Agree with many of the points made above, Mickey is right to say you shouldn't necessarily try to 'sell' directly on social networks, thats not what they are about. But you can definitely use them to get traffic to your site and more importantly, build relationships. Social networks allow you to listen and engage, which can only be a good thing. Provide insight and advice and you will start to grow relationships, which can in turn lead to customers. Try treat it like normal, face to face (or forum networking), ask questions, publish thoughts and ideas.
Social Media searches can be very effective, if you search for a term, for example a problem your customers regularly come across (to which your product or services solves/fulfils a need), you will often find some talking about it. These could be seen as warm leads, or just people to engage with - you can learn more about the markets you are selling into, or the needs of the consumer by doing this.
Social Media gives customers different/new ways of contacting you, allowing the customer more control of the relationship. Social Media, is only going to grow and grow, so in my opinion it's inevitable that businesses will have to grow with and around it, you can't ignore the fact that 845million people use Facebook and there are over 2bn conversations a month taking place on twitter! I agree that the social business model will work much better for some companies than it will others, but its definitely and area that can be used, explored and harnessed by most business today.
