Facebook: Power of Networking

The power of networking in any industry is unquestioned. Most especially in the blogging world, networking can assist your marketing reach and bring a wave of industry insiders to your blog or website.

Even networking with your competitors is a smart move that can help you gain valuable information and bring attention to your work. Fortunately for us folks who work with the internet the amount of free tools available to assist networking is simply astounding.

We have massive amounts of tools available to us from email, to instant messaging, VoIP and now the social networking phenomenons such as MySpace and Facebook.

While MySpace was the early leader in social networking, the exploitation of this platform by spammers, hackers and predators - has seen many shy away from the website in favor of newer more secure frameworks such as Facebook.

There are various levels of networking, from initially 'introducing yourself' to friends to eventually speaking verbally on a regular basis - once you gain the initial trust of a new friend, try and keep regular contact and where possible leverage your relationship to speak through an IM client or programs such as Skype. Any verbal time you can get with an internet VIP is pure gold. The recognition and ideas exchanged will really help you in your ventures.

Personally, I find Facebook a very powerful tool for getting in touch with people on the Internet I wish to converse with. From very public and powerful identities to the average internet browser - Facebook allows you to introduce yourself and establish a relationship with anyone.

Where the true value lies for industry players is the 'access all areas' type of setup - allowing anyone to track down and get in touch with VIPs or successful internet identities. Using Facebook you can quickly search and 'touchbase' with the real influential people in the internet world.

Once you begin establishing relationships with your targeted personalities on Facebook, you can then extend your marketing arsenal by creating 'Facebook Groups'. Creation of a group on any topic is simple, free and the creation notifies your contacts and instantly gives them insight into the topic you are launching.

With any internet venture, especially a 'blog' - you naturally want to give yourself an edge and employ marketing techniques that are unique, powerful and not too time consuming. Maybe take some time off Google optimization for a few hours and put some effort into growing your Facebook network and direction - if you haven't already.

If anyone has some good unique ideas the are employing with Facebook, feel free to reply below - any quality examples will receive a free back-link from me.