By now you know how important social media can be to building your business. It gives you a whole new world to market to and network with while providing a wealth of information. Just signing up with the big social media sites won’t help you grow your network, you need to be proactive and leverage your presence. Here are three simple ways to do so.

Start Conversations with People Who Are Talking

You know to start conversations to build relationships online, but it matters who you’re talking to. Tweeting at someone who never responds or trying to start a conversation with someone who hasn’t been on there account in weeks is waste of time. Look at the people you follow in your feed and see who’s really talking. Those people always tweeting with @ signs are those mostly likely to engage back. Conversations with these chatty people will help you build your network.

Talk About Trends Relevant to Your Business

What should you be talking about? Anything that’s relevant to your business. With GDI this can be site design, marketing ideas or networking events. Users search on sites like Twitter for people talking about what they are interested in and then follow them. Use keywords related to your business in each tweet and include hashtags (#) to make sure you can be found.

Follow Up and Organize

Just because you had a Twitter conversation with someone doesn’t mean they are a reliable part of your network. Go farther to ask them to connect on LinkedIn and share some ideas that can help you both. Create lists on Twitter to sort people you follow so you know who you’ve interacted with and why they could be helpful.