Anyway, that’s private stuff, but I want let you know I’m on Twitter right now. Well, I’ve actually had an account there for the longest time (a year maybe?), but I just never really got around to tweeting. If you don’t know what Twitter’s about, it’s basically this nifty little site that allows you to update your friends and stalkers about whatever it is the heck you’re doing right now.

So if you’re doing the garden, cutting a million dollar deal, or taking a dump – you can tweet that and let your friends know. If you’re asking why in the world would you wanna tell the world about what it is you’re doing (i had the same question myself — that’s why I didn’t tweet before), I just realized that people are naturally bored and having nothing better to do with their lives, so they’re naturally curious about what the other bored people are doing in their lives. But it’s wonderful! Really.

Obama used Twitter to great effect during his campaign and I mean if you’re interested in what the heck that bloke is doing 24/7, you’d follow his twitter right? And yes, over a quarter MILLION people (i think) follow his twitter. Which is amazing. He’s got a quarter million people glued to his every freaking move — but then he is president.

As a net marketer, I hope you’re starting too see how powerful twitter can be at connecting with people out there and to naturally create awareness about your online business and eventually drive traffic there as well. Very powerful. After email, twitter’s the tool that people respond to the most.

But you DON’T want to use twitter to spam people about your websites, products and sevice. It’s a networking tool and just like facebook, if you’re just using it to sell, sell, sell. It’s not gonna work. Look at this this way — Twitter’s kinda like microblogging (you can only type 140 characters per tweet). If your blog’s all about promos and products, NO one’s gonna be interested. But if your blog is interesting to read, funny, and helpful — you’re gonna gain a loyal audience. SAME with twitter.

If you’re not on it yet, I highly recommend you do. Because even if you don’t plan on twittering right now, you should still get an account because the url extensions are limited. So if you’re John Doe and some other guy’s already booked twitter.com/johndoe — too bad. You have to think of something else. Like for me some other chinese dude’s already snapped up /adamwong, so I had to go with adam_wong, which is still ok thankfully. But to make the point again – get your account quick.

I’ll be twittering more often form now onwards, so if you’re naturally bored/a stalker/wanna know what the heck I’m up to, you can follow me at www.twitter.com/adam_wong.

That being said, social networking sites are getting REALLY popular today. Facebook alone, I believe, has over 110 million users. Imagine what you could do with a database that size! Not only that, I believe FB is the first social networking site to really go mainstream.

Back then, other social networking sites were more or less used by the ‘younger’ crowd. For example, I was on Friendster years ago and so were all my friends and peers. But you never really met anyone from outside that circle.

But Facebook, oh my! you’re seeing everyone and I mean everyone getting a Facebook account today. Even big old organizations are getting in on the act. I regularly read news online and even there you have links where you can share the news article on Facebook.

Sites like ESPN, LA Times, Reuters, Washington Post, and even the jolly British – the BBC – have share links to Facebook. You never saw such things with other social sites before. So FB is really mainstream now.

But back to my titular point…

So with the growth and reach of Facebook today, it’s no surprise that it is fast becoming a very powerful way to promote your products and services. And as you know, a lot of marketers are in fact already doing so.

Now, there’s a right way and a wrong way to promote your business on social sites like Facebook. You see, no one likes to be bombarded with advertisements day in and out. We may be ok with that happening on the radio, TV, magazines but definitely not from our ‘friends’ on Facebook!

You have to remember that the main reason people visit sites like Facebook is to connect with people, and not have their online ‘friends’ constantly pitch products to them. So if you’re using FB now to pitch, pitch, and pitch your products to your friends online – STOP.

Marketers have found that it is highly ineffective to pitch your products on social networking sites like Facebook. People are just not that interested! Now it’s definitely ok to let people be AWARE about what you do, what your business is all about and the products you offer. But you don’t want to pitch.

Instead, you should be using FB the way it was designed to be used – to connect with people. To connect with your peers, your JV partners, your customers, your fans, etc. And when you build a solid relationship with them, they’re naturally gonna want to find out more about you and what you do. And if they’re interested at all, they may do business with you.

But if you’re doing something as dumb as this:

Then you risk peeving A LOT of people off.

Especially if you post that same exact message on ALL your friend’s walls. Not only that, all your mutual friends can also SEE that you posted that same exact message on everyone’s wall. Really, really dumb. In other words, you’re just abusing the access to the network you have. And for what? To earn some dollars promoting your affiliate link? the Not worth it.

There’s another word for things like these – it’s called spam. And your friends won’t appreciate that at all.