This Is Social Media: How to Tweet, Post, Link and Blog Your Way to Business Success

*UPDATED FOR 2011. Including new info on mobile devices, new platforms and location based social networking.*

Anyone in business can use social media to increase brand awareness, customer loyalty and sales. This is Social Media shows you how.

You might already be social networking on Facebook, or even microblogging on Twitter. One thing's for sure though; you're too busy to muck about on these sites all day, not really knowing how to get any decent play out of them. You're looking for profitability, not gimmicks.

Many organizations, large and small, are using social media and social networking to build robust communities of followers, stay ahead of the competition and increase profits. Are you missing a trick?

This is the definitive guide to using the whole spectrum of social media in an efficient and measurable way in order to market your business. It covers Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Ecademy, Flickr, YouTube, Bebo, MySpace, Blogs, Podcasts, Mobile and much, much more. Each site is assessed not as an end in itself but as means of delivering a business result.

With simple, practical steps, real life examples and quick definitions to explain the jargon, you'll soon understand the world of social media and have access to a range of social networking tactics that will help you reach new customers and clients, as well as get your existing ones to do more business with you.

Guy Clapperton is a columnist and regular contributor to the small business and digital sections of most of the national press, as well as a consultant and media trainer.