There are four types of social media:

1. blogs
2. social networking sites (facebook, myspace, twitter, linkedin etc)
3. social bookmarking sites (delicious, digg, stumbleupon etc)
4. forums

Social media help promote your website by sending direct traffic, producing links to your website and generating awareness.

1. Begin a Business Blog

A good way to draw visitors to your website is to begin a business blog on your website, hosted on your own domain. If you offer excellent content and regular industry comment, people are likely to link to it, increasing your website's Page Rank. Consistency and having something to say are key.
If you have a blog on a third-party blog website, occasionally find reasons to talk about and link to your own domain.

2. Become Part of a Social Media Community

Some of the best online communities for business include Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. In addition, you may want to participate in a social bookmarking community in which members share with each other information about websites, articles, or news items that they like (or don't like). These include Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon and Google Bookmarks. Search engines crawl these websites looking for links to something new and relevant. You can usually place a link to your website in your profile, but the biggest gain comes when other people mention you (which generates traffic to your website), link to you (which increases your Page Rank and brings traffic), or bookmark you (which increases your Page Rank and brings traffic).

3. Promote Your Site in Online Forums and Discussion Lists

One last place to put links to your website is in your signature on a forum. For this to be effective, you need to do a couple of things:

• Find a forum that is related to your website based on its industry or topic.
• Become an active contributing member of that forum.
• Place a link to your website in your signature, making sure you follow forum rules.

The nice thing about this strategy is that the more you contribute, the more members of the community will see your link to your website. It's a situation where everybody wins.

4. Ask Visitors to Bookmark Your Website

It seems simple, but ask visitors to bookmark your site or save it in their Favorites list. We use here on our website a widget called AddThis. This tool helps your users share information with the top user-preferred social services, including Facebook, Twitter, email, Digg, and 40+ more.
Why don't you go ahead and try this cool tool and share this page with other people you know. Please! :-) Just click on the Share link below.