–and some great Tips on how to avoid them–

Originally, social networking sites were merely “social havens” wherein you can make new acquaintances and stay in touch with long time friends. These sites were originally meant to allow friends to update each other with what is happening in their lives. It was just recently that social networking sites became a place for business owners to grow their networks. These days you can use these sites as a business building tool, but, more importantly, you can get to know your prospects, clients, and colleagues in a more relaxed and friendly environment.

This means that if you’re active on these sites and you regularly contribute and seek out new connections, you can easily put up your network and have a ready collection of contacts who are interested in what you have to say, your services, programs, and products.

But despite this business potential social networking sites have, I hear of many solo entrepreneurs saying that they are spending so much time on their social networking activities, whether that’s on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, or one of the other popular social networking sites, but are not seeing any benefits as a result of their time. I have heard some of them complain that the amount of time they put into social networking is not comparable to the returns they are seeing. And so they lose interest and wonder what all the fuss is about.

Like any of the list building strategies that I teach, the real secret to success is consistency. If you have made up your mind that social networking is one of the lead generation strategies that you want to implement then you need to be consistent in your approach to make it successful. You need to be spending time each week (several times a week) visiting each of your social networks, contributing, and building relationships.

Although there are many, many advantages to this latest marketing strategy, there are also several substantial drawbacks. But these drawbacks can easily be avoided if you’re aware of what they are.

Here are the four drawbacks social networking has when used for business. Know them well, avoid them at all costs and follow the tips I present so that you can easily conquer these drawbacks:

1. Not updating regularly. It is a mistake to think that in order to utilize social networking sites, all you have to do is sign up for an account, add your details, and wait for someone (client or friend) to reach you. In order to optimize the potential of social networking for business; you need to be a regular contributor to the network.  Actively seek out new connections and participate and post regularly.

. 2. Profile lacks information. Breathe life to your profile. Add pictures; make yourself sound interesting and fun! People want to know about you, what your interests are, and see you. Always include a photo, and, the beauty with social networking is that because it’s informal, you don’t always need your photo to be a professional head shot – a more informal photo works just as well; let your contacts see the ‘real’ you. People will easily trust you when they are able know a lot about you. And people are more willing to do business with those they can trust.

. 3. Thinking business first before relationships. Remember the “social” in social networking. It is all about building relationships with those people in your network – it’s not about getting new clients. Although you’ve probably heard of colleagues getting new clients via social networking, it really is about creating and building relationships with those people in your network. Remember… relationships first! Build trust first… and do business later.

. 4. Always being in the sales mode. If all you’re doing when you visit the various sites and post your updates is pitch your latest program, product or service then it’s no wonder you’re not seeing results. Your friends will definitely find you annoying if you constantly push your product or the services you provide to them. Start by sharing information with your network, whether that’s your own information or you’re passing along information from clients and colleagues. The more you share, the greater your results will be.

Regardless of which social networking arena you’re active in (and it is better if you have more than one) remember the original reason social networks were made for – building relationships. Make new contacts, and socialize. Inform your network, not sell to them.

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Understanding Social Media and Learning How to Use it to Power Up your Business

Many of my local business clients say that they find social media hard to understand. They tell me they just can’t see how using social communities can get them more business.

I tell them that the key to using social media is just simple, really. The more effective your exposure is, faster YOU will be getting your results.

To really wrap your head around this, it helps to comprehend that behind the search rankings, dot coms and email addresses are people. Why are people online? Because they want to be informed, they want to be entertained, and they want to connect.

We market in newspapers, magazines, on radio, on television because we want to reach people who want or even need what we’re selling. The same thing goes for the web. Instead of using the traditional offline marketing strategies, we now have social media.

The biggest deal about social media is so big, we often don’t even see it. Sites like Facebook, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, Delicious, Digg, Mixx, Twitter and all the others have one thing alike: they’ve redistributed power that used to stay in the hands of the few to the hands of  many.

When this happened, a lot of the barriers between us and our potential clients and prospect customers fell away, in a way that allows more communication between people, without leaving sensitive private information disclosed.

I can write a blog post about an aspect of what I do without exposing the secret formula that gets people to buy from me or hire me. And you can read it or provide feedback without divulging your private information. For example, if you send a Twitter link about my post, and my blog recognizes it, you can leave a comment without even telling me your email address, as you would need to do if you were to comment on my site.

And blogging and tweeting are just two types of social media you can leverage to benefit your business. Know that there many more!

For some people this is really scary.

Socializing online puts you in an odd position as a business person if you start maneuvering without quite “getting” it.

You don’t want to be the one who would unknowingly put his link on someone else’s Facebook profile and find it removed the next day, and have potentially powerful prospect clients blocking you because you breached some etiquette and somehow offended them.

You don’t want to be on a sales pitch too soon. You also don’t want to be the person who had an opportunity to promote themselves, but wasted it because of a moment’s hesitation.

I have heard of a person who couldn’t wrap his way around social media. Like in many new social situations, he didn’t know how to take action. If like him, you think you don’t “get” social media, and how it can be used for business, I think that if you’re like most people, you’re mistaken.

You already get Web 2.0 and Social Media. You just don’t grasp it. The very fact that you don’t want to “be that guy” means that you’ve figured out that there’s certain protocol to all these new tools, and that they vary from community to community.

Remember how you made sense of it offline? You found someone to help you, someone who had the results you wanted that you could copy, or you figured it out through trial and error.

Luckily, online there are people who are enthusiastic to teach you the tricks of the social media trade, so you can skip the trial and error. Now all you need to do is find the right people to teach you. Social media isn’t really that hard.

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Many people want to take advantage of advertising opportunities available with Facebook. One of the best reasons to advertise with Facebook is your ability to target by age group, sex and location.

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