Reader Poll: Influence Marketing with Social Networks

Update for 2012: Here’s a list of the top 12 social networks for business:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• YouTube
• Google+
• Slideshare
• Pinterest
• FourSquare
• StumbleUpon
• Flickr
• MySpace
• Tumblr

Whether the top social network is Facebook or something new, TopRank can help your business with social network development and social media marketing.

Networking has been a core tactic for building and marketing businesses long before the internet came of age, and certainly even more so with the explosion of services such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Ning. Web technology and the mass appeal of making connections online makes social networking an attractive channel for businesses that want to extend their word of mouth reach, credibility and influence, or using influencers to market through social.

While there’s plenty of buzz about social networks (socnets), most companies aren’t quite “wired” for enganging social communities just yet. Amidst all the shiny new objects of Web 2.0 web applications, it’s important to understand which networks are influential and relevant. Hence, our Reader Poll:

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For these options, I am including Twitter and FriendFeed as social networks, even though most would characterize them as having social features, but not necessarily pure socnets in the sense that LinkedIn and Facebook are.

Many people use multiple social networks. For example, the three I use most often are: LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. YouTube and Flickr offer social networking features, but I suspect the majority of users are personal, not business.  For this poll, just pick one and share others in the comments including an anchor text link to your profile if you like.

Please also share other business social networks, especially any that are niche or vertically specific.