1. Engage – People who join your group or fan page want something. Find out what it is and give it to them. Give them coupons, suggestion, offers, new, meetings, rallies, contests…what ever it is, you must keep your network engage or else you risk loosing it…or worse, having a stale network.

2. Aggregate – Social networks allow you to bring people together around your issues, products and services. Once you build your relevant network, you can engage by polling, conducting market research, delivering offers, and so on.

3. Measure Online – Measuring your activities on your social networks. For example, how many people joined your group. How many people are attending your events, how many people saw your event, and how many comments are made.

4. Measure Offline – Use every opportunity to drive your “offline” audience to your online social networks. So if have a quarterly magazine, or conduct monthly direct mail, or advertise in print or television, invite people to join your online network. Now you can measure what’s happening offline and at the same time grow your influence in your social network.

Social networking is no panacea.  But, done right, it can be a slice of heaven, even though it takes hard/smart/inspired work.