If you’re like many business owners trying to make it work online, you’ve gone and joined MySpace, Facebook, Ryze, LinkedIn, and every other social network that you can find hoping that your business would just explode through the roof. It hasn’t, and now you’re just plain miffed. Well, it could be that, like Click Wisdom, you’re approaching the social networking game all wrong. It could be that you’re on the wrong network to begin with. Maybe these tips will help you rearrange your Facebook for more effective networking:

According to Click Wisdom

1. Include a Photo: You should include a photo of yourself on any social network you join. People don’t like networking with strangers. A photo will help them get to know you better.
2. Incorporate Twitter: I’ve never used Twitter. Others are using it like crazy. My understanding is that people use Twitter because you can just jot down a quick message too small for blogging. My thought is, if you’re too busy to blog then you’re too busy to Twitter. Free up some time and start a blog. Like Michael Martine, I think you’ll get more mileage out of a daily blog than you will out of any of the social networks. But if you’re going to Facebook then it does make sense to be active and to make your Facebook page interactive. Twitter seems like a good enough tool for interactivity.
3. Post Links of Interest: No kidding. I think it helps to have a target market. Are you on Facebook to make friends or contacts for business? If the former then keep it personal. If for business then narrow your network only to people you are trying to target for business. Don’t be general, be specific. Develop a demographic and target it, but be aware that it’s not a sales tool. It’s a networking tool. So put links on there that will benefit your target audience and stay away from fluff.
4. Fill Out Your Profile Info: No brainer? You’d think. If you want people to network with you, give them a reason to. Who are you? Let them know.
5. Change Your Privacy Settings: Privacy settings are there for a reason. I figure if you use Facebook correctly then privacy isn’t as big an issue as it could be. I’d never put my address and phone number on a social networking site. Not my personal information anyway. Business phone is OK if you want any old Tom, Dick, or Henrietta calling you at any time of day or night to talk about your blue widgets. Remember, you could be networking with people in Hong Kong or the Phillipines, so keep the time difference in mind. If you need it, change your privacy settings.
6. Friend People; Don’t Sell Them Stuff: I totally agree with this one. I am so annoyed when I make someone my friend and they immediately try to sell me something. Don’t do it. Make them your friend before you start making offers. Otherwise, don’t be surprised when they drop you like a hot potato.
7. Friend With Privacy: Yes, you can change the privacy settings for each individual on your friends list. Good idea.
8. Calm Down When It Comes To Applications: Do you really need a wailing wall that shouts “Ooogedy boogedy boo!” to every new friend when they accept your friend offers? Seriously, folks, too many applications make you look like a pimple-faced high school kid chasing a cheerleader around the lunch table. If that’s what you’re aiming at, load up another application.
9. Bow Down To The Coolness Of The Timeline And The Feed: Yep, even Facebook has that cool RSS feed. You’re in business, right? Use the feed. But don’t abuse it.

All of these are great suggestions. But I’ve got one more to add. Don’t go on a willy nilly friendship spree. You don’t have to make friends with everyone on Facebook. The idea is to look for people with similar interests. Do you have anything in common with that cute little ballerina with the curls or do you just like looking at her picture? Buy a magazine. Use Facebook as a networking tool, but if you can’t find a use for it for your business then don’t waste your time. Go to LinkedIn instead.

I learned something new recently about social marketing. It was actually sparked by a reader who left a comment on this Social Marketing Journal post. Just in case you missed it, here’s a snippet of his comment:

What you and your like-minded colleagues describe is not social marketing. Social marketing is a concept first explicated by Philip Kotler & Gerald Zaltman in 1971, to describe the application of commercial marketing principles to health, social and quality of life issues. (Cf. Kotler, P. and Zaltman, G. (1971) “Social marketing: An approach to planned social change. J of Marketing. Vol. 35, pp. 3-12.)

Thanks Craig for the correction.

I’ve confirmed Craig’s comments by doing a little research on this topic. This article from another blogger confirms his comments.

Nedra Weinreich is a social marketer. I and the other social bloggers mentioned in the blog post where Craig made his comment are social media marketers. It’s a slight nuance, but one worth mentioning. Social marketing has the aim at trying to improve society through people-centered marketing and is usually done in health care and other charitable or non-profit circles. Social media marketing is a strategy used by new media marketers to promote their businesses online and through digital media. I guess I should have called this blog Social Media Marketing Journal. Sorry folks!

MySpace is still one of the most visited sites in the whole wide world. But to hear Rebecca at SEOmoz tell it, it’s the worst website in the universe.

In all actuality, I’ve heard a lot of negative stuff about MySpace lately. It was bad before Rupert Murdoch took it over, but it’s been a lot worse since then. Is MySpace still a good place to network and market your products?

I think it is, but not for everyone. Keep in mind that most MySpace users are teenagers. How much spending power do teenagers have? Do they even have credit cards?

OK, some do. The rich ones. But are those the ones hanging out on MySpace? Probably not.

I think MySpace is best used as a branding tool if your market is the high school middle- and lower-middle income bracket SES. Otherwise, Facebook might be the better option for you. One word of warning: Don’t sign up for a MySpace account to market your product thinking that you can just start sending out spam messages and get people to buy what you offer. Spam doesn’t work – even on MySpace.

One of the most popular features of Facebook is the ability to develop your own application. Of course, you can always just use one of the 500 million Facebook apps already available. But if you can’t find one that does what you want it to do then you can create your own.

In fact, Facebook has a subdomain set aside just for application developers. It’s really not hard. All you have to do is read the small print and get started. You can get great information for application developers that includes:

• Platform documentation
• Everything you need to know about the Facebook API
• A library of resources you can use
• Tools for testing your Facebook application
• The latest news from the Facebook development team

Facebook was designed as a community for people who like to network. Your own Facebook application can go a long way to helping you build your network. So why not?

After doing some social bookmarking of my own, I’ve discovered quite a few social bookmarking sites that do well over all. Some bookmarking sites are good for certain industries and some are not. For instance, I don’t like to Digg SEO articles because they typically don’t do well, but interesting technology stories do. So when it comes to social bookmarking, you have to know the sites well enough to maneuver around and pick the right sites for the right article or blog post that you want to bookmark. The following five websites are websites that I’ve found are good for bookmarking for social marketers:

• StumbleUpon – StumbleUpon is a staple in the bookmarking and networking community. Different people categorize social websites in different ways. I like StumbleUpon because once you submit a site it’s added to the list of stumbles and anyone who “just goes stumbling” could discover your website. Stumblers are real socialites. They love to discover new and interesting sites and if yours is worth discovering then StumbleUpon is the place to be. Plus, if you find a hard core stumbler with some clout and they like your site, you’ll get lots of stumbles.
• PlugIM – PlugIM is not well known outside the Internet marketing community, but if you plan on doing any Internet marketing then you should know about it. The categories at PlugIM says it all: Business, Development, Marketing, Products, Search Engines. Can you submit in other categories? Yes, but the designated categories usually do much better than “others” no matter where you go. Another indicator of the type of material you can submit to a social bookmarking site is to look at its “Most Popular Story” list. PlugIMs consist of these stories: “WordPress Plugin: PlugIM Votebox,” “Why It Is Good To Link To LZZR,” and “LZZR Linking – Black Hat Or White Hat.” If you do Internet marketing, PlugIM is for you.
• Marktd – Marketing news for marketers by marketers. Great tag line. It’s also true. Marktd has the stories every Internet marketing practitioner needs to read. If you do any social marketing and you want to share your stories with others then this is the place to do it.
• Sphinn – Anybody who is anybody Sphinns. Perhaps the most popular social media site for Internet marketers, all the SEO gurus with any clout are using Sphinn. If I were you, I would too.
• Hubspot – Hubspot is my least favorite the list of five, but I add it on here because I think it has real potential. It’s tagline is “Social Content For Marketing Mavens.” Not strictly for social marketers, you’ll see articles on a variety of business topics. But it does have a heavy lean toward toward social and Internet marketing topics. I highly recommend it.

When you start your social bookmarking, and particularly if you are a social marketer trying to spread the word about your product or service or just connect and share your knowledge of social marketing, then these websites will be helpful.