For a long time we've been taught to keep our personal life and professional life separate. Socializing is supposed to take place after work hours only, right? Wrong. Socializing has become an important marketing aspect of running an online business and the better you do it, the more traffic you'll be able to drive to your website and the more customers you'll have. There are many ways to socialize online for the benefit of your business.

Before the emergence of Web 2.0 tools, chat rooms were the height of online socialization but now there are more effective methods to communicating your way to the top. Social networking sites are the buzz right now and businesses have learned to take advantage of the many features they offer.

One of the most popular sites is Facebook. It was originally used by college students to keep in touch with friends and family and although it still serves this purpose, it also offers marketing features for business owners. You can create a 'fan page' that is essentially a public profile of your business with interactive features like discussions, media sharing and events. Get as many fans and you can and update your page regularly to gain the most attention possible. Facebook also offers pay-per-click advertising and enables you to create ads with images that will appear on relevant pages.

Another social site increasing in popularity is Twitter. On here you set up a short profile and try to get as many followers as possible. You can do this by performing a keyword search or looking up names of people and businesses. You can also scroll through your friends' follower lists to find people in your industry. By following people you will get more followers and more people will see your tweets. Your tweets are short updates, often with links that are used to spike interest and drive traffic to your site. The more you tweet, the more traffic you'll drive.

Other methods of social networking you can try are posting on online forums, setting up accounts with sites like LinkedIn and Squidoo and starting a blog. These are just a few of many ways to use your social skills on the internet to boost your business by adding a little personality.

Jesse Rawstorne is a business coach and mentor that assists serious entrepreneurs in building a profitable online business with multiple incomes streams. Jesse and her top earning team have assisted hundreds of people in generating executive level incomes in their first year of business from home. For more information and to contact Jesse visit http://www.jesserawstorne.com

Twitter is becoming like an online urban area.

Peer into shadows of any gathering place and you'll find unsavory folks who are waiting to pounce on the unfortunate souls who exposed themselves inadvertently.

The more popular Twitter becomes, the deeper the shadows and the more prolific the shady characters. So, how do you protect yourself? Or your children?

Without surrounding yourself with a team of security specialists and crime-fighters, the easiest way to protect protect yourself is to observe the following 12 Twitter safety tips.

Above all, use common sense just as you would in the real world.

Here we go:

1) Protect your Twitter password just as you would your bank account password. People posing as you can easily do you harm in the Internet world. Make password protection one of your guiding principles.

2) Kids make up a huge portion of the twitterverse, so there will always be predators and bullies. Teach your kids about suspicious behavior and report anyone who approaches children with inappropriate or threatening tweets.

3) Never give out personal information. Period. If someone you don't know is asking for your full name, home address, where you attend school, phone numbers or even your email address, ignore them and run the other way.

4) Don't go on and on in your profile information about who you are. Let people get to know you and build a relationship with you through your tweets before you expose too much.

5) Don't be careless. Teasing or enticing someone can lead to trouble. Don't send any on-line person photographs or suggestive material.

6) Tweet-ups (in person meetings) can be pretty cool when you're with a group of people who like to hang out together. But make sure you know who you're meeting up with and never arrange to meet someone in real life if you don't know them.

7) Careful who you hang out with. A good rule of thumb is to establish relationships first, follow those people and let them follow you.
Pictures can tell you a lot. Twitter users without profile pictures are always suspect. Avoid them. If the profile picture displays a bikini-clad girl that looks like it could have been professionally shot, avoid them too. Basically, you should try to engage real people. Be wary of those tweeters who don't meet that basic criteria.

9) Keep your responses respectful and on topic – especially if you don't know the originator of the message. Don't give someone a reason for revenge.

10) Don't click on links from tweeters that you don't know, especially if they don't give you an indication of what the link is about. Chances are it could lead to malware or inappropriate content sites.

11) Remember, this is the Internet. It never goes away. So if you post something today, it will be there for posterity. Consider every tweet very carefully. Your parents, colleagues, friends – and enemies – can read each message.

12) And if you really want to feel safe, make your Twitter feed private. Only those people that you invite to view your tweets will have permission to view them.

Twitter is an amazing communication tool. Don't be afraid of using it to the fullest. Just use common sense and apply these basic safety rules to enjoy it to the fullest.

By the way, if you’d like to see the coolest Twitter applications on the web, visit My Twitter Toolbox at http://MyTwitterToolbox.com. With more than 250 Twitter tools for productivity and fun, you’ll discover everything you need in one spot to be incredibly effective with Twitter.