Social Networking for Business - is it worth it?

I still think of myself as a newbie in many aspects, regardless of my training and experience / success over the last while. To be honest, starting out I felt I was being tossed head first into a tank of hungry sharks. Literally. I earned my stripes and I can vouch that it is not easy at all. Social bookmarking for me is even harder. I don't mind being active on forums, I actually love that aspect, but to make myself THAT visible on a social network is the scariest thing I am ever liable to do. I try though. I work with our fb and twitter page, but to be honest, I am a lot more comfortable on our blog. SMM just makes me feel out of place sometimes.

Well looking at your forum posting, you come over as relaxed and confident.

Why not make use of your signature links. You never know, you may get a few more readers for your blog

Include your twitter, FB and linked in id into your profile. Networking, Online marketing call it what you like, but it's all about presence. If DreamRaven keeps cropping up on forums/social networks and people value what she has to say, then human nature will normally carry that trust to any product or business she is associated with.

Online networking is all about building up trust and credibility.

Take a competitive market like web designers. Someone who has repeatedly helped people out and offered good advice with out doing a sales pitch is highly likely to gain new clients from things like forum or social networking reccomendations.

I think people that get the least out of online networking are the ones that haven't grasped that people don't want to be sold to all the time. Just look at any twitter stream, these days its normally a sea of hard sell

It just feels that, SMM is a lot different than working on blogs and forums etc. I love writing and I love to help, but what you say is true. Even my twitter page is overrun with sales pitches daily. It leaves me thinking that, no matter where you are, whether its a social network or not, you need to sell sell sell all the time, which is probably what makes me uncomfortable. I can advise a person, I can point them in the site's direction, but I will not force a sales pitch on them all the time. I just feel that, from past experience, you don't always want a sales person hanging around you shoving a sales pitch down your throat all day long. Maybe that is one of the reason I don't spam people, maybe that's why I prefer to be an adviser, rather than a salesperson. Being able to help someone buy the right product, rather than try get them to buy something they would in all likelihood never need is a better alternative because I feel that people respect you more for helping them, rather than have them curse you because they spent a decent amount of money for you to pad your own pocket with.

like I said, lol old school. But I believe that, even though I may be, the sales I make are ones that not only help my company excel, but help my clients excel. That was my goal when I created my campaign.

Facebook and twitter are great social networking tools. I am finding i am getting a bit of traffic coming from them.

Don't forget Googles Plus 1 network. Early days, but might as well get involved, as it's here to stay That said, I haven't really mastered it yet. Need to set aside some time!

Steve I think that the question that you pose is a very good one. Social networking is good if use correctly. I do think that some individuals and business can get caught up in the number of likes, followers and general buzz received online when it doesn't always have a monetary of value based impact on the organisation. Sometimes too much time can be spent on social networking sites and forgetting that the daily task need to be done as well. So to summarise its about striking the right balance and actually connecting when you are using social networking.

See i feel social media does help but it is like a cherry on top. It is good to gain some amount of attention. But for that i feel you need to have some ground image/status as well.
And this also depends from business type to business type. If you have business related to internet then yes social media is a great platform.

It was worth it to promote a business in any social networking site that you can have potential customer in their aside that you can be friend.

Seems like a longer view has to taken when you start using social networking to market you business. Its good to engage and seems that the people who offer the most support, answers, links to content gain quite well from it but this requires quite a bit of time and/or man/woman power.

To be honest it can be a bit of a burden. Suggest that you spend what amount of time you can that doesn't interfere to make with the urgent things you have to do from day to day.

Remember that Social Media isn't new - it's at least 15 years old now.