When I speak on the subject of social networking I first try to get my audience to think of how they interact socially with others when they’re together. A good example is at a conference cocktail party. You form little groups of people who discuss topics of common interest that may include business or personal issues. Right? From there I think it’s an easy step to understand that all these online social networking services do is allow us to do the same thing, only electronically, easily, freely and when/where we want to. Does that make sense?

So, there’s nothing magic about it although I think many agrimarketers either believe there is or hope there is. Many can’t get beyond the idea of social networking as just another way to push people to their web page and when that doesn’t happen they turn their nose up at the use of social networking to promote their business. But keeping my example above in mind how popular would you be if you walked up to several people at a cocktail party and started telling them to go to your website and buy your product? I think you’d find yourself alone in a hurry.

So how do you use social networking to benefit your business in a meaningful and worthwhile way? You use it to carry on a conversation with your fans/followers/friends/contacts. It’s called engagement and it’s a two way street. If you can interact and contribute in a meaningful way to the conversation then you can gain trust and that will lead to more business.

To better understand how people use social networks I would recommend you read “Understanding Users of Social Networks” from the Harvard Business School. Here’s an excerpt that might help explain why these online networks have grown so large.

“Online social networks are most useful when they address real failures in the operation of offline networks,” says Piskorski.

They can address some basic search failures: “It’s hard to know what my friends are up to, but online I can catch up with them quickly.” But they can also fix bigger search shortcomings, such as those related to establishing new relationships.

The article includes some interesting comparison information for Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. It may surprise many of you how significant MySpace still is. According to the article there are about 70 million MySpace users logging in each month compared to 90 million for Facebook and 20 million for Twitter. The researcher quoted in the article has a good blog post on this subject.

One of the things to keep in mind is the differences in demographics for the different social networking communities. Who do you want to reach? Is one more suited to your business or audience? The bottom line is that social networks are good vehicles to promote yourself and your business. But you need a strategy and I don’t think that strategy should be to use them just like you would a traditional media ad buy.