For the past few years businesses have made a concerted effort to utilize the incredibly fertile and ever growing world of social networking for their advantage. It is a fantastic marriage when done correctly but far too often businesses exploit these practices in ways that make them unappealing to the vast majority of people using Twitter and Facebook as a way to connect to the world in a direct way.

Business development requires smart internet moves and yet these days there is an increase in social networking tools making an effort to undermine the work of people making empty marketing based content on social networking sites. A great example is Klout. The folks at Klout are trying to measure individual’s merits within and out side of their own social network. The site takes it’s measurements not by sheer quantity of followers but by those followers engagement with content in “likes,” retweets, and active commentary.

This does not mean your business is out of the social networking game it simply means that you have to up the ante and offer your customers content that sparks their collective interest. Links to deals are great but how can you make offering something into a conversation? Answer that question and you will be cracking the code for better brighter business news in the future.