We’ve been getting more calls and emails lately than ever before by businesses interested in marketing themselves on the Social Networks.

We’re hearing questions like:

What are all the Social Network sites that everyone is talking about?

How do we create an account—as individuals or as one company?

What exactly should we say once we’re on there?

When do we say what we’re supposed to say?

How much do we post and how often?

Can we sell anything or not?

Our answer to the newbie is always the same.

If you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s better to hire an experienced company to provide consulting, at least to get you started (yes, we do that here).

However, if you don’t have a budget, and you would like to try it out on your own, then the best thing to do at first is to watch and absorb—start with one or two social networks only. Be yourself. Try to have fun and interact. Don’t initially worry about selling.

While you’re on there, keep track of what other businesses are doing, what they are saying. Decide what you like and what you don’t like.

Once you feel comfortable, you can wade in slowly. Think touch and go—NOT media blitz.

Here are just a few social networking sites you may wish to start with:

Twitter: The big site right now, next to Facebook. As described by Twitter themselves: “The timely bits of information that spread through Twitter can help you make better choices and decisions and, should you so desire, creates a platform for you to influence what’s being talked about around the world. Search results spread across Twitter and in other ways across the Web so you can discover what’s happening on and off of Twitter.com, wherever you prefer.”

Squidoo: The world’s most popular site for building free, single pages about whatever topics you’re passionate about. Highlight books, videos, blogs, online shops, or just spread the word about what you love most. An added bonus is that you can raise money at the same time (even for charity). It’s fast, free, and simple to use.

Facebook: Here you can join networks organized by city, school, workplace, and region. The goal is to link up and interact with other people. You can also add friends and send messages, and update your personal or business profile. You can be successful if you provide useful and interesting content here, and if you interact in a fun and exciting way.

StumbleUpon: An online community that allows users to discover and rate Web pages, photos, and videos. Web pages are presented when the user clicks the “Stumble!” button on the browser’s toolbar. StumbleUpon chooses which Web page to display based on the user’s ratings of previous pages, ratings by his/her friends, and by the ratings of users with similar interests.

Digg: Digg is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. From the biggest online destinations to the most obscure blog, Digg shows the best stuff as voted on by users. You won’t find editors at Digg — they’re there to provide a place where people can collectively determine the value of content; this site is known for some of the nastiest remarks online. It’s not for the faint of heart. Submit links or vote on the ones there.

YouTube: Video sharing website where users can upload, view and share video clips. Unregistered users can watch the videos, while registered users are permitted to upload an unlimited number of videos. Accounts of registered users are called “channels.” If you supplement your copy with images and video and place them out there, it provides linkage back to you for users who might not otherwise access your site.

Flickr:  Almost certainly the best online photo management and sharing application in the world. It has two main goals: 1) to help people make their content available to the people who matter to them; 2) to enable new ways of organizing photos and video.

Slashdot: A technology-related news website that features user-submitted and editor-evaluated current affairs news with a “nerdy” slant. Each story on the site has an Internet forum-style comments section attached. The summaries for the stories are generally submitted by Slashdot’s own readers with editors accepting or rejecting these contributions for general posting. Warning: if your content gets placed on Slashdot, make sure your servers can handle the traffic. Google the “slashdot effect” for more information.

Yelp: Yelp helps people find great local businesses like dentists, hair stylists and mechanics. As of February 2009, more than 20 million people looked up a business on Yelp in the past 30 days. Yelpers have written over 5 million local reviews, over 85% of them rating a business 3 stars or higher. You can use Yelp to find local events, lists and to talk with other yelpers. Every business owner (or manager) can setup a free account to post offers, photos and message customers.

LinkedIn: A professional community that was originally intended to act as a sort of job-reference site. The content you place here is all about you, so it can serve as a mini-resume to which (and from which) you can link. LinkedIn makes staying in touch simple, as you can find past and present colleagues and classmates quickly. You can discover inside connections when you’re looking for a job or new business opportunity. Your network is full of industry experts willing to share advice. Have a question? Just ask.

Technorati: The leading blog search engine, Technorati.com indexes millions of blog posts in real time and surfaces them in seconds. The site has become the definitive source for the top stories, opinions, photos and videos emerging across news, entertainment, technology, lifestyle, sports, politics and business. Technorati.com tracks not only the authority and influence of blogs, but also the most comprehensive and current index of who and what is most popular in the Blogosphere. Founded as the first blog search engine, Technorati has expanded to a full service media company providing services to the blogs and social media sites and connecting them with advertisers who want to join the conversation, and whose online properties introduce blog content to millions of consumers.

Newsvine: Updated continuously by citizens like you, Newsvine is an instant reflection of what the world is talking about at any given moment. You can submit stories here, but make sure that they’re newsworthy and not just advertorials.

Helium: This is one of the best content sites. Too often content sites are used by first-time writers looking to “publish” their work, and by companies desperate to get links to their site who will throw up an ad or even a paragraph and call it an article. Helium is a lot of content in a lot of areas, and while it’s not strictly speaking fact-checked, at least an editor takes a look at the material. It’s a good place for your content to appear.

Sphinn: This is a pretty good content site with a social community for Internet marketers. There is a lot of good SEO and other web marketing information and opinions. Users have the option to “sphinn” the content found here.

Wikihow: Just as Wikipedia offers information, WikiHow is a how-to site/community made up of user-generated content.

Reddit: Social news website where you can post links to whatever web content you like. Other users may then vote the posted links down or up, causing them to appear more or less prominently on the Reddit home page. Users may discuss the posted links and vote for or against. When there are enough votes against a given comment, it will not be displayed by default, although a reader can display it through a link or preference. If you submit lots of interesting that gets “vote ups” you receive “karma” points as a reward.

If you want to try social media marketing, take a look at these and other sites (new ones appear daily!) and see which ones might work best for your company, your product, your service. Then behave responsibly.

Remember, in the social network marketing world, it’s all about trust.

At All Access Unlimited, we advise small-to-mid-size businesses and organizations, as well as entrepreneurs and individuals on how to use social media marketing (also known as social network marketing) to build relationships and deliver value.