To begin with, I not only think that social networking works for increasing my business, I know it does. Spending time each day on the right social networks is very financially sound. Spending all day on the wrong network is just a great way to avoid working.

I don't believe there is any business that wouldn't benefit from social networking. After all, the better your contacts know you, the better they like you, the quicker they are to do business with you.

Fwiw, most of the bloggers, tweets, Facebook, LinkedIn and Ecademy business contacts that I connect with, are not MLM at all. There are very few of those.

The only thing I can tell you, is that if as an MLM you're going to "network" in order to build your business, then do it as everyone else does, because you can share your rolodex with us, not because you can recruit us to your fantastic business opportunity. That'll be the quickest way to turn other networkers off.

Aside from signing my posts with my tagline (below), I rarely, if ever, talk about my business when networking, unless asked.

I've been "social networking" since the late 90's, when most people simply thought I was wasting my time.

If it helps, I was chatting on LinkedIn about the problems I was having with our printer and one of the contacts decided to take advantage of what he learned by networking with me, and unsolicited, referred someone in my local sales office to try and sell me a different printer. Unfortunately for the local sales guy, I had just that morning resolved my problem with the printer and so, was no longer thinking of changing printers. BUT, had the printer company I'm with failed to resolve my issue, we would have been in the market for a printer that could and the referral could have been in a gift position of making a $20,000 sale. When I told him where the referral had come from, he probably signed up for LinkedIn within the day.

Ultimately, making relationships with other business people is never a waste of time.

If on the other hand, you're chatting with personal friends and not actually making new contacts or discussing business, then it's a simple matter of rethinking how much time you spend on that particular channel.

Feel free to ask any questions, I'll gladly share what I've learned.

Tina Brooks, VP Marketing
Brooks Pepperfire Foods, Inc.
Makers of Peppermaster Hot Sauces
http://www.peppermaster.com

Eat more peppers!