Is your social networking strategy actually costing you customers? Use these strategies to get it right.

Drumming up a fan base on MySpace, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter isn't as simple as sending out friend requests. To find followers, you need to create threads and promote products on social sites. To do so, there are a few unwritten rules of etiquette you should know. Master the etiquette so you can stop sending Super Pokes and start winning over your connected consumers.
 
Be Patient
It's hard to feel competitive when you're comparing your 50 friends to someone's 5,000, but if you take it slow as you build your social content, you'll fare better in the long run. Don't request friends blindly.

"In most cases, there is no viable mass adding strategy for companies," says Joel Postman, principal of Socialized, a social media consultancy for businesses. "To start off, follow a few people, get referrals and create a network that's useful to you as a businessperson."

Also resist the urge to ask all your contacts to join your network. Tom Lewis,  vice president of marketing for imaging toolkits and applications provider Atalasoft, imported his Gmail contacts into Facebook and then asked them all to friend him, sending messages to professional contacts as well as people he didn't know very well. Big mistake. He issued a mea culpa message afterward, calling it a "definite mistake." A better idea is to announce social networks on your site, in your newsletter, or in an e-mail signature, and let contacts come to you.

Be Inclusive
Just because you shouldn't be sending out friend requests to everyone in your address book doesn't mean you should be shy about connecting with networkers that come to you. Don't take a chance on alienating potential customers.

"So long as it's not a spam request from a porn site or get-rich-quick scheme, I will friend anyone who appears to be a real person," Postman says. "For a business, you have to accept every live person because you run the risk of offending a customer."

Be on Message
Once connected, keep your connections' sensibilities in mind. One evening, Brooke Webb, marketing and PR director at Vicinity Manufacturing, started posting to Twitter after a failed client dinner and a few cocktails. She says, "I tweeted several messages that compared my clients and their cities to the adventures of Dante in The Inferno. You know, seventh-circle-of-hell references, and so on."

Even worse, her Twitter account posted to her LinkedIn so all her professional contacts could see what she had written. Webb has since learned to keep her Twittering professional, using it for her company's customer service and encouraging clients to reach out to her directly. She also posts about social media and has some much tamer personal posts.