Well, I’ve done it. I’m on Twitter (www.twitter.com/mikelann) and Facebook. Whether you call them social networking, microblogging, or life-streaming applications, they are here. The internet is changing right beneath my feet. So I jumped in. With both feet.

The obvious challenge is how to avoid wasting all your time wading through these sites while you try to find something meaningful and ideally post something relevant. (How much meaning can there be in 148 characters?!) For a long time I was part of the crowd that said they would “Twitter” when hell froze over. (I don’t need a chirp every time someone goes to the post office and sends out a tweet to let everyone know they crossed something off their to-do list. )

But…. The internet is changing. For business owners, social networking is the next wave of marketing and relationship building. (But it cannot replace face-to-face networking!)  You can ignore it, but there are risks. For one thing, email is becoming more and more problematic. For example, I write a great newsletter and send it out to my subscribers. But I know full well how many of my brilliant thoughts go straight to spam, and how many more simply never get opened because people are overwhelmed with their inbox. Now, I can post my articles on my site, and send out a 2-line synopsis to various sites. If you want more, click and read.

With Twitter, I post a “thought” each day on how to earn your worth. And there are people I do follow myself. Anyone can “follow” me on Twitter. I may or may not follow them back. I keep Facebook for colleagues and people I know. That is how I do it. Ask me next month and it may be different!

Still, the issue for many of us is how to make this really worth our while. And small business owners often have a hard time separating their business life from their personal life, and these applications can tempt us to blur the line even more. I do carefully protect my time, and needless-to-say, social networking CAN become a time-sucking vortex. So I NEVER check my work email on the weekend or in the evenings. (Read that again.) Hence, I never check social networking sites outside of business hours. This keeps me sane. I also only access Twitter via the web—not on my phone. Again, that is me.

I keep all my social networking business related and associate it with my business email address. Of course I post personal information at times, but clients and potential clients may read me, so I keep it pretty professional. (And I do enjoy catching up with what my colleagues are doing.)

I schedule time each work week to write and then schedule my posts. I can schedule my blog posts and there are applications to let you schedule your Twitter thoughts too. (I haven’t done it yet but will check it out soon.) Right now, I am spending 15 minutes a day on social networking. It’s part marketing and part relationship building. There are also applications that let you update many social networking sites at once. For now, my Twitter site updates my Facebook site. I’ll blog again as I figure out the applications. (And be sure to leave a comment with your own thoughts and suggestions.)

This is evolving and I am learning a ton. Yes, relationship building is important and applications such as Twitter and Facebook do allow us to stay connected. But like I said– small business owners often have a hard time separating their business life from their personal life, and these applications can tempt us to blur that line. Resist. Be intentional with your time and decide how you want to spend it. Figure out what works for you. Decide how you will integrate this into your workday and keep your personal time for personal pursuits. But during business hours? Follow me on Twitter! www.twitter.com/mikelann