Ning is a super cool free tool that allows anyone to create their own social network. That means you can create a private or public facebook-like site with user profiles, blogs, forums and more.

If you’re thinking about creating your own site – stop right there buddy!  Why start your own site when you can just leverage someone else’s?

I want you to join at least one Ning site where your prospects are talking. They might be there discussing exactly what they buy from you (for example, you sell surfboards and search for a Ning site about surfboards) or you might need to be a little more abstract. For example, someone who sells to bookkeepers could search for a Ning site about quickbooks, a tool that bookkeepers often use.

There are two ways to find Ning sites. Ning does have  discovery tool on its homepage but let’s be honest people – it sucks. Go to http://www.ning.com/ and click on the circles to see what I mean.

A better way to find Ning sites is our old friend google. Simply go to google and add the word ning to your search term. So in the examples above I would type “ning surfboard” and “ning quickbooks” into google. When you’re scanning the search results just look for sites with ning in the URL (which is pretty easy as it will be bolded in your search results).

Once you find a targeted site, dive in a start talking! Comment on a blog, post on the forums, have some fun and see what happens.