Social media as a communications tool

We are quite often asked how to best use social media sites, especially LinkedIn and Twitter. There are many ways in which people are successfully using these online mediums and historic uses have shown that you can benefit in many ways. However these types of social media are predominantly communication tools and our advice would be to use them in the way you do your face to face networking:When you go to a networking event, there will be people you have identified you want to speak to or in conversation consider that person to be someone to keep in touch with. You can search and communicate using these tools. In addition, when say 4 people are stood talking, I guess you do not barge in with your promotional material and business cards, but rather listen to the conversation and then contribute with a view or your expertise that makes people listen or recognise you.