Social media has taken over how we network with our friends and family. Whether you want to be a part of it, you hear about it every day. Every TV show, celebrity and practically every politician is now on Facebook and/or Twitter, trying to get as many friends or followers as possible.

Ok you are not BCS, or Fox News, but you are trying to grow your business and client base.

It is too social for business purpose? Is it appropriate for what you do? But the question I hear the most is “How can I use it without spending hours on it”? There is a fine line between personal and business online networking today. If you like to keep your personal and business life separate, one way to protect your personal life and business life from overlapping too much is to have separate Twitter and Facebook accounts for personal and business accounts.

Is it appropriate for what you do?

Almost always. Today’s markets are run by social media marketing. Facebook recently sold for an unprecedented $4.1 billion dollars, Twitter is purportedly in the works to be sold for over $1 billion dollars, and the list goes on. Online social networking is big business right now and it looks like it is here to stay.

It is imperative that you use social media in your business. The current technology allows you to promote your product or service faster with less cost than ever before. Get your profile started on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. There are many more, but those are the base requirements.

How do you use online social networking without spending too much time on it? The more time you put in while you are setting up your profile and your initial contacts, follow-up methods and links to your website and blog(s), the less time you will need to spend daily, weekly and monthly maintaining your profiles. It is very important to take some time to perfect your profile and maximize the information available about you and your business.

Social media can be overwhelming if you don’t know how to use it or do not have structure in place to prevent yourself from getting ’sucked in’. Once you have perfected your profile and added your links, dedicate 5 or 10 minutes a day to post messages/tweets to communicate with your followers. Even if you post only once a day to start, it will allow you to be seen and heard by your prospective clients. In your Tweets and Facebook updates, give general information about your topic, share a resource, re-tweet someone, invite contacts to your events, mention a new post on your blog or new product or anything else with which you can grab their attention in just a sentence or two.

Dedicate 1 or 2 hours a week to follow up with your most pressing contacts personally. Send these contacts individual messages. Also befriend your friends’ friends that may have use of your product or service; people who have friends in common are more likely to add you. Invite more people to join your social network. Stay focused on your target market. Don’t waste your time checking things that are not related to your business. Join groups related to your business, participate on discussion, so you will get more exposure.

The people on LinkedIn are probably more business oriented, try to see how you could start some partnerships to trade clients that could use multiple services. Using social media, your main goal should be to direct people to your website or blog to sign up for your newsletter and eventually purchase your product or service. Have a strategy and a system in place to follow-up with your contacts on a regular basis, so with consistency, you will be able to turn most of those contacts into clients.

To learn more strategies like this one, on How To Turn More Networking Contacts Into Business Boosting Clients In 7 Simple Steps check www.powerofnetworkingsecrets.com

(c) 2009 Biba F. Pédron