Social Media Marketing is spreading like wildfire. The reason being it’s viral nature and it’s potential for spreading news, information, and updates very quickly. Chances are, if you are offering any type of product or services online, you may be using social media marketing in your search engine marketing efforts, or plan to in the future.

If so, there are many important social media networks that you should become familiar with. Even if you are a newbie in social media, or are outsourcing your internet marketing, signing up for social networks with an optimal username is key. Usernames on social networks are becoming as sought after as URLs. Not only should you sign up, and get familiar with these social media networks, securing your username is an important step to take now, even if social media marketing is not in the very near future for you.

This is a list of the top 10 social media networks I recommend, though there are hundreds, if not thousands out there, and more being created each day. Take a look, sign up, and if you use an internet marketing professional or contractor, talk to them about your future plans for social media.

Facebook

Facebook is a social networking site where you can add your friends, co-workers, family, and other contacts, and share information such as links, photos, updates, videos and much more. You can also integrate your Facebook account with other social networking sites such as Digg.

Digg

Digg is a social news site where you can discover and submit news stories, links, and photos. You can vote on Digg submissions by “digging” them or “burying” them, and the more the submission is Dugg, the higher it will appear either in its category or, if you are lucky enough, on the home page. Digg can be a great source of incoming traffic, especially if your submission reached the home page.

Technorati

Technorati is a blog search engine. Social media can be “tagged” and categorized for users to search for their particular topic of interest. Technorati rates a blog’s authority by the number of unique blogs that link to a particular blog, and the tags that are found in the blog. A high Technorati rating is very good for search engine rankings.

Delicious

Delicious is a social bookmarking site where people can publicly bookmark, tag, and share their favorite website bookmarks. Users can search for websites that fall under certain tags, and indexed Delicious bookmarks will show.

StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon is a social discovery network where users discover websites, stories, photos, and videos, and can rate these discoveries. Other users and members can then “stumble” across these sites, and rate them as well.

Twitter

Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows people to connect, and send messages or “Tweets” to all of their followers. Twitter users can “retweet” messages from the originator, which has a viral effect when users send their followers these “retweets”. You can also send pictures now tweets as well as links. You only have 140 characters for Tweets, so you will need to use a URL shortener such as Bit.ly for sending links. There are many Twitter applications that can make tweeting and retweeting much easier, as well as to organize your messages.

LinkedIn

Linked in is a business-oriented social network which is mostly used for professionals to network for business, jobs, and leads. You can post your resume on Linked in, and also have past colleagues and superiors recommend you. There is plenty to do on LinkedIn to network, you can submit and answer questions, get introduced to contacts at companies through your network of people, search for, and post jobs, join groups, and much more.

Reddit

Mixx

Mixx is another news social network where stories can be submitted, and users vote links up or down to determine their popularity. Mixx is similar to Digg and StumbleUpon.

Sphinn

Sphinn is yet another social news site where articles and posts can be submitted and voted on or”Sphunn”. The difference with Sphinn, is that it is a social network that is Internet Marketing-oriented.

As I said, there are many, many more social media marketing sites out that can be utilized, and each is a little different and serves its own purpose. If you are just getting started, at least become familiar with this list, and if you own a business or website, you definitely want to secure your username.

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