Not everyone knows why there seems to be such a buzz around all the "social networking" that is happening on all the Web 2.0 sites these days.  If you listen to all the "gurus" they are all saying go post, go post, get on the social sites, but none of them seem to be realy saying WHY.

There are basically three main reasons why it is important to be on these networking sites and build your list of networked people.

1) You can increase your links to your site by posting to these places and getting people to post about your site, there is no doubt about this.  But you do have to be careful that you do not just post about your site.  If you do not post about other sites that are in fact good things to post, then you will not get any "trust ranking" amoung those that read your posts.

2) You can get great information on how to do things, what works, and what is happening in your business by interacting with others in the same business.  This is known as doing your business intelligence work to keep in the know.  The worst thing that you can do is get so far behind in the knowledge curve that you are totally left out when something new comes along, and that is almost daily on the web.

3) One of the least talked about reasons for business networking is that you are in essence building a opt-in mailing list.  If you have people that have subscribed to your contact list, network list, or groups that you run, then you have an opt-in list for doing low-key marketing to.

A really nice new site that has come out in the last few weeks is called ApSense.  It has an easy to use interface, allows for the creation of unlimited groups, provides some advertising options, and allows you to create a network of people.  I would strongly recommend joining this or other similar sites and start building your network so when you want to promote something via a recommendation, you have a network of people that trust your judgement ready.