Social Networking is excellent for connecting with people and using those connections to establishing, developing and expanding your personal network to grow your business.
While there are a many courses and programs that are available to help set up and use our social networks, the question still remains "what do you do and say to an individual to get an active, vibrant and successful social network that will respond to you over time?" Social networking is the key.
The answer is rather simple, in fact it is just four easy steps.
You must connect with the folks in your social network (social networking), make friends with them, find out about them (what interests them, why they are doing social networking), find out what issues or problems they are having (and everyone has something they want to improve) and help them with a solution.
Here are the four steps:

1. Make friends with them.
   Handle it like you would anyone you meet for the first time.
   Find out about them, where they live, what interests them, things they like to do.
   If you have time before talking to them or responding to them, go to their social network page and find out a little about them and draw upon that information to frame your conversation.
   And in the course of the conversation, find out why they are involved in internet/network marketing.
   Let them do most of the talking with you asking questions to guide the conversation and keep them engaged.
   Remember, people like to talk about themselves.
   
2. Find a need that they have.
   Ask questions to determine what issues or problems they are dealing with.
   Yes, we all have something that needs improvement.
   Probe a bit to find out what they want to improve.
   And LISTEN, be sure to listen attentively, very attentively, because they will tell you what problem(s) they are facing and will tell you what they need.
   
3. Suggest a solution and offer help.
   Bring to the table something they could use to address the problem.
   Be open and listen to what they say as you talk to make sure you are on target.
   
4. Follow up.
   This might be the most important step in Social Networking.
   Once you have established that relationship, made the suggestions, get back in touch with your new friend to see if it worked! Assuming you made a good suggestion, besides being nice to know about your success, you can find out why they felt it worked and use it for future prospects.
   Your new friend will be impressed that you are keeping up with their progress and that is priceless.
   

Step 5 might be to repeat the process (over and over again), but you get the picture.
Social Networking is about forming, developing and maintaining relationships.
Over time you are banking on being able to contact your social network with more information and suggestions.
If your relationship is firmly grounded, it will be a long-term benefit to you.