If you are like most internet entrepreneurs, you will probably notice you spend a disproportionate amount of time checking Facebook, Twitter, your email or your web statistics. How much productivity does this cost you and how can you cut down on this productivity loss?

The True Price of Socializing

If you check your Facebook for just five minutes, two or three times a day, plus your email another two or three times a day, that doesn’t seem to be than very normal online behavior, but in reality, the costs are huge.

Let’s say each time you decide to check Facebook, it interrupts your concentration and costs you momentum in a project. In addition, it takes you an additional ten minutes or so to get back in the groove of what you were working on. While you are on Facebook, you might see a cool link or video, or perhaps a comment on a friend’s wall that you want to discuss; you then get sidetracked and spend an additional five or ten minutes. When you add it all up, each distraction could easily cost you fifteen to thirty minutes of productivity.

You can just check your email once at the beginning of your work day and once at the end and still address all the important emails in a very reasonable time frame. And even with 1,000 friends, you can easily view all the posts that were posted in a day in about twenty minutes by checking Facebook just once a day. The cuts in productivity aren’t necessary. You aren’t missing out on anything by streamlining your online social networking.

What to Do about It

As mentioned above, one very effective system is to just check your email or Facebook once at the beginning of the workday and/or at the end of the workday. If the interruptions feel like an addition, consider getting a site blocker for a short period of time. Even if it is just for two weeks, it can help you get in the habit. Set up the site blocker so Facebook.com, Gmail.com, Twitter.com, etc. aren’t accessible during work hours. That way you won’t even be tempted to access those websites.

Also consider trying a productivity monitoring system. These are systems that will watch how much time you spend on email, on work and on websites such as Facebook and report it to you at the end of the day. You will probably be shocked at how much time social networking takes when you see the numbers.

You now know how much online social networking can be costing you in terms of productivity. You also know a number of ways to break this habit. Remember that adding just an hour or two to your daily productivity can mean a lot of real money added to your bottom line in a few months of time.

There are many ways to increase traffic to your blog. You can advertise your blog, you can optimize your content for the search engines, and you can take advantage of social networking sites such as Digg. In fact, social networking interaction is often the easiest and most effective traffic-generation tactic.

When Using Digg, Submit Your Most Compelling Blog Posts

Submitting everything you write to Digg is a good way to alienate people. If you want users to take you seriously, then submit only content that is entertaining, very informative or useful.

Submit Other Content, Too

Digg is a social networking website. As you might have already experienced on other social networking sites, individuals who only promote and don’t interact don’t have too many fans. Once you have registered with Digg, install the Digg toolbar on your browser. Spend a few minutes every day submitting relevant and useful content. This is a key way to build your profile and to interact with other users.

Build a Compelling Profile

Simply being a Digg user and contributor will drive some traffic to your website. People will want to know who you are and what you are about.

Install Digg Buttons

Integrate Digg buttons into your post and blog. You can prompt visitors to “Digg this.” Each time a post is submitted, it moves up the results. You reach more people and increase your search engine ranking.

Use Your Resources

The more Digg votes your posts receive, the higher they move in up the results and the higher up they are, the more people see them. This in turn drives traffic to your blog which is your ultimate goal. Don’t hesitate to ask for Diggs from your readers, customers and prospects.

Optimize Your Submissions

When you submit a post from your own blog, optimize the title and description with keywords. Choose the right category for your niche and consider including a photograph.

Make Friends

Digg is a social networking website and that means interacting with other members. Get online and chat with fellow Digg members. Ask for reviews or votes and reciprocate when fellow members connect with you.

Digg is a great way to promote your blog and drive traffic. It’s free, powerful and can be your most effective traffic-generation tool in your marketing strategy.

StumbleUpon is a social networking site that connects you directly to others who share the same interests, and can be a fantastic tool to drive traffic and grow your business. However, in order to gain the most benefit there are a few key strategies you can utilize.

#1 Identify Your Goals

Goals help you stay on track. They also help you know when a strategy is successful and when it needs to be fine-tuned or eliminated. So what do you want to accomplish with your StumbleUpon tactics? For example, “I want to increase website traffic by ten percent.”

#2 Create a Strong Brand

It’s important to make sure you are representing a cohesive brand personality or image whenever you communicate on StumbleUpon. Your profile is also a significant brand builder. Here are a few tips to strengthen your brand through your profile:

* Post a picture – Just like other social networking websites and even your website and blog, it is important to demonstrate that you are a real, live human being. It’s also a good way to share who you are.

* Choose topics strategically – Choose topics that are relevant to your business.

* Connect with like-minded Friends and Followers – Connect with your industry gurus and experts. You can also connect with your competition this way and upload other social networking contacts.

#3 Schedule Your Interactions

Most often when people join StumbleUpon and other social networking websites, they create a few key posts and then they forget about it. If you want to reach your goals, you’ll want to participate on a regular basis for it to be effective.

It is important to know that this is a task that you can outsource. You don’t have to spend your valuable time networking. If you are managing the task on your own, set aside a few minutes every day submitting sites to StumbleUpon, interacting and reviewing. Submit regular content that offers value and helps build your brand and awareness. You can make this step significantly easier by installing a StumbleUpon toolbar on your browser.

#4 Strategic Content

Of course you will want to submit some of your own content. However, you want to make sure the pages you submit are strategic. Don’t submit everything, but rather only content that you believe will help you reach your goals. Create content specifically for your StumbleUpon audience.

#5 Testing and Tracking

When you are creating your StumbleUpon goals, make sure you also create a way to test and track your results so that you will know if your efforts are successful.

#6 Integrate

Include StumbleUpon into your other marketing efforts. For example, add StumbleUpon buttons on your website content pages to motivate Stumbles and reviews.

#7 Advertise

Once you have a solid StumbleUpon system and are achieving the results you desire, take a look at StumbleUpon advertising. Like Facebook and other social networking advertising programs, it is highly targeted and may be more effective than other advertising programs.

StumbleUpon offers businesses the ability to build traffic, awareness, SEO and much more. Create your goals and a strategy to achieve them. Implement systems and tactics and then test for success.

LinkedIn is the equivalent of an online resume that is always accessible. Unlike a resume, however, it can also help you meet new professional contacts, impress potential clients and reconnect with former co-workers. Learning to use LinkedIn intelligently can help propel your business career to the next level. Here are four strategies to help you make the most of LinkedIn.

Ask for Recommendations Often

Since most people have only a couple recommendations, if someone opens up your profile and sees twenty recommendations, they are automatically going to assume that there is something special about you or your skill set. Getting recommendations isn’t difficult. Anyone who’s on LinkedIn can write a recommendation for you. Whether it is co-workers or employers, business partners or past clients, make it a point to ask for recommendations from everyone. It’s the equivalent of having twenty letters of recommendations attached to a resume.

Go through Your Past Contacts and Add Them

A lot of people don’t make full use of LinkedIn because they haven’t added their past contacts. People from past jobs, past employers, past partners (even from many years ago) may have valuable contacts that you can meet in the present. Go through your old telephone books, phones and email addresses and look for people you might have forgotten to add.

Update Your Profile Regularly

Not everyone uses LinkedIn every day. Some people use LinkedIn only when they’re looking for a job. Others use it only when they are looking to hire, or looking to find new clients. During off periods, a lot of people let their LinkedIn profile stagnate. They forget to ask for recommendations, forget to add new contacts and forget to add new workplaces. Anyone you meet could look you up on LinkedIn at any time. If they see an old profile, they will likely think that you are less connected, less skilled or less experienced than you actually are.

Keep your LinkedIn profile up to date. Even if you aren’t using it at this particular moment, make it a point to update it at least monthly. Remember that it is a publicly visible resume.

Search for New Contacts

LinkedIn allows you to search for contacts that are two degrees of separation away. In other words, if your friend Tom knows Rich, who knows Harry, and you want to get to know Harry, that can come up in a search. You may be more connected than you realize. Potential mentors, employers, clients and investors could just be one or two degrees of separation away. Get in the habit of searching for people who could help you in your career. Ask people you know, who know people you want to know, for referrals and recommendations.

These are a few LinkedIn strategies you can use to really take your networking and business contacts to the next level. Spruce up your LinkedIn page with recommendations, add past contacts, update your profile regularly and use the search feature to find people who could help you advance your career.

Flickr is the second most highly trafficked photo-sharing website on the Internet, second only to Facebook. Here are a few smart ways to leverage this high-traffic website to market your business:

Put Your Website in Your User Name

Make your user name your web domain. For example, your domain might be MyDomain.com. That makes it very clear to people who you are and where they can learn more about you. Since your user name is clearly featured, you will get a lot of copy and paste traffic if you get traffic to your images.

Tag and Describe Every Picture

Pictures that are properly tagged with good descriptions are much more likely to show up in search results, both from Google and from Flickr. You will also be more likely to get linked to when people clearly know what is going on in an image. It can get tedious, but it is an essential part of using Flickr for marketing. If you want your images to rank and get linked to, tag and write descriptions for every image.

Get a Pro Account

For just $25 a year, you can get a nice pro logo next to your name and have the 200-photo limit removed. Being a pro member shows people that you are serious about marketing on Flickr.

Leverage Groups and Community

Flickr has a very active community, centered primarily around groups. These are interest groups around a wide range of topics, where people share images with one another. For example, a group around car modification might have users from all over the world who share photos of their cars. There are photo groups for all kinds of topics. Look to see if there are groups related to your market. If so, make sure you are there sharing photos and promoting your business.

Promote Reuse

A lot of people don’t allow others to reuse their images, which could severely limit the amount of traffic you get to your pictures. Instead, make it clear that people are more than welcome to reuse your images. When they do, you could ask them to link back to your website, or you can just put a small, translucent watermark on the image. Make it small so it is not distracting, but so that anyone who is interested in finding you can do so through the watermark.

These are a few key tips for marketing on Flickr. Most importantly, tag and describe every picture. Get a pro account. Consider using your domain as your user name. Use the power of groups to get your photos out there and encourage others to share and distribute them.