Client Andy Bourland has been weighing the pros and cons of Facebook as a marketing tool. Copywriting guru Michel Fortin has just concluded that the social networking site is not a viable marketing tool for his businesses.

My take is that, like MySpace, it is an absolute waste of time for most Internet marketers unless you’re willing to outsource the marketing to a virtual assistant who will work for a fraction of what an hour of your time is worth.

Are there social networking success stories? Absolutely. In fact, I met with Marc Freedman last Friday. He’s done very well with LinkedIn. Steve Iser, who I met when speaking at JVAlertLive in June, has done great things with MySpace. Yet they are both exceptions to the rule.

If you’re playing the odds, expect a higher rate of return on your personal time, energy, and money spent on marketing. Outsource the social networking.

About the Author

With an advanced international law degree from Georgetown University and more than 14 years of real world legal experience, Attorney Mike Young shows entrepreneurs how to protect and grow their businesses online. He's the author of "Internet Marketing Legal Secrets Revealed," "How to Create Your Own Internet Business Without a Lawyer for Under $175," and the creator of Website Legal Forms Generator^TM. Not just a lawyer who focuses exclusively on Internet and marketing law, Mike’s been working with computers for more than 27 years (his first computer was an Atari 400 with 8 KiB RAM) and started representing Internet businesses back in 1996.