EVERY DAY IN business, you're either looking for a solution to a problem or you want to be the solution to somebody else's problem. In an effort to achieve those two goals, we network. Online social networking has become the de rigueur method used today and sites such as Facebook (facebook. com)and Linkedln offer the promise of extending your reach and making useful business contacts.



It's important to talk to connected people in your industry and ask them what services they're using. A complete profile is welcoming, so be sure to take the time to fill out all the public info that you want people to know. Being easy to reach means providing direct contact information, such as your 1M addresses, Skype user
name, e-mail address and phone number. You should make yourself easy to find by including appropriate keywords in all your profiles.

Clean Up What's Already Online: You probably already have online presence. You should definitely clean up inactive profiles and compromising content, says David McClure, producer of the Graphing Social Patterns conference, which focuses on the business and technology of social networking platforms. McClure recommends that you search your name on Google, Spock, and Zoominfo to see what undesir¬able items are readily available for you to remove, such as embarrassing photos. You should also find old, inactive accounts and delete them.