Is social networking the latest business tool?

Or simply the new backyard?

When I was a kid (yes, I can remember that far back), we didn’t have air-conditioning so the neighbors would sit out during the evening and visit while the day’s heat dissipated.  As air-conditioning became more affordable, those evenings under the stars ended and the close relationships we had with neighbors declined.

Many of us of that generation are using the social networks to reconnect with the people of our youth and experiencing great joy at finding long-lost friends.  Even those too young to remember the backyard visits appreciate the relationship building power of these social networks.  Facebook, Twitter and a whole host of social networks have become the new backyard.

Yet many of us in business keep trying to convert these tools for business purposes.  A few have done so with great success.  Most of us, however, are struggling to make effective use of these tools.  Why?  Because it seems to take inordinate amounts of time to sift through the backyard stuff to get to the business stuff.  That will continue to be our dilemma until greater segmentation occurs within the social networks.

It’s counter-intuitive, but most of us are not going to be successful using social networks until we separate our social contacts from our business contacts and consciously decide how much time and energy to devote to building each type of relationship.  The more conscious the choice, the greater success we’ll enjoy in both arenas.

The 7 Steps to Becoming INVALUABLE program is designed to help you see more effective ways of doing business – ways that dramatically improve your bottom line while making your life easier.  In today’s blog I used Step 4, See Similarities, to relate today’s social networking rage with the mechanism used decades earlier.  Then I used Step 1, Contributory Negligence, to see what we’re doing that contributes to the problems we’re having converting this tool to business purposes.  For more information on the 7 Steps to Becoming INVALUABLE visit www.furtwengler.com/7steps.htm.

If you’d like to receive a weekly email reminder with a link to The Invaluable Leader blog or if you’d like me to address specific topics, please send me an email at dale@furtwengler.com.  Please share your experience with our readers by posting a comment.

Good news – My latest book, Pricing for Profit, is going to be released 9.9.09 in the United States, Canada, U.K., Italy, France, Germany and the Netherlands.  Prepublication orders are being taken at amazon.com, borders.com and barnesandnoble.com. Enjoy!