Social media allows us to discover, connect, and engage with new people of interest. While most people are open to new connections and receiving messages from people they don’t know, there is a fine line between reaching out and “spamming.” The challenge is to make a connection clearly and effectively without wasting people’s time.

Many of us are on both sides of this relationship — sometimes making the connection, sometimes receiving the invitation. To help navigate these waters a little better, I’ve outlined seven key lessons for improving your social networking skills.

via 7 Lessons for Better Networking with Social Media.

Solving the “I need to immediately implement social media into my company, but I don’t know how/have time” problem, does take time and resources to figure out if you go at it alone. Education is going to play a major role because of how FAST the industry has changed. Here’s the skinny. Bring in social media consultants to teach everyone, not just your interactive department, on how social media can improve their productivity and outputs. In order to expedite the learning curve, many companies are adding outsourced (and in-house) social media specialists.

via Would You Hire A Social Media Expert?.

There are a lot of misconceptions when it comes to social media. People seem to think that every day standards and decency get tossed out the window because of the anonymity of the Internet. Unfortunately for those people, that’s not always the case. First off, the Internet is getting smaller, and by that, I mean that it’s getting easier to find out who people are. You know how the saying goes “It’s a small world.” That reigns true for the Internet, especially social media sites, as well. Everyone is connected one way or another. There’s a whole “Six Degrees of Separation” thing going on.

There are Ten Commandments of Social Media that you should always try to follow. They will not only make you a better person but they will make your followers that much more appreciative of what you have to say.

via Ten Commandments of Social Media – Noupe.

New Marketing Strategy.

An excellent strategic plan for using social media for small business – the author writes:

I suggest you begin by outlining clear goals for your social media marketing efforts and figuring out how you’ll measure success. Once you’ve outlined your goals, let’s look at 10 great ways you can begin to leverage social media for your marketing efforts.

See http://mashable.com/2009/10/28/small-business-marketing/