Among the top social media sites it is no surprise that Facebook is ranked the most popular, beating out the competition by a landslide. Mobile web and PC users combined allowed Facebook to top the charts, bringing in a total of 304.9 million users this past year. Other popular social media sites noted in the study were LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, and WordPress.

With growing popularity social media sites such as these have also recently explored the idea of working with advertisers to sell ad space on their sites. Facebook was the first to explore this idea and has since been scrutinized over their decision to do so. However, though users initially complained of such a change Nielsen revealed that this change hasn’t actually deterred anyone from visiting their favorite social media website regularly. Thus, perhaps Nielsen’s study not only revealed the growing trend in social media, but also the potential lucrative perk that on-site advertisements could provide such networks.

You probably already have a Facebook account right? You may have even checked it today to see if your friend had her baby or to drool over your buddy’s vacation. You know the definition of a tweet and +1, but do you really know how to use social media to help your business? This article will give you four introductory ways to use social media for increasing your profits.

If you’re like most people, you prefer doing business with someone you know. It’s nice to say your insurance agent is Chris, who’s name (not just business) is in your contacts list.

It’s the same for your customers. In addition to your personal account, make profiles for your business on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+. Make friends, join networks. With these accounts in addition to your small business website, you’re on your way to getting your name known.

It’s a given that just having an account won’t get you the quantity and quality of business you seek. You’ll need to settle in and get comfortable. Post or tweet on your pages multiple times each week. Don’t get greedy, though. Try to make only one out of every 5 posts self-promotional. Other updates need to include content in which your readers are interested: news, events, deals, Q&A, etc.

Think of social networking like your old time southern town, complete with nosy neighbors and welcoming committee. Remember your manners and you’ll do just fine. For example, if someone follows you, thank them. If they share or retweet your post, do the same for them when you can. If someone says something nice about you, say something nice back about them. And if a “friend” reaches out to you by writing on your Facebook wall or sending you a message via LinkedIn or Twitter, get back to them. Tie into your message how your business can meet their needs or help with their concerns.

One of the nice aspects of social media marketing is the ability to keep tabs on your popularity status. There are websites such as Tweetdeck and Hootsuite out there that will allow you to control multiple accounts from one page. You can get weekly (or really, however often you like) updates on which posts are most popular- which content is getting interaction from potential customers.

If you happen to see some negative posts about your business, you can address them before they go viral. Communicate with the disgruntled poster and work toward providing a better experience with your business.

Facebook
Google reviews state that there are nearly one billion search results for “Facebook” on their site. To put that into perspective, there are almost three search results for every man, woman, and child in America. It’s easy to see that Facebook is the largest and therefore, best place to advertise in social media today. It offers the largest readership and the most developed advertising platform compared to other social networks. Advertising on Facebook remains relatively cheap, making it a competitive choice over options such as Google AdWords, which can cost significantly more.
Facebook allows companies to focus on two areas: targeting groups or making a network. Targeted ads allow you to use the information Facebook collects on all of its members. How can this be useful? By allowing you to focus on a massive number of data combinations, for example: men over 50 who like smooth jazz, you are able to find your target audience in a snap. If you choose instead to make a network, you can make a page on Facebook. You can then pay to advertise that page and gain “likes,” thus developing your own network of fans on Facebook with whom to communicate.

LinkedIn
If you want the same type of groups targeting with a smaller network, LinkedIn is a viable alternative. While you won’t get the same data to market your groups, you get a finer grain of targeting so you can specifically advertise to people with, for example, a certain job title, like “Director of Operations.” LinkedIn is made for business networking. Therefore, if business professionals are your target audience, it is a wonderful tool. However business professionals are not the group you want to attract, you should look to advertise elsewhere.

Twitter
Despite Twitter’s great success, it has the least developed advertising platform of any of the social networks. In terms of sponsored advertisements, all you can do with Twitter is buy a sponsored tweet or pay to promote a trend on the main page.
To use Twitter successfully, a company must manually building up its network by gaining followers and following the right people. This method of networking will make your voice more prominent. The draw to using Twitter, as opposed to other social media platforms, is the “snowball effect” that you can have: you tweet, your followers retweet, the followers of your followers retweet, etc.

Twitter also makes it possible for your business to become searchable as people tweet about you. For example, someone’s search for “carpet cleaners” will find your business if you get people tweeting about it. Twitter also allows your message to be placed fully in the public rhelm, as opposed to a more focused network like Facebook, which is concentrated on the immediate network of a person and their friends.

As you can see, in order to find success via advertising in the social networking market, you must first determine your audience. Are you interested in a local or more global outreach? In the end, social media advertising is one of the least expensive and most efficient ways for placing your business in the public eye. If you haven’t yet, take the time to explore social networking and its advertising possibilities for your business.

It is predicted by Paul Allen, founder of Ancestry.com, that Google+’s female population may surpass that of business social network LinkedIn come August. LinkedIn’s staistics, for it’s estimated 100 million users, report 63% male and 37% female.

Allen determined Google+’s gender estimates using a method based on US Census data about surname-popularity (the popularity of an individual’s last name) and the number of Goggle+ users with each surname.

Jeff Weiner, CEO, was quoted as saying, “This isn’t necessarily indicative of anything,” he said. “The market will do what it will do. This company is in it for the long haul.” Not since the debut of Google in 2004 or Netscape Communications in 1994 has an IPO made such a stir on the trading floor raising over $350 million gross in proceeds.

However, there’s a catch: the company’s active users are less than its registered users. From the company’s S-1 filing: “…a substantial majority of our page views are generated by a minority of our members? If the number of our actual members does not meet our expectations or we are unable to increase the breadth and frequency of our visiting members, then our business may not grow as fast as we expect, which will harm our operating and financial results and may cause our stock price to decline.”

To draw a comparison, Facebook has 600 million users.