At the end of the day the only person you have control over is YOU.  But each of us influence and have impact on others based on our relationships.  And “Social Networking” is a way of taking a systemic look at your relationships and leveraging them to help you accomplish your goals – whether that goal is to find a great realtor, gain access to a prospective client, find a new job, or raise funds for charity – your most successful forays will be with people who know you or know someone who knows you.

Randy Schrum, http://successwithlinkedin.wordpress.com/ has a whole blog, and an e-book about how to successfully utilize LinkedIn in marketing.   Charlene Li’s book Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies talks about how social networking has taken hold of the internet and where it is all heading.  There are many other references out there…

Ultimately if you are trying to decide to “Twitter or not to Twitter”  ( you might want to check out: Twitter Power: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time ) or how to set up a Facebook page for your Business ( check out Clara Shih’s book The Facebook Era: Tapping Online Social Networks to Build Better Products, Reach New Audiences, and Sell More Stuff ) you need to set out a strategy and schedule some focused time to do it.  It is like any other aspect of your business, you need to schedule it in and spend some time to get comfortable with the ins and outs.

If you “shot gun” your approach, you spread yourself too thin, miss your target half the time, and may jeopardize the one thing you have to leverage – your relationships.   Guard them closely, your contacts are almost as precious as your reputation.  Learn how to nurture and leverage, remember to give value as well as harvest value, and take the time to stay in touch – that is the beauty of the internet and social networking sites – they enable you to stay in contact and find opportunities to help others.