Wondering if social networking can have a positive impact on your small business? Find out the basics of social networking for small business in this exclusive expert interview with Sylvia Browder, Project Director, Business Coach, and Consultant with the Alabama-based Women’s Business Center, Inc.

1. Why is it important for small business owners to engage in social networking?

Browder: Small business owners should engage in social networking because it is an easy and inexpensive way to connect to people around the world and an opportunity to make friends with people who have similar interests, find solutions to problems they might have by collaborating with others, as well as attract clients that might need your products or services.

Some popular social networking services, such as, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Linkedin and Bebo allow users to create a profile of themselves.

Here are just a few million reasons why business owners have nothing to lose by using social networking as a marketing tool for their businesses:

  • Facebook – 60 Million Active Users
  • MySpace – 110 Million Users
  • Twitter -  1+Million Users, 3 Million twitter messages per day
  • LinkedIn -  Over 30 Million Professionals

2. How can social networking have an impact on a company’s bottom line?

That’s a great question, one in which is widely discussed across the blogosphere.  There is no formal statistical data to measure return on investment (ROI) as related to businesses.  With that in mind, business owners need to investigate which   social media programs have the potential to create a revenue stream for their business.  This is done by researching the purpose of each one.

According to a recent survey on online social networking by the Institute for Corporate Productivity:

  • 65% of business professionals use some form of personal or professional social network
  • 47% use social networks to connect with potential clients and market their skills
  • 55% use social networks to share best practices with colleagues

Click here for a few ways to self-measure social media’s ROI for your business:

3. What tips do you have for small business owners who want to get started with social networking?

A few tips that I recommend for business owners are:

  • Create an effective and professional profile to introduce your business and yourself to the world.
  • Make friends with people who have similar interests as your business.
  • Keeping your profile updated with fresh content.  This will help increase the traffic to your website and blog.
  • Visit other profile pages to check out their interests.  It is a good idea to leave constructive and relevant comments when possible.  The more back links and comments you receive the more likely it is that your profile will show up in the search engines.
  • Join and participate in as many groups as you can.
  • Do not spam users!  It is annoying and you risk being banned.

4. How do you suggest deciding which social networking sites to participate in?

When deciding on a social networking site for your business, choose based on the type of audience you want to connect to.  This should be based on ‘members’ of these sites that would be interested in your product or services as well as those that are in the same industry as your business.

5. What factors can help small business owners determine how much time they need to devote to social networking.

Like anything else, it is important to manage your time.  As a part of your marketing plan, social networking should be included.  I suggest setting aside two to three days a week to contribute and check your key social networking sites, just as you would set aside time for cold calling or attending local networking events.