The business world these days is built up by social media networking sites.By using the main social networks Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Plus you can grow your business, make connections from all over the world and market your business to a whole host of people without spending any money.

Facebook is the fastest growing social platform and it has about 200 million active users per month from counties all over the world. Facebook for business can be managed easily by creating a page using your personal profile and by doing this you can then switch between the two keeping both
pages up to date to personal contacts and customers. TIP: Download the Facebook Page Manager on your smartphone and keep on top of your pages and even add employees as administrators to manage the pages also.
PRO: With Facebook advertising, you can target potential customers through the Facebook advertising platform. As a page administrator, you can aim your advertisements to people through age, genre and interests. Facebook advertising is an excellent way of directly targeting your audience.
CON: Building a business page and getting more likes and interest can be difficult. With Facebook it’s not guaranteed that your status updates and pictures will reach everyone so you may have to re-share status and pictures to get the response and traffic you want.

With Twitter having 288 million active users it is an attractive audience that you should consider connecting with. However, Twitter is different. With users throwing around @’s and #’s it can seen a little complicated to some compared to the simplicity of Facebook.
PRO: Twitter is massive! Even if you are a small business, it is big enough for you to find an audience and unlike Facebook you are guaranteed each and every tweet goes to all of your followers.
CON: Twitter users generate 340 million tweets every day and most users follow several hundreds of profiles. If you only tweet once or twice a day your tweets will be buried in your follower’s feeds and since you are limited to 140 characters you need to get to the point with your tweets!

LinkedIn is a big social network that provides a great deal of exposure to business and can help find new partners, business opportunities, or employees. LinkedIn’s main focus is the business world and is used for “professional networking”.
PRO: LinkedIn can help boost your SEO (search engine optimization) which is what search engines use to bring business and traffic from search results.
CON: When using LinkedIn it is important to know it is for a professional networking and not advertising. One of the major negatives is that advertising your products and services will be picked up as SPAM and can lead to seriously damaging your SEO in the long run.

Google Plus is important for everyone but especially small businesses due to it’s high potential impact. Google Plus is the King of SEO as it is owned by the most important search engine Google. An active Google Plus account (both personal page and company page) will be noticed and you will be rewarded by the ranking in people’s search results.
PRO: Google Plus is a great way of sharing content with users using utilizing circles. With circles, communities and hangouts (video chats), it is very appealing to many users who are working to balance their professional and personal life.
CON: While most small business owners have a very positive outlook for Google Plus, it is still growing slow and not yet that well known. Since businesses can only add other businesses to their circles, and not individuals like Facebook and Twitter, the growth can be small for your company.