The Web is the best learning platform available. There's nothing else out there today that allows you to learn more quickly or to reach and teach people about your products or services. The better you do it... the better quality leads you'll generate. Part of the problem is that there's money associated with prospecting, but there's no correlation between money and learning.

Set up a strategy that includes spending a certain amount of hours per week on Facebook identifying who you might connect with, reading what your Twitter followers are reading, using Google Reader to read blogs, and developing valuable, pertinent information to reach clients through social media.

By developing an understanding of consumers and interacting with them online, you can generate business by pulling clients to you as opposed to pushing advertising and marketing dollars to acquire new leads.

So the question for many practitioners is: How much time should I be spending on this, and how do I know that it's working? If you're going to commit only 3 months to it, it's not worth doing. Like any traditional networking activity, it's going to take longer than that for it to pay off.