Everybody seems to know today that social networking is the latest trend, but few people know how to actually make use of it in order to profit. The vast majority of businesses and companies end up creating a profile and either doing nothing with it, or simply trying to use it as a generic advertisement. Either way you won’t be producing results. If you want to actually profit from your web 2.0 presences and your time spent on social networking, then follow this quick guide to get started.

First, it’s important to recognize that regardless of the platform your on, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace or anything else, this is not the place to shamelessly advertise. It’s simply not an outlet for you to aimlessly drone on about how great you are, or about your latest product. These are sites where people connect and interact, and that has to be your primary goal.

Next you have to recognize that every social networking website is different. The way you set up your profile on Facebook and MySpace will be different, and different techniques will be more effective.

The way you interact with your followers on Twitter will be different from the way you interact with groups you join on other sites. So recognize that your efforts on every platform will need to be adjusted to the guidelines, unwritten rules and best practices for each particular site.

With those guidelines out of the way, one of the best ways to profit with social networking is to entice people to visit your website for a specific reason. Hook them into visiting your website where you can then convert them as you would a typical website visitor or prospect.

Another great way to profit from social networking is by actually turning down the promotional talk, and then only kicking it into gear once in a while. If you’re on Twitter and every Tweet you send out to your followers is recommending a new product, then people will start to tune out.

However, if you focus on providing people tips and other useful articles and so forth, people will find what you’re saying to be worthwhile and interesting. Then, the occasional promotional push or recommendation will be highly valued, and your conversion rate will soar. In this way, less is absolutely more, and you can profit by promoting less often and less intensely!

Don’t be afraid to incentivize your social networking either. You can offer people coupons or discounts for friending you on Facebook or following you on Twitter, or anything else. Once you do that, you then gain them as a captive audience and can continue to work on creating more business from them in the future as well.

These are just a few of the quick and easy ways that you can profit from social networking. Remember that every web 2.0 platform is different and you’ll need to follow the guidelines of each. But generally, work on being an active and helpful member of the website, drive traffic to your own site, promote less frequently to see more results and incentivize your presence and you’ll be seeing great success from the time you spend social networking.