Even if you have a great product it can be a real challenge to get a new company off the ground. If people don’t know about your products they obviously can’t buy them.

Typically, new businesses will invest heavily in traditional advertising, cold calling, and email marketing. All of these are legitimate and should be pursued.

However, a robust social media component to your marketing efforts can make all the difference.

Social media is about generating buzz. The only thing worse than bad press is no press at all. If people are not talking about your brand they’re probably not buying it.

Here are 10 reasons your small business should be using social media:

1. More Traffic (a lot more) – The amount of traffic a successful viral marketing campaign can generate is simply staggering.

2. Reputation Management – Find out what people are saying about your brand and where.

3. Increases Search Rank – The more people share your content and talk about your brand it generates natural links back to your site. This increases your search engine rank which increases your traffic and the quality of it.

4. Branding – Creating a recognizable identity and a strong brand is key to success.

5. Buzz – Get people talking about your brand. This will increase the spread of your brand via word of mouth. People trust what their friends and family tell them.

6. Levels The Playing Field – Social media allows tiny companies and one man shops to get the same exposure as multi-billion dollar companies with massive advertising budgets. A single viral video has the potential to be seen by as many people as a million dollar Super Bowl ad.

7. Saves Money – Social media costs a fraction of what traditional advertising does.

8. Increases Trust – Companies with a strong presence on social networks are more accessible. Companies that are more accessible tend to be more trustworthy (or are perceived that way).

9. Makes You Better – When you engage with customers through social media you’ll know what they want, what’s wrong, what’s right, and how you can do better. Domino’s Pizza heard from customers via social networks about how terrible their pizza had become. They responded by throwing out all the old recipes and starting from scratch.

10. Increases Your Market – The web has made doing business all over the world as easy as doing business in your own neighborhood. A robust social media presence will expose your brand to potential customers all over the world.

American college student Amanda Knox was recently convicted of murder in Italy and sentenced to 26 years in prison. Knox allegedly murdered her roommate with the help of two accomplices. Most of what was used to convict Amanda in Italy would’ve never been allowed in an American court. I have no idea if she’s guilty or innocent, but suffice it to say the case is extremely controversial in the US and in Italy.

What I find most interesting and somewhat alarming about this case is the role that social media played in her conviction. While not the centerpiece of the case, Amanda’s social networking profiles were seen by prosecutors as strong evidence of her guilt.

Like many 20-year old college students, Amanda created a playful and somewhat sexy image of herself on Facebook and MySpace. She called herself “Foxy Knoxy” and frequently uploaded pictures of herself partying, acting silly, or posing in unusual ways. Her profiles were nothing out of the ordinary for someone her age and in fact would be considered quite typical. However, once accused of murder her profiles took on a whole new meaning.

Italian prosecutors used Amanda’s social networking profiles and her “Foxy Knoxy” persona to portray her as a slut and someone with loose morals quite capable of committing murder. Maybe they’re right, I don’t know. But it’s important to understand the implications of this. Maybe the person you portray on Facebook is really you, but if not you should think carefully about how you’re being perceived. When taken out of context seemingly innocent pictures or blog posts can become something else entirely.

The Italian media ran wild with the “Foxy Knoxy” meme and her Facebook pictures were on the cover of every newspaper and magazine in Italy and across Europe. It was later discovered that Amanda had written a short story several years earlier on MySpace about a man who drugs and rapes a girl. Once again, a short story like that doesn’t mean much until you’re accused of rape and murder.

Everything we write, say, post, or upload to the Internet will absolutely be there forever and could be used against us at anytime — even in a foreign country.

I’ve been convinced over the last few months that location based services like Foursquare are going to be huge this year. Foursquare’s latest move may be the just the catalyst needed for this technology to catch fire.

Foursquare is now making itself much more business friendly by offering a suite of tools for business owners to use in conjunction with the service.

Now every unclaimed business venue has a link asking, “Are you the manager of this business?” The link takes managers to a page asking them for proof that they are indeed the manager so that Foursquare’s sales team can call them to set them up with tools for claiming their venue and managing offers. There is also a new Businesses page explaining the different tools available to local merchants.

Businesses who claim their venues on Foursquare get a dashboard with realtime stats on number of check-ins, times of day people check in, most recent visitors, and most frequent visitors. They can also manage the offers and badges people get when they check in. These include Mayor specials, specials for people who check in a certain number of times, or wildcard specials which can be customized. A special can be anything from a free drink to 20 percent off a purchase.

This is pretty exciting stuff. I can imagine this being very popular with businesses. The marketing potential of this technology is impossible to calculate at this point because it’s just too new. Mobile technology in all its forms is getting more popular by the second largely due to the iPhone. Local businesses need a way to cash-in on this technology and integrate their brands with it. Foursquare is undoubtedly the first of what will be many companies developing ways to do that.

Businesses should take advantage of this and give it a try. There’s no downside to registering your venue on Foursquare and creating a couple of promotions.

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced today that major changes are coming to Facebook. Mashable has the specifics, but what really matters to most people is how all this will affect them.

Here’s Zuck explaining what the coming changes will mean for users (don’t worry, it’s not a big deal)…

It may not be as sexy as Facebook or get as much love from celebrities as Twitter, but LinkedIn is one of the most powerful social networks on the planet. When it comes to business networking LinkedIn is second to none.

Here’s an interview with Lewis Howes, author of the bestselling book LinkedWorking. Lewis talks about how businesses can benefit from using LinkedIn:

Lewis Howes Interview from Michael A. Stelzner on Vimeo.

* Don’t forget to check out our LinkedIn profile and then join our group!