I can’t believe it’s been so long since I’ve blogged. I realized I better post some stuff fast before my Halloween decorating goes to waste!

Social networking is so important for all of us self-employed people but how do you know which sites are worth investing time in?

Well, I can tell you, it really depends on your target market, but I have found certain sites to be a waste of time for me and others have been extremely beneficial.

For me, Facebook hasn’t done too much, probably because I despise the “new” Facebook and don’t want to login. The only time I use it is to update some of my clients’ profiles and add applications and stuff. For me, I signed up long and ever ago with a personal page and have never really used it for business. (Maybe that’s why it hasn’t worked, brainiac.)

MySpace I’ve never gotten into but rumor has it, it’s a waste of time for business networking. (If you have had good results, please comment and let me know about it!)

Now, Twitter. Oh Twitter, how I love thee!

Twitter is a social networking site that begs the question, “What are you doing right now?”

You might be thinking, “Well, who cares?”

Answer – You’d be surprised!

Each Twitter post or “Tweet” (hence the catchy name of this post) is like a tiny little blog post. Anyone “following” you will be able to read your Tweet.

To totally get the power of this, let’s talk about me for a minute. I’m a virtual assistant and I specialize in writing services. When I ‘Tweet’ I try to always let my followers know what it is that I do. But, see, you’re limited to 140 characters with your Tweets so it’s challenging to come up with smart little updates. In the morning, I’ll usually Tweet about what I’m doing (writing a press release, polishing up an article, working on web content, etc.) so that my followers are kind of subliminally getting a service list that’s updated for them each time I’m working on something different. For example, I might say “Drinking coffee and optimizing a press release for web submission.” That tells my followers something personal (I drink way too much coffee because every other Tweet is about my java) and that I have people who pay me to optimize their press releases to be submitted online.

When my followers need my services, if they have been stalking following me for awhile, they are going to feel like they practically know me (Tweeting is a fine balancing act between personal and business for me, but my followers know that I love to cook, eat good food, play with my kids and watch Grey’s Anatomy on top of the fact that I am really busy with writing projects so I must be good, right?).

Twitter, basically, is the ultimate relationship building tool if you ask me. I’ve hired people after following them, I’ve been hired by people who follow me – it’s one big happy Twitter Universe.

I learned about a really cool Twitter tool yesterday called Tweet Beep. It works like Google Alerts. You type in words or phrases you want to be notified of being used in people’s Tweets. I might have a Twitter Beep with my name, so I know when people are talking about me. Or, I might have one set up for ‘copywriting’ so I can be notified if someone is looking for copywriting services, or if there’s someone cool Tweeting about it so I can follow them.

To learn more about this really fabulous networking site check out the Twitter Handbook.

Phew. That’s enough about Twitter for now. But I could go on and on….

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