There has been a lot of talk lately on the old “If you don’t know someone that invites you to their network, should you accept the invite” thing.

If you would have asked me that question just a short time ago, I would have been one of the people saying “hell no”.

Then the weirdest thing happened . . .

I changed my philosophy.

I no longer feel I need to know someone to accept their invite because I now feel that the purpose of accepting the invite is to begin a courtship to know each other.

Last week, at a seminar, someone asked me, “If you could give me only one piece of advice about social media marketing, what would it be?” My answer was, “Be generous. Give, give and give some more. A lot of doors will open for you if you do this.”

In this post I’ll share with you the most powerful social media tactics I’ve ever used.

Ever since places like Facebook and Twitter have become selling platforms for businesses, newcomers want to know the social ROI. The truth is; some businesses lose a ton of money while others prosper with ease. It all comes down to whether or not you REALLY know what you're doing. However, today we want to focus on how you measure your return on investment during a social media campaign.

Understanding the tools available to help you find the social ROI has to start with Google Analytics. It's by far the most popular piece of code you utilize to get a better feel for the results you need. Once you have your goals in place then you can use this to figure out the direction that will take you there.

1) Link to inactive social networking accounts: So there’s a prospect, interested enough to check out your Linkedin profile. They click on your Twitter link thinking “Cool, I spend more time there anyway” then they discover your account either has zero tweets or the last time you tweeted was back in late 2009. I’ve seen this with inactive blogs and even websites. Please go back and update or report to the Principals office folks. Inexcusable!

2)    Dancing the “Linkedin two step”. This is when you