’s the third most popular site on the web, so it’s a no-brainer that it can increase visibility.

Of course, there are many other social networking sites that can be beneficial, so explore and decide which fits your demographic best.  For a list of the top 50 social networking sites recommended for businesses, click here.