If you look at all the build up around social networking, you might consider that it’s a craze that will soon weaken. Advertisers don’t think so. After seeing how many teens and adults (40%) in the US are on social networking sites, they are upping their budgets for the new year.

Last year, advertisers spent $920 million advertising on social networks. They plan to spend a lot more this year - 69 percent more, according to eMarketer - around $1.6 billion. It’s not expected to slow either. In the next four years the figure is expected to reach $2.7 billion.

eMarketer predicts that by 2011 more than 85 million adults in the US who are online will be on social networks. That’s almost half of all adults online (or 49 percent). That’s pretty optimistic. They predict that most of that growth will come in 2008.

If you want to get into the social networking advertising trend, yet do not have the big bucks to dish. Manual labor for marketing your products or services will be needed. The steps include the following:

Build a Plan

You will then need to map out a unique strategy that is catered to your business. Going blindly into social networking is going to lead you nowhere.

Search it out

The next step involves identifying social networking sites that are the most widely used and which therefore could be ideal for achieving your social networking goals.

Make a Unique Profile

You must take care to develop a professional looking profile for yourself over a social networking site. Remember, it is your profile that would draw other visitor’s attention to your business.

Stay Updated

Being up to date with all the information regarding social networking is another aspect that you should not neglect.

Meet Others
Anyone who wishes to be successful in social networking should make it a point to go through the profiles of other people in detail. It is even better if you were to leave your comments on the blogs of other members, with a back link to your website. This would help you to increase traffic and visibility of your website.

Add Links

Linking is perhaps one of the most important aspects of social networking that you should not neglect at any cost. Productive social networking is not possible if you were to not pay proper attention to linking. You can use the link to your particular page on a social networking site or your website’s URL, in order to generate increased web traffic and therefore more business.

Ask Other to Link

You can also ask for a reciprocal arrangement wherein some other members of a social networking site or some your friends could put a link to your page on the social networking site or to your website. You can also request them to blog about your business and put a link back to your website. All these techniques will enable you to generate more web traffic and therefore more business.

Include Links in Email

Leaving a link of your site each time you send an email is another way to increase traffic to your page on a social networking site.

Update With Fresh and Quality Content

You should be constantly updating the content on your page and website on regular basis. This way you will be communicating new things about your products or services to your target audience.