The number of social/online networking tools is, to put it bluntly, overwhelming. From Business Blogs to Twitter, LinkedIn to Facebook, Plaxo to MySpace and everything in between the choices are astounding. Hopefully you're using at least one of these tools, even if it's only casually. The trick is to develop your own strategy in how you utilize these tools so they don't take over your life. If done incorrectly the time you spend on e-mail and your social networking activities will consume ALL of your available time. That would be bad, unless that's your business. So how do you develop this strategy? First an understand of what you're trying to accomplish would be very helpful. Personally I have three primary goals when utilizing these tools. Maintain or deepen connections with people I've already met. Build visibility for myself and the things I work on and am passionate about, and attract other like minded people to me through these efforts. Find appropriate contacts and make connections through referrals/introductions. Initiate new professional relationships that make sense. Once you're clear about your goals you can start to think about how you'll use each tool. I'll share with you 2 of my own examples: I've already written about My LinkedIn Networking Philosophy I encourage you to read that. Very generally LinkedIn is a way for me to maintain contact with people I have a genuine connection with. That way if they change jobs or move I don't lose track of them because all of their other contact information changed. I have a way of being in the loop. It also helps me see relational connections. For example if I want to meet the CEO of a prospective company and they're on LinkedIn I can see our mutual connections and potentially ask those individuals to make an introduction for me. Twitter is quickly becoming my new favorite tool. I avoided this one for a long time because from the outside it sounds just plain goofy and like it will be a colossal waste of time. Turns out it's the best relationship deepener I've ever seen. People I know well who I follow on Twitter I now know really, really well. Even more impactful are those that I kinda know, and have the ability to get to know at a much deeper level. It's a little hard to explain just how this works. I highly recommend you just quickly create an account, follow a few people and see what you think. You're welcome to start with my profile just to get an idea: www.twitter.com/scottingram Over time I will go deeper into the use of each of these tools (stay tuned!). In the mean time your best bet is to just begin to play with a couple of these sites. Here's a little bit of generic guidance on the order in which you should explore these sites and why. If you are a business professional this is my opinion of the order of importance of these tools: LinkedIn - If you're a professional you MUST be on LinkedIn. Facebook - It's less geared toward professionals, but it's much better at helping you reconnect with people in your long ago past. High School, College, etc. Twitter/Business Blogs - In terms of priority these are tied. However, what they each bring to the picture is very different. Plaxo/Myspace - For the professional I think these are fairly irrelevant. Plaxo doesn't really add any value beyond those listed above (it used to in the past when it was about keeping contact information up to date). As for MySpace it's maybe not my place to say this since I'm not even on it, but I don't see how it adds value for the professional. Please feel free to comment if you disagree. All others - Beyond these core tools there are probably hundreds of others. The learning curve and critical mass is typically steep enough that unless there is something in a very specific niche that would be helpful to you it's probably not worth your time to explore these. Again, I'm open to suggestion and hope you'll comment if there are other tools that have been helpful to you. I encourage you to look beyond this post. I've written at least a little bit about most of these tools, especially business blogging (as that's what you're reading now) and you can navigate these topics using the categories listed below. Happy Networking! Scott Ingram NetworkInAustin.com

I'm excited to be back blogging again. Being a blogger, especially about a specific topic, has a really interesting way of changing your perspective. It makes you much more aware of that topic and how things relate to it. Just in the last week I've made a list of nearly a dozen different things I'd like to write about based on things I saw, conversations I had, or other events I experienced. However this topic of the dead blog is prettty interesting. I tried to do a little research this mornings and nobody seems to agree, but it is believed that there are over 100 Million Blogs! Unfortunately some huge percentage of those blogs are likely dead. (How Many Blogs Are There? Is Someone Still Counting?). I'll define a dead blog as one that hasn't had a post in over 30 days. Of course many are much worse than that. In the past when I was blogging much more consistently and also speaking about business blogging I would often warn people that the most important thing to think about if they wanted to start a blog was how committed they were to it. Starting a blog is easy, continuing to blog consistently over time is the hard part. What I didn't know then was: For how long? Life changes, circumstances change, we change. So how do you gracefully stop blogging. (Hint: don't do it the way I did). Knowing what I know now I think the best way to end a blog, or to take a blog break is to have some type of final post that explains the status of the blog. Without that all of the posts you've worked so hard on can lose a lot of credibility when all of a sudden your blog just ends at some date that was months or even years earlier with no explanation. To combat this in the future, and just to have it in general, I've decided to create a Best of My Blog post. In this post I'll simply have a list of what I believe are my most relevant posts, their title and a link directly to that post. So far I've been amazed at how much I've written about networking in the last few years. That way if I choose to take a break again in the future I'll be armed with a way to quickly add value and then will only need to write a quick explanation as to why I've chosen to not blog for a period of time or permanently. Well, enough about all of this blog talk, it's time to get back on topic.  Stay tuned for more business networking tips and insights. Happy Networking! Scott Ingram NetworkInAustin.com

Until now you haven't been able to comment on my blog. Not because I didn't want you to, but because my blog platform didn't have the capability.  When I wrote my last post I noticed there was a new option for me to "allow comments." After a little bit of testing I've determined that it's true! I can't tell you how excited I am about this. In the past people frequently told me they wanted to be able to comment but couldn't. (Keep in mind that was at a time that I was blogging a lot more frequently. I imagine I've lost a few regular readers)  It's now here. Comment away. Just know that your comment won't show up right away. I will need to approve it. This step just allows me to keep out the spam.  Woohoo! (Can you tell I'm excited?) Happy Networking! Scott IngramNetworkInAustin.com

Somehow it snuck up on me and happened again. Today is 2 years after my first blog post.   I have to admit that this year wasn't nearly as active as my first. There've been a number of other priorities in my life lately. However, the value of the blogging I'm doing and have done in the past continues to pay dividends. Having a regular blog has absolutely been worth the investment of my time.   Another friend of mine, Jason Alba the Founder and CEO of JibberJobber.com, just celebrated his first blog birthday in the last few days. He is doing a really cool series on his blog about the secrets he's learned after blogging every business day for 1 year. It's a great series, and he's only up to Day 2 of the 5 Day series. Jason is another person who came into my life and network because of my blog. I'll tell you more about JibberJobber next week, it's also an excellent resource.     I guess I should go eat some cake?   Happy Networking!   Scott Ingram NetworkInAustin.com