CRIReporter.com

As an avid user of LinkedIn for several years, I have noticed many more repossession agents who are signing up and using the business-focused social networking service. I think this is a great development for a number of reasons. 

Social networking is a great lead-generation tool for companies looking for more leads and to win more business. I have used a successful strategy for some time to find new business contacts by identifying individuals with whom I share many common connections. I then send a connection request to the contact and mention that since we share so many common connections, it makes sense for us to connect as well. Most of the time, this works and the connection accepts my request. 

When that happens, I then mine that contact's connections to find new connections. And the process continues. 

I could spend days using LinkedIn and not getting any "real" business done. But I find that if I set limits for how much time I spend on the site prospecting, I can enhance my social network and not have the process consume my day. I try to limit my social networking time to 30 minutes per day. 

While LinkedIn is becoming much more popular (be sure to visit my repossession group), I am not seeing a lot of Twitter activity from repo agents. I think that's because agents need to find a business case to use the service. Once that has been established, they will sign up en masse. I use Twitter (follow CRIR here!) as a secondary news service, to stay updated on things that might fall through the cracks of my normal site surfing. 

I'd love to hear how you are using social networking and whether it's a time suck or a valuable business tool.