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.

1. Maintain or deepen connections with people I've already met.
2. 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.
3. Find appropriate contacts and make connections through referrals/introductions.
4. 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:

1. LinkedIn - If you're a professional you MUST be on LinkedIn.
2. 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.
3. Twitter/Business Blogs - In terms of priority these are tied. However, what they each bring to the picture is very different.
4. 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.
5. 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