Social Networking sites are useful for more indirect, long term, and round-about means of garnering traffic and conversions. The many such sites excluding commercial content will continue to be plagued by unwelcome sales pitches.

Savvy small business owners will …

learn to ask questions of potential friends rather than preach product to potential customers,

find out needs and desires before providing solutions,

provide help before doing business.

And the business done will be outside the social networking sites by the buzz that was first generated in the social arena. Of course, some such sites like Twitter (or many blogs) are openly business-friendly.

Perhaps the main advantage of social networking sites is that they help develop relationships that can produce long term and repeat customers.

Peter Rubel