It's not just the fact that you can get out there and really connect with the market you're targeting but you can give them the chance to give you feedback as well. People who use the Internet today want to feel as though their messages are being received and acknowledged - savvy marketers are finding ways to do just that.

Social bookmarking websites have a large role in helping you to benefit from social networks. This is because it switches the power back to the users. You can make use of these sites by bookmarking, sharing, voting and reaching out to a larger section of the market. The kind of response you can generate from these sites can be excellent. The best benefit received from the traffic you get from them is that it is very concentrated. For instance, let us say that your website is bookmarked by Digg and lands on the homepage.

This will forward a large flow of traffic to your website because of how well known Digg is. 

When we're talking about social media marketing, how can we ignore social networking sites?

Social networks such as Facebook are a great way to communicate with your target audience by creating groups, fan pages, applications, etc. It is a unique plan for producing a strong bond with your customers by supplying what they want via good quality content. In order to use the influence of social networks for marketing, you have to be there to connect with your fans and group members.

Lastly, it is important for your business to realize that social media marketing is not the only thing that you will need. You have to utilize it along with other tools such as Twitter to tweet your blog posts and to get a button put up under each of your submissions so that they can be re-tweeted. There are loads of unique ways in which you can use social media marketing to your advantage. You just have to be able to see the correct opportunities. 

Anyone looking to build a successful online business for the long-term needs to invest in social media marketing in a big way. Even though social media marketing is still in its early stage, it does show a lot of promise given the kind of growth its having. If you're planning to build a strong online business this is a huge opportunity you can't afford to miss out on.