It feels like there is a new social network each week and for every social network everyone you have ever met needs to send you an invitation to join. This is not a viable way of using social networks for managing your social life and especially for marketing your business. This post is a map to three of the major social networks in order to help you understand what they are good for and why you would use them. Including as well the vocabulary the sites use to describe their network.

Social networks provide an opportunity to see who you are connected to in business and to make new connections with the people that are connected with others that may be helpful to you. Social networks should (pick one) be used for finding people who need your consulting or other services, locating a job or those who might need your product. The networks are adding features to define yourself as an expert and promote your business. Social networks can also be used to be social, stay connected with friends, find events, track a band or comedian, or any number of activities.

LinkedIn is your jacket and tie business to business networking site designed for supporting business to business relationships. LinkedIn prides itself on building business relationships and avoids anything that is not purely for the sake of business. On LinkedIn you share your job and education history, write answers to questions related to your field, give and receive recommendations and network with other professionals.

Facebook is far less formal than LinkedIn and represen/ts a business to consumer network. Facebook has the most complicated structure relating to the connections you form on LinkedIn and does not yet have the tools to help you form strong business relationships.

Meetup is the bridge between the real world and the digital world. Meetup lets you connect with the people you hike with on the weekend, taste wine with on evenings and network with for business during the week. Meetup’s strength is that it focuses on one goal of bringing people together and does it very well. Meetup is free for those attending events to use (some groups charge for events) but has reasonable fees for planners of events.

?LinkedIn

On LinkedIn the Vocabulary is to be connected or LinkedIn when you form a connection with another user.

When you want to connect with someone on LinkedIn you find them and send them an invitation. LinkedIn requires that you know someone before you connect with them and may even require you to provide their email address. The individual you are connecting with is required to confirm your connection.

LinkedIn is very good for showing you how connected you are to other people. If you do a search you will see people that say that you are directly connected to, people who say that you are connected to through one of your direct connections and

Example: I am connected with John. John is my 1st tier connection. John is connected to Sally, and Sally is my 2nd tire connection because she is john’s first tire connection. Sally knows Josh; josh is a 3rd tier connection for me because I am not directly connected to Sally.

LinkedIn also has groups. Groups allow any LinkedIn user to show that they are a member of an organization or share an affinity. You can search and contact all the members who are in your group. You will see a icon with these people in searches.

LinkedIn paid membership. LinkedIn has a paid membership with extra features (like email to people you don’t know and and advanced reference checking) that is not nessesary unless you need the specific features. Paid members are identified in searches with .

Facebook:
The connections with Facebook are a bit more complicated. Connections on Facebook are called Friends. All personal connections are Friends even if you have connected with them for business. Facebook puts users in networks and allows you to search within these networks. This will give you more information about indeviduals who are in your network than those who are not (users can change what information is given about them to non-friends), but you can contact or request to be Friends with any user on Facebook. Your friend must aprove your friend request.

Facebook also has groups, pages and causes to help people connect with others.

Groups let anyone connect with others for an affinity. Groups can be either global (shown to all networks) or private. Groups can also be open, closed or secret. An open group means anyone can join, a closed group anyone can request to join and a secret group is invitation only.

Individual users are members of groups.

Groups can have events and message their members. Groups do not show you statistics about group usage or members.

Facebook Pages give companies and organizations tools to share their organization. Individuals can become fans of pages. Pages are very similar to groups but all are global and are open. Facebook pages are also able to be seen but not used by non-Facebook members. Pages are indexed in Google, which groups are not.

Pages are connected with other pages by adding other pages to their favorites.

Pages provide excellent resources for the creator to see valuable information about who is using your page and what they do with it. Are people commentating on your page’s wall (a place for open notes), posting pictures, posting video or reviewing your company?

Causes are created for non profits and have tools specific to the non profit community. People become supporters of causes. You can recruit other individuals to be members of a cause.

Overall Network Overview

Meetup

Each Meetup group is called a Meetup. Users can join as many Meetup’s as they want. There is general information about a user which is kept in a profile, such as what Meetup’s they are apart of. But each Meetup has its own profile questions, allowing you to better keep business separated from social matter.

Members can be friends of other members but this does not create the same kind of connection that it does on other networks. For example unless someone blocks you the relationship does not need to be confirmed by the other person. The emphasis of Meetup is on each group.

Groups post events and then people can RSVP to an event. This information is shared with others and members can write to other members who will be coming to an event or who were at an event with them. This is how Meetup extends the value of its network to help people stay connected between “in person” events.

There are other networks and online tools that have value. For example, blogging is an excellent tool for defining yourself as an expert and micro-blogging using Twitter or Facebook status updates is another great tool, when used in the right way.