So everyone is really excited about all this Social Media stuff. People are trying to figure out how all this stuff works and jumping on any band wagon they can find.

The question to ask is if this stuff is effective for your business. Are answer, of course it is. You must keep in mind it is just a tool to interact, connect, share ideas and spread your reach. Do not think however that just by setting up a facebook account you are done.

The way to reach success is to actually jump in to this stuff and start interacting and posting new ideas, questions, answers and start conversations. If you do this, you will be amazed at how effective these tools can be at generating leads and setting yourself up as an expert.

Ok, here are the sites you were looking for:

1. Facebook.com - use this for both business (by setting up a fan page, read our ebook if you need help) and personal use.
   
   
2. YouTube.com - again, this can be used for both business and personal use and does a great job for both.
   
   
3. MySpace.com - this is more for personal use, but if you are in a band this is a great site for getting some major exposure and can be highly effective.
   
   
4. Twitter.com - this site works excellent for business or personal use. We use it about 95% for business and have seen it drive huge volumes of traffic to our web site. We have also been able to convert a lot of this traffic into leads. Twitter is good, very, very good!
   
   
5. Flickr.com - is a really great web site for sharing photos. It works equally well for personal and business usage. Flickr has a great resource of photos that can be used under the "Creative Commons" license, great for blog articles.
   
   
6. PhotoBucket.com - although we have not personally used PhotoBucket much, it seems to be very similar to YouTube and Flickr I really thought this video was pretty cool and I found it on PhotBucket.
   
   
7. LinkedIn.com - when it comes to business social media sites, this is the number one site. These guys do it right and there is so much valuable resources out there, but you can only reap the rewards by becoming active on the site. Add some apps, go ask or answer some questions, join a group and start participating in it. All these items will help you become highly successful with LinkedIn.
   
   
8. Digg.com - ok this site feels like it is mostly for all the tech people out there. However, it is a great place to start connecting to the movers and shakers in the social mediasphere. Get on and start making a few friends that post topics you like. Also post a few blog articles you have written.
   
   
9. Ning.com - nings focus is building groups that can connect and interact and build communities.
   
   
10. Yelp.com - Yelp is a social media site that allows you to rate and review local nightclubs, shopping and restaurants among other things. Check out what others think about these great local establishments.

If you found this article helpful and would like more ideas of social media sites to grow your reach (business or personal), just leave us a comment and we will post some other sites to check out.

For those of you that are super hip on all the new social media sites, we would love to hear the ones you are using and a description of what they are and why you like them. If you give us some of your ideas, we will be sure to include your name, web site and/or blog address for your thoughts and publish the next article if we use your feedback.