All of these options have something in common.  If you’re going to make them work for you, it’s essential to understand the cultures involved. We’re not talking about the national or ethnic heritages of participants in these groups, we’re talking about the way the groups themselves operate.

They’re all little semi-insular communities.  They have their own mores and conventions.  They have unwritten rules.  There are expectations.

If you hop right on in trying like mad to sell, sell, sell, you’re probably going to find yourself an outsider, on the wrong side of the cultural divide.  Do your homework.  Learn the law of the land.  Find a way to exist within those communities and then (and only then) can you hope to generate free traffic via your participation.

Remember when you were in school and the teacher complained because you did too much socializing in class? Well, today, you are going to see your socializing pay off. You can honestly say that you did learn something in school to help you succeed if you were the social butterfly. Social networking is free traffic. You can use any of the many sites to find friends, get traffic and market your website all for free.

The nice thing about social networking is that you meet people from different areas of the world. You are not stuck in the country that you live in. This means that your website is going to be seen around the world. StumbleUpon allows users to give a little testimonial about your website that will help nudge people in the right direction–right to your website.

Do status updates periodically daily to direct traffic to your website. You can make as many updates as you want and keep everyone updated with your latest news. You can also use the application from Twitter to post your tweets if you don’t want to spend time posting on each one separately. You do have to make friends, but fortunately, Facebook has a search feature for finding people that is so much easier to use than MySpace.

You can browse people in your area or make friends in one of the hundreds of groups. Join the groups and get you will find hundreds of groups that you can join. All it takes is a little time from you to make friends, get your voice heard and get free traffic to your website.

Whether you’re actively participating in these sites or not, your profile will almost always remain active and visible to anyone who stumbles across it. Advertising your website URL on any profile you set up makes sense. Of course, you may have a niche site that you don’t want associated with certain profiles. In that case, you may only want to share your URL when the network you are on is more generalized, or geared toward a larger audience.

If you use Gmail, you can now create a profile that Google creates as a webpage. When someone does a search for you or a site you are associated with, the profile will show up at the top of your search. This is a great way to advertise your site, as Google allows you to add unlimited links and references on this profile. Take advantage of this marketing tool to get traffic to your website.

If you post regularly on a company blog, it makes sense to have these buttons automatically inserted at the ending of every post. If a reader likes what you have to say, they can choose the button that is appropriate, and send a link to your blog post to other via a tweet on Twitter, a link on Delicious, a Digg, or even by email.

There are almost unlimited sites through which you can share, though you need an account on whichever ones you personally want to share through. To post the buttons on your blog post, you do not need to have an account with each site.

If you use a self-hosted Wordpress site, consider adding a plug-in that will automatically add these sharing buttons to each post. Your readers can then easily share your site with the click of the mouse, and giving them this convenience helps bring in more consistent traffic, at no cost to you.

Social networking has quickly become one of the most efficient ways to get the word out about what businesses have to offer. Whether it’s through Twitter or Facebook, many are enjoying the benefits of a large audience centered in one small location–at the same time.

One of the newest trends in social networking is participation in parties that are hosted in real time on Twitter. A website’s equivalent to a “housewarming” party, these gatherings bring thousands of social networkers together in a chat room type atmosphere. For anywhere from one to several hours, the marketing hosts talk about and spread the benefits of your website, product, and/or services.

Another new trend is the creation of “fan pages” on Facebook. Individual companies are creating pages (the web’s equivalent to an individual website). As each user marks your page as a favorite, their entire list of contacts is notified. So essentially for each fan you gain of your website, you can receive up to thousands of free referrals to your page.

It’s not too late to use social networking to your advantage. Begin participating in these sites today and you’ll be on your way to driving free traffic to your website without much effort.