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I’ve been deleting my Facebook friends. The reason is pretty simple. I’ve discovered that the best way to go about social networking online is the same way you’d go about it off line. I call it the segmented approach.

Let’s say that you have a day job where you make specialty marketing products, you have a networking marketing business on the side where you sell herbal health products, and your hobbies include bicycling and gardening. Obviously, these are very different interests and many of the people currently in your networks within those three areas won’t have any interest whatsoever in your other interests. That is, your marketing customers won’t all enjoy bicycling or gardening, nor will they all be interested in your herbal health line of products. Why waste their time trying to talk about things in which they have no interest.

When you go to your motivation meeting for your herbal health products, you don’t stand around talking about biking up your favorite mountain range, do you? That is, unless you meet another bicycling enthusiast there. And you don’t stand around discussing gardening with your marketing specialty customers who have no interest in gardening. So why would you do that online?

I’ve decided that, in order to manage all of my interests better, to focus my networking efforts at each social media site that I use on specific goals related to my areas of interest. And that’s why I’ve been deleting Facebook friends. I’m about to completely delete my MySpace profile (because I’ve started another one that is specifically geared toward one of my interests).

I virtually have two interests that I manage online. Naturally, Internet marketing is one of those. The other is poetry. For those of you who don’t know, I write poetry and have done so for 20 years. I’ve decided to use Facebook and MySpace completely to network with other poets and people interested in literary topics. I’m using both of those networks to market my poetry and connect with others with that interest. If I decide to start networking with others interested in Internet marketing through either of those sites, I’ll set up another profile geared specifically toward Internet marketing.

But I think I can network with other Internet marketers in other ways. Sphinn, for instance, is a great networking site for Internet marketers. So are a few other places that I like to hang out. But because of the content nature of Blog Content Provider, we are a service provider to a variety of types of businesses, some of which may not be Internet marketing specialists, I have other ways of connecting with potential prospects.

There are a ton of social media sites that are useful. The trick to using them most effectively is to find the ones that can benefit you the most and through which you can meet the type of people you want to meet. I’m a big user of StumbleUpon and I’ve figured out that it’s a great place to show my versatility of interests. I can network with poets and other literary types, Internet marketers, other small business people, and persons interested in politics - all through StumbleUpon. Otherwise, I’m segregating my social networks.