When Dale Carnegie wrote "How to Win Friends and Influence People" in the mid-1930s, it's likely that the idea of using electronic social networks to do so never crossed his mind. Yet, many of the basic tenets Carnegie's work champions work extremely well in the context of media such as Facebook and Twitter.

Focus on the Friends

When using social networking media, it is critically important to focus on building relationships first, sales pitches much later.  It's best to start slowly, allow your friends to be acquainted with your personality, then offer advice and suggestions that let them see you as an authority in the realm of fitness. It's equally important to keep up relationships with existing clients who use social media; electronic messaging can be a great way to keep the fitness conversation going outside of the gym.

In a culture that emphasizes instant satisfaction, social networking offers another avenue for personal trainers to interact with existing clients and gain new ones. The main cost associated with social media is time rather than money. That means a business of any size with the inclination to invest some time on social media/networking sites in order to build a community or fan base can reap the benefits.

Keeping It Fresh

For most people, viewing a stale web page can be disuade them from looking further. An outdated page sends the message that the owner can't be bothered to maintain his or her own site, and search engines also pick up on this as they compile their rankings. The most common rationale by such owners is that they don't have the time to invest in creating new content.

Setting up a personal page in media such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn is much less involved than setting up a dedicated Website. But the need for fresh, up-to-date postings is even more critical when it comes to making friends and influencing people. Your communications with your "friends" can be as detail rich or sparse as you want them to be, but they need to be frequent.

Let's look at Facebook. Not just for teens and 20-somethings, Facebook's popularity is slowly creeping up the age scale. For that reason, learn about your friends' demographic information and their interests. Keep them engaged and wanting to learn more about you and what you do. Keeping people up to date with the latest conference you attended, a new workout trick that you learned, or some motivational advice is quick, easy, and goes a long way toward establishing and maintaining your credibility and professionalism.

Using the Electronic Grapevine

The most common way people use Facebook is to create a personal profile, then become "friends" with everyone whose name you can recall. But when using Facebook for professional purposes, it pays to be more selective about whom you befriend. As a personal trainer, aim toward creating a network of quality Facebook friends. This has the potential to be more effective in reaching the right people than drafting an email list, since Facebook allows users to post demographic information like birthdays, ages, hobbies and the like.

Perhaps one of the most powerful functions of Facebook is its abilty to produce a "news feed." This allows each of your Facebook activities to be relayed to everyone in your network of friends. One business savvy way to use a news feed is to share video and/or photos of your training facility or to demonstrate a workout. This can automatically alert all of your Facebook friends. All it takes is for one of them to watch in order to send an alert to their friends that they are watching your video. In this way, messages can spread between networks, leading to a much broader scope of interest in your product.

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