The following is a guest post by Tibi Puiu, a professional blogger and social media consultant, who can be found writing down at Lost Art of Blogging.

As marketers and bloggers, we should all be very opened minded and inclined to new things. Exploration is the keyword here. If you want to be successful, in any activity you might want to follow, it’s very very important you always look around you, analyze and experiment with your work and surroundings.

In the past the easiest way to get in contact with the latest trends and so on, was to follow as many conventional media institutions as possible, from newspapers, to radio, to TV; but now with the development of the internet the world has become a smaller place and by far the easiest way to stay at top of the game with the latest, in any field, is to be active in social media.

Social media has been around for a long time now, bridging the gab between consumers and establishments (websites), but it’s only been recently that it managed to explode on the mainstream. If you’re a bit unfamiliarized with social media and all it represents, I’d recommend you first start reading my introduction to social media. If you need a few reasons why you should start extensively using social media, then I’ll just lay them down for you bellow. You’ll get converted in no time.

1. Traffic. This is probably the main reason why you should start using social media. It’s widely known that social media has the power to bring obscene amounts of traffic to your blog or website, infinitely easier then waiting years to establish your website and spending thousands on SEO services. A first hand example is the notorious digg effect, which describes the period of time in which an article from a blog or website gets popular on digg. The traffic that digg can send is tremendous, powerful enough to shatter most servers (around 100k uniques). Try building this kind of traffic the old fashion way.

2. Branding. If you’re looking to establish yourself as an authority in your niche or looking to promote your company’s services, then social media can provide the means to achieve just that. The most efficient way to brand you or your blog is to get your name out through as many channels as possible, seeing how there’s tons of popular, high trafficked social network out there it would just be a shame not to take advantage of them. Here’s a little more food for thought, this time on branding your blog.

3. Networking. With the help of social media you can build a heck loads of new contacts, which can quickly convert into loyal readers or customers. You can also meet a lot of interesting and inspiring people, that would normally be inaccessible. Sure these types of online “friendships” don’t compare to those from the real life, but a certain degree of connectivity and bound is certainly formed. Almost everybody has at least a myspace of facebook account, so you see the market is huge.

4. Learning. I’m really into social media and what keeps me constantly hooked is that I can always find remarkable things to read or watch in it, with great ease. It keeps me entertained, informed and up to date. The internet is notorious for being a place for knowledge and enlightenment (close the porn you perverts! :P), but it sometimes can be pretty overwhelming and time consuming. A lot of social media channels, like most social media bookmarking services, help you filter the best content and resource available on the web, as voted and popularized by the masses.

5. Voice. It can really be frustrating when you’ve got some really interesting ideas and thoughts, but can’t get them out to other people’s eyes and ears. The beauty of social media is that it can be used by anyone, from top journalists, to politicians, to your every day street corner average Joe. With the help of social media, virtually anyone with an internet connection and some solid eyes, can voice their thoughts across the mainstream.

Here’s some of the most popular social media services out there.

• StumbleUpon - My Profile
  
• MySpace - My Profile
  
• Facebook - My Profile
  
• LinkedIn - My Profile
  
• MyBlogLog - My Profile
  
• Bebo -
  
• Delicious - My Profile
• Digg - My Profile
• Furl -
  
• Reddit - My Profile
• Propeller - My Profile
• Spurl -
  
• Blue Dot -
  
• Ma.gnolia -
  
• Flickr - My Profile
• Twitter - My Profile
• YouTube - My Profile
• Sphinn - My Profile
• Newsvine

For more interesting articles about social media, blogging and marketing visit Lost Art of Blogging.