Nurturing existing relationships into referral sources is akin to growing a garden. Nothing worthwhile  happens overnight, but it’s well worth the effort when the fruits appear. Fruit from your own garden usually tastes better, is less expensive than buying from the store, and is just a few steps from your kitchen. Often your online neighbors (clients, friends and family) lend you the ground and even plant the seeds, but you have to provide the water (online content) and fertilizer (caring, reliable and honest service).

Online social networking sites act as little plots of land for your garden. Here’s my recommended list of sites to establish a presence on, even if you don’t update all of them regularly. I choose these sites because they tend to show up well on Google Searches (sooner than later), with or without long tail keyword research. If you have SEO information, by all means include it in your text.

 Social Networking

1.      Facebook Personal Profile

2.      Facebook “Like” Page (business)

3.      LinkedIn

4.      Biznik

            Blogs

1.      Twitter (it’s a micro-blog, technically!)

2.      Posterous (if you can use email, you can use this blog system)

Review/Recommendation/Misc Sites

1.      Yelp

2.      Google Place Page (see the article I wrote on Place Pages here)

  Every effective marketing plan in this modern age should include a corporate social media campaign, and I highly recommend the elements above to be included. Good luck!