It is hard not to use Twitter for one-way communication. The way the stream flies past so fast conversations and interactions take work. Plus, you usually have to follow a trail of breadcrumbs to see what the initial tweet was about. However, because that's how the majority of users are handling their time on Twitter, it becomes useful in ways you may not have thought of.

We all know by now, that when you make a habit of connecting with potential customers little and often, on topics that they care about, you increase the likelihood of them doing business with you. That could be 5 minutes each network per day. 5 minutes on each of the 5 major networks is less than half an hour; why do most of us drag our feet on such a simple way to increase our online visibility and build our business? Procrastination.

One of the best traffic sources is to comment on someone else's blog, when that blog is on a relevant, related topic. It may sound counter-intuitive to raise up our competition but oddly enough it makes us look more authoritative when we do. There are several advantages to being strategic when commenting on blogs, news posts and in forums, so much so that this is now a formal kind of marketing - Comment Marketing.

LinkedIn - the name is good. We all want to be linked in to whatever's happening; to be part of the "in" crowd has been most people's goal since junior high school! So, why is the social media site such a snore? It's bland, feels nothing but black and white and terribly dry. Do not allow yourself to think that way. People can see great results when they use LinkedIn for business: it is the best place online to build your reputation and position yourself as an expert.

Of all the popular social media sites right now, LinkedIn is the one most purely focused on business. It was first set up as a way to billboard your resume; it remains the best way for professionals to find jobs and employers to find their next employees. So, when you come to LinkedIn imagine you have put on your best business suit and act accordingly.

There are things you might not want to put on your resume, but all of it should go on LinkedIn. Partly because LinkedIn is a social network, and you want to present yourself as a whole person, but more importantly because your whole experience explains...

For any kind of success with social media marketing today, the focus is all on boosting your product's recommend-ability.You need to know very clearly why your current customers bought your product (or service) and the benefit they're getting from it. This requires a different kind of listening on social networks.

What is the price of your product or service? How did you come up with that number?On a blog, or in pictures on Facebook, or a video on YouTube, you can explain a fuller, richer story about your product or service. In your own words, just exactly how you would like to present it.

You make the most of a social network when you know how it works. With the advent of each new platform we all have to learn new skills. While it is annoying to have to stop doing business as usual and learn a new set of skills, it does make us more skilled in the long run. Social networking has had far more impact on how we do business online than it might appear on the surface.

LinkedIn not only wants to be the social media site for business, it is empowering businesses to tell the most laser-focused message currently available. LinkedIn will allow you to offer different line-ups of your products and services to whichever audience you specify.