There's a new tool available for online entrepreneurs or even brick-and-mortar ones. Social networking (as seen in such popular sites like MySpace, Facebook, Hubpages, and Squidoo) can expose your business to a whole new bunch of people, as long as you use them right.

On a social networking site, your profile should tell those who visit you about your business, yourself, and then provide a link to your website so that if people want to go visit, they can. What's great about social networking sites is that you can introduce yourself to everyone, and kind of take your business along with you. This is different than simply trying to market your business without you as a face and personality behind it.

You can make your profile's contents really, really valuable to people by adding interesting and valuable information to them, instead of simply "filler" information. Social networking is great because with such tools as your profile, you have the ability to attract people who have similar interests. This, in turn, is likely to increase traffic to your website, and it can also increase your business's potential profitability, even if it's not your typical online business.

Take a look at other people's profiles and pages to see what they're doing. It's perfectly fine to leave comments and even desired. However, be respectful and polite. If you're not, people will find you and the backlash can be quite severe. So treat others as you want to be treated by them.

Of course, what you really want to do with social networking sites is to get people to visit your profile, too. You'll start receiving a lot more comments and back links in this way, and you'll start to come up more and more in search engine results, which will give you even more traffic.

A lot of social networking sites actually have groups that you can join so that your profile is even more visible. When you join a group that shares your specific interests, you're going to be plugging your business into a venue that you know is already going to be interested in what you're doing. Take the time to join as many of them as you can, because this will only increase your exposure.

Of course, social networking only works in this way if what you give people is truly quality. You want people to come back and visit your site again and again. To do so, you can give them a true and quality content for "free," in return for having them visit you and make you highly visible and popular. You can offer e-books, reports, and any content (including downloads) that's going to be valuable and truly interesting to people. Make sure the quality is there and that you're not just doing it to attract visitors, because it's going to show. Your first purpose should be to provide people something of value. They'll return the favor in spades.

Finally, remember that you can engage in "social networking" off-line, too. If people you know are aware of just how you feel about social networking, they just might be convinced to give it a try. If they do, you can encourage them to visit your profile even as you visit theirs, thus creating even more back links, more traffic, a higher profile, and greater profits.

Here's to your best social networking efforts ever!