Social marketing has become a phenomenon over the last few years and many people find it easy to spend all day hanging out in social network sites such as Facebook, My Space, LinkedIn and Twitter. Even famous celebrities and politicians use these networks on a consistent basis!

If you have an Internet business you need you may want to use social networks for marketing purposes. You may be wondering if social marketing is a waste of time, or if it is worth the effort.

Many Internet marketers start out on a part time basis so they are limited in the amount of time available to build their business. If this is you, you need to be careful that you do not fall into the trap of hanging around in social networking sites thinking you are actually making money.

There are some skills required to use social networking for profit. The key point is to budget your time and use it effectively when trying to advertise and promote online.

For example you may want to spend 10-15 minutes each day making some Tweets in Twitter, interacting with a few Facebook friends, or LinkedIn contacts, or updating your status.  Just be careful that your alloted time doesn’t turn into a few hours! 

By doing it this way you will always know when it is time to get out of the social networking sites and work on another part of your business. This way you are in control and when you are working on the Internet you will focus on the task at hand and not on just having a good time.