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As a practicing Business Coach and closet "Economist", I recently coined the term "SocialNetomicsTM", short for "Social Networking Economics", aka "The Economics of Social Networking" to describe the growing phenomenon of companies and individuals finding ways to monetize their online and offline social networks. Over the last few years, many have been busy aggressively building large social networks, followings or links to "friends", "connections" or "tribes" on social networking websites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Ecademy, Plaxo and to a lesser extent on MySpace and other social media websites.

These visionary "Thought Leaders", and "Open Networkers" including many Recruiters, led the way in exposing the financial benefits of investing the time, energy and money into building these huge Business to Business (B2B) online and offline social networks and may have created a whole new industry in doing so. Recently, Mike O'Neil, a leading Social Networking Strategist, CEO and Founder of Denver based, Integrated Alliances LLC described this trend toward monetization in what he refers to as the "Social Networking After Market Industry (SNAMI). Mike said, "SNAMI is composed of third parties - individuals, businesses, service providers, authors, trainers, writers, investors, inventors, developers, software makers as well as bloggers, podcasters, videographers, API programmers and so on."

While monetizing business networks thru referral marketing is not a new concept, companies for example like Business Networking Inc. (BNI), LeTip, eWomenNetwork, the Country Club set and many Chamber of Commerce leads groups have been doing so for years "offline".  Now many of these trend setting companies and individuals plus new authors, coaches, consultants, internet radio talk show hosts, podcasters, speakers and trainers from many industries are jumping on the band wagon. They are turning their attention to implementing plans and strategies to capitalize on and monetize their own online and offline social networks or building their own private social networking websites.

In our upcoming "SocialNetomics^TM" blog series here or on www.socialnetomics.com we will explore this growing phenomenon and share best practices and other trends in the Social Networking After Market Industry. Along the way we'll cover questions that you'll want to know the answers to so that you too can achieve your own Social Media Optimization (SMO) strategy (but that's another blog).

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Dave Westfall is a Business Coach, Internet Marketing Consultant, Speaker and Trainer with DewPointe Ventures LLC. You can reach him by email at: davewestfall@dewpointe.com. Please check out Dave's profile on www.linkedin.com/in/davewestfall  or you can follow Dave's updates on www.twitter.com/davewestfall.

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Categories: Internet Marketing  |  SocialNetomics