Social Networking is a wonderful tool and when used properly can create great success for businesses and individuals.  Unfortunately though there are some down sides to Social Networking that we often overlook.

The downsides of Social Networking unfortunately affect our children.  Unfortunately sometimes they are very innocent and do not think anything about sharing information online that has the potential to open them up for being harmed in some manner.

It is Important that you take the time to regularly remind the young in your life of the potential dangers of social networking and ways to be safe online.

Jacksonville Parenting Teens Examiner posted a great article titled:

Seven quick tips for social networking safety: Crash course for parents, teens and everyone

This is a good read and does a great job of hitting 7 items that can be addressed to help the young stay safe online.

As a parent I also advise that you always keep a pulse on your child’s social networking activities and establish rule and guidelines for the use of social networks.

Great video on using Social Networking to Save Money !

Watch CBS News Videos Online

One thing I have found is that many people have a hard time grasping what Social Networking is and how it can drive business to you.  Here is a great video from Perry Blecher that breaks it dowan and explains the concept very clearly:

Perry also has a great FREE Report How to Monetize Social Media that you can grab by clicking on the link.

I am often asked by new Twitter users

….Now that I am on Twitter, how do I find people to follow? ….

This is a great question for a new user to be asking.  Once you are on Twitter and have started to post informative posts the goal is to find others to follow.  The people you follow should fall into one or more of these categories; a friend, a colleague, an expert in your industry, a client, a prospect or even a competitor or someone that has “tweeted” on one of the keywords you are interested in.

So how do you find the people to follow?

There are several ways to locate who to follow on Twitter.  The following are some of the ways to identify who you wish to follow:

Use the people search feature inside of Twitter.

To use this feature just click on Find People and then enter in the name of the person you are looking for.  The draw back of this method is that you need to know who you are looking for by name.  This option works when you searching for someone that you know already.

Another tool that is pretty good for locating others on Twitter based on keywords in their profile is TweepSearch.  You can type in a keyword and it will pull up anyone with that keyword in the profile.  This can be used to look for anyone in “Denver” or anyone involved in “Social Media” for example.

One of my favorite tools to use to find others to follow is the Twello Directory.  This directory groups users by industry or interest.  You can also search by keyword with this tool.  If you haven’t already done so, when you are looking for people to follow make sure you register yourself in this directory.

Another method that I use on a regular basis to find new people to follow is use http://search.twitter.com/ to find people that are talking about topics that I am interested in.  Using this method you are able to scan in on someone directly based on their tweets.

There are several other tools that can be used to help you find people to follow in addition to the above list.  Here are just a few of those so that you can investigate them further as well:

Tweepz

TweepSearch

TwitDir

WeFollow

Just Tweet It

Twubble

Twitterel

Who Should i Follow?

And I couldn’t forget Mr. Tweet.  This is a Twitter app that sends you recommendations on who you should follow.

This list should help you identify a handful or more people to start to follow as you get started on Twitter.  Remember that you don’t want to build your Twitter following too fast, you want to build it up gradually and build relationships with those on your Twitter stream.