Social Media is where you want to be when it comes to helping your business expand, as it is a priceless asset in the marketing world. Social media channels like Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin attract so much continual attention from Internet users, it has become a phenomenal and powerful venue for advertisers to create interest and traffic. Here are five reasons to use social media for business.

1. Help Increased Search Engine Rankings:  Social media profiles frequently rank highly with major search engines. Using brand names and keywords in your profiles can help you to generate traffic for your social media sites and company homepage.
2. Generate Site Traffic:  By updating regularly on sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn with posts that link back to your site, you can create additional traffic to your site.
3. Find New Customers Through a Company Profile:  Your company profile is a great opportunity for you to post regular updates on your activities, but also about important news and trends in your industry. It’s critical to post regularly if you want to increase your followers or fans and convert them to potential leads.
4. Brand Monitoring:  Having a social media presence allows you to better understand what current and potential customers are saying about your product or services.
5. Networking:  Through social media you can quickly build a network of core supporters, which is essential for any up and coming business to keep growing and expanding. It is that group of loyal followers that will keep bringing your company business and referring it to others if they are pleased with what they are finding.

Following on from this, here is a little bit of ‘New News’ - Introducing Tokkster, a new type of chat room.

Tokkster is a new type of Internet chat room, which enables users to chat with other people over the same webpage. Pretty Unique.

All you need to do is sign up with a Tokkster account (and yes, it’s free). And that’s it. Once signed up, you browse websites like usual. What you will notice is a Tokkster Status bar in which you are able to see other peoples faces that are browsing the same page at the same time. Of course, if you don’t feel like chatting, either minimize the app (to become invisible) or don’t log in.

Only available in Internet Explorer version 7.0 and above (other version coming out soon).

Google+ (Google Plus), Googles answer to Facebook, may not have the massive membership numbers that Facebook now enjoys, but it has just recorded its strongest-month ever and, according to Experian Hitwise, should reach 400million users by the end of the year.

Hitwise tweeted: “Google+ total US visits reach more than 49 million in Dec-11, biggest month to date & up 55% compared to Nov-11 ow.ly/i/oT3R,” 

they further tweeted that Google+ visits have increased in all but one week over the last 5 weeks. As usual figures are base in the US but are a good indicator of the global uptake in english speaking countries.

Analysts expect that Google+ will reach about 400 million users by the end of 2012, thats half the current number of Facebook users but it will have taken Google+ just over a year to reach compared to Facebook taking 4 years to reach 60 million. Of course, Social networking is now in the public conscience and many will try a new network out or simply stamp their mark on it.

Google integrates its Android smartphones with Google+ so it is now even easier for users to access Google+. With sales of Android devices of more than 700,000 per day the numbers should soon increase.

What does this mean for business owners? It is one more place to advertise and engage with potential or existing customers. Have you set up your Google+ Business Page? Talk to AsOne about how you can make steps to leverage the potential of Google+, Facebook and other social networking services.

Do you check in on Foursquare, Facebook or another location-based app at least once a week? If so, you’re among just 2% of the adult population, according to a new US report.

Forrester Research surveyed 37,000 people with mobile phones and discovered that 70% no only didn’t regularly use location based check-in apps but didn’t even know what they were. On the bright side thats better than last years 84%. From the 30% this year who are aware of the Geo-Social applications only a tiny 5% are classed as active and only 2% check-in at least once a week.

If “checking-in” is not mainstream, what is the point of using it as a marketing tool?

Forrester found that American adult location-based service app users are twice as likely to share information about products or services they are considering purchasing or have purchased. Its those tiny minority who are the powerful influencers and early adopters who can also start trends and generate hype for brand other will later follow.

Promoting Check-Ins for your business can improve Checkouts!

With so much focus on social media and the need to embrace it to improve and increase business the same hesitation continues to raise its head; “my customers don’t use Facebook”.

You know what? They are probably right, because those potential customers who do use Facebook are shopping somewhere else, Somewhere that does embrace social media. Lets look into who is using social media.

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First it was the news that Facebook would become the killer of Gmail earlier this week, now Facebook are in the headlines again as they announce their new partnership with MySpace. It seems we can’t go more than a couple of days without mention of the online behemoth, let alone the hundred odd times we check it a day.

MySpace, who recently under went a radical overhaul of their user interface and branding, now allows users to connect their Facebook and MySpace profiles, in what is being labeled ‘Mash Up with Facebook.’ This new feature now allows users a whole new range of online sharing features, where they will be able to receive updates and follow their favorite unsigned, underground and established artists that MySpace is known for.

Despite being the foremost social network at one time, MySpace has seen a sharp decline in activity, seeing a fall in users of up to 49% in one year, if certain reports are to be believed. However, MySpace has shown it is far more resilient than it’s given credit for. With its new focus as a social network for music, (which it had long been labeled, but never full embraced until earlier this year) it can now benefit from Facebook and its 500 million users, as news feeds continue to play an increasingly big role as a source of website traffic.

This has great benefits for Facebook and their mission to learn everything about you, as it is now able to import even more user data into it’s highly targeted advertising model from the new mash ups and the eventual introduction of the ever present Like button. It’ll be interesting to see how this fits in the recently updated Fan Pages, but no doubt it’ll be in a way which increases user engagement and generates further advertising revenue.