In The Power of Pull, Hagel and Brown detail an emerging ecosystem that allows people to pull resources toward them in order to execute their ideas. It can be a little overwhelming but here are five straightforward tips. I challenge you to execute one or two this week. I'll put my results in the comments and encourage you to share your experience (including your frustrations) as well. 

Harvard Business Review Blogs: Five Tips for Smarter Social Networking, 2011-Jan-31, John Hagel III and John Seely Brown

…become more active orchestrators of our social networks, setting the tone and drawing out others…

1. Express more vulnerability. …Talk about some of the really difficult problems you are wrestling with and seek advice.

2. Mix professional and personal lives. …It is much easier to build trust if people have a more holistic view of who you are.

3. Provoke. …Provocation does two things: it reassures people they are seeing the real you (assuming most of us have provocative views of one sort or another) and it helps stimulate other people to generate new insights.

4. Promote others. …Find people whose work and deeds you admire and promote the hell out of them.

5. Actively seed, feed and weed. …We are often taught that social networks are emergent and self-organizing — they take care of themselves. Baloney. Truly vibrant and growing social networks are carefully tended by the individual at the center of his or her network.