Social media has a set of rules and they’re pretty simple.  Here’s a plan for you how I visualize this process so hopefully it will be very easy for you to an act in your own business and online activities.

Social media is the place for socializing, gathering, and conversing.  The most important factor is the ability for back and forth interaction, for two-way communication. Tools like Google Friend Connect make this all the more easy.

It’s not just one-way communication like you see in normal advertising channels on TV and radio stations.  Because of this the big companies screw this up when they attempt a social media campaign and it elicits a great wave of negative backlash.

Inside a bar or club do you immediately just walk up to people and start saying “hey buy my stuff” or “hey join my MLM business”.

If you’re that guy you’ll quickly be avoided like the plague and noone will talk to you.  Then I doubt you get invited to any more parties in the future and the ones you do are low class which no one wants to be at anyway.

What you most likely do when you go to a party is go up to a group with some opening line or simply introduce yourself and then start a back-and-forth exchange.

You may ask what kind of work the person you’re talking to does and they may respond in kind and then you can start talking about philosophy or politics or other topics of mutual interest.

Even when you’re talking about your job though the prospect of sales almost never comes up because when people are in a party they don’t want to be sold something.

So why then is this basically what people do online?

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten a random e-mail on Facebook or MySpace saying “hey check out my site” or “hey buy this”.

I know why you continue to see it because programs can be built which make this kind of thing profitable.

My friend was telling me a story of a guy who basically spammed MySpace walls selling ring tones and made $250,000 inside of six months.

Of course, the police have been circling his house and he’s under constant fear of being taken in.  But this is how these things continue to perpetuate on the Internet.

Basically, the biggest thing is to interact on the social sites the way you would at a party in an off-line situation.

start up the communication whatever the appropriate tool for that site is saying hi and talking about something they like or are interested in and see if they respond in kind.  After e-mailing back and forth three or four times then you can say “hey if you want to learn more about me check out my blog here”.

Your blog is a non sales platfrom they can get to know more about you.  And they can refer you to people they know would be interested and want to buy your stuff.

Either way your blog is your lively business card where you can tell your friends about yourself and what you do.

Follow this procedure and philosophy in social media and you’ll have a good experience and get good results.

Follow it not and you’re likely to get flamed from angry members of the community and even have your accounts shut down.