Just as yesterday I spent considerable time talking about why you need to be using social networking for your business, today I want to give you a list of social networks that are essential to your business. Not every social network will be good for everyone, but out of the list below you should be on the majority of these sites in order to successfully build your business. Also remember that this list of social networks does not take into consideration any legal regulations for financial and legal professionals.

Legal reasons aside you should be on virtually all of these sites.

Facebook- 500 million people in one spot. Enough said!

Twitter- This is one of the best traffic drivers to my website, since I started blogging. When I was figuring out SEO, Twitter made up roughly 30-40% of my traffic. Today it still makes up between Twitter and Twitterfeed 10-15%. Additionally, it is a great place to start building your relationships.

LinkedIn- The premier business social networking site where people go to connect with other business professionals on a wide range of business topics.

Myspace- On the other spectrum of social networking you have Myspace. This site is devoted nowadays to mostly entertainment industry insiders and their fans. Not to knock a site that has 160 million followers, but they are of limited use to the majority of business professionals. If you are an artist this is a good site to join.

Youtube- For the people, such as myself who want to see what something is about, instead of just hearing it this is the place to go as you can watch video from sunrise to sunset and still not even view a tiny fraction of their massive video library.

Flickr- This is a continuation of my explanation for Youtube, but this is a great site for those who enjoy the visual, which according to my reading of Howard Gardner’s Mutliple Intelligences is a large percentage of the human population.

Foursquare- This location based social network is one of the fastest growing sites on the web today.

Social Networking On Your Terms- Self-promotion. Definitely! Great site- heck yeah! This social network that I created helps you understand the ins and outs of social networking and also connect with great business professionals.

Niche Networks

Etsy- For the hands-on arts and crafts crowd this site is the bomb!

Active Rain-Social networks for real estate professionals

MLM Social- The social network for network marketers. This site is growing and do not be surprised if you hear about them more soon!

The list of social networks included above should be a great starting point for you to begin your social networking experience. I am sure there are some that others feel are important to include here, so feel free to let us know what sites you believe should be included in the list of social networks listed above.