Social Media is all the hit these days. But the challenge is that most of the hype is about connect with lots of people and getting lots of people following you.

As usual, the hype misses the real point. The rules for being successful at Social Media are pretty much the same as they are with traditional networking. 

In my 12 years of consulting, I have met thousands of people and have several hundred business cards laying around my office closet. I do not remember who gave me the vast majority of those cards, let along exchanged any valuable referrals.

Instead, almost all of the referrals I have gotten over the years that have turned into real business came from a select number of strategic networking partners I have gotten to know well. I trust sending business to them and they trust sending business to me.

It might be good for my ego to have 20,000 people following me on Twitter, but it would be much better for my wallet to have 20 people on Twitter who thought enough about what I said to send me real business. I have discovered that most of the people who are successfully using the new Social Media are following the same rules they follow for traditional networking. Relationships and trust are built with time and quality communication.