When it comes to Web 2.0. social networking is not only all the rage, it is the rage. If you haven’t got into the swing of things yet, it’s not too late - you may just have to get into some speed dating to catch up. How quickly can you become involved in the social networking game, it’s totally up to you. Here are my six P’s that may help you catch the field.

1. Popularity - join sites that are already popular. These are the mainstream sites that have a lot of traffic.
2. Profile - develop a profile that is interesting and will entice visitors to add you to their friend lists. Don’t go overboard but at the same time, don’t be too brief.
3. Photo - grab a good photo of yourself and add it to your profile. If you don’t feel comfortable with your photo, find an avatar that looks attractive.
4. Pictures - add pictures, graphics, videos and any other artwork that puts you into the web 2.0 crowd.
5. Promote - promote yourself whenever possible. If necessary, pester your friends, relatives and colleagues to get online and add you to their friend lists.
6. Participate - get into the crowd and start participating. Read and vote on articles. Take part in discussions or debates. Get to know some of the top players and get on first name terms with them

Follow these social networking guidelines and you will improve your chances of being noticed quickly. The faster you are noticed, the more connections you will make. Once you start making connections, become judicious as to who you do and do not accept into your contacts list. Do a little research before adding them and only add them if they are going to improve your profile within that site.

If you notice the same contacts on other sites, don’t be too quick to dismiss them. If you friend them on one site then it is a good idea to add them on any other sites as well.

Once you have made your presence felt within a social networking site, you can start to ease back on the social and start to work on your marketing. Like all dating games, don’t rush, don’t push, just ease your way into it. And you thought I was going to help you with ’speed dating’ - sorry, the last date I had was in a packet.

We have business plans, marketing plans and financial plans. Do we need a social marketing plan? There are so many quality social marketing sites now that it would make sense to develop a plan similar to your business or marketing plan.

Having such a broad range of social marketing web sites available to choose from, you need to decide which sites take priority, which sites need a lot of interaction and which sites can be utilized with a minimum of interaction. Having the determined the priority and interaction needs to you can then develop a plan to help you fully optimize your activities. It seems pointless to spend hours on one site with little return when that time could have been better spent on another site with far better results.

A social marketing plan can also help you to focus on the where, when and how of submissions. Where you submit content can depend very much on the focus of the content itself. Some sites don’t like being spammed so you may need to be judicious on when and what you submit. With some sites there may be more value in having friends, colleagues or social contacts submitting content on your behalf. Your social marketing plan can help in determining how this could be achieved with a minimum of fuss or confusion.

Do you have a business plan? Do you have a marketing plan? More importantly; do you have a social marketing plan?

In today’s busy world, social marketing has become an art form in its own right. There are specialist who spend their entire working day helping others to optimize their social marketing strategies to gain the most leverage possible over their rival. Many of these specialists develop social marketing plans for their clients as a guide to their day to day social marketing activities.