Like many entrepreneurs conducting business over the Web, Sara Puls has fallen into a social networking sinkhole.

Puls help non-profits and government agencies create their own online communities through her Milwaukee Web development company, Involvenet. She also oversees an online community for pet lovers through a second online business, BrewCityTails.com.

To make her businesses work, Puls participates in social networking.

She uses Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, the most popular social networking sites for business; chats regularly on Gmail; and uses MySpace to stay in touch with a niece in Oklahoma.

“Some of the relationships I’ve made have led to real opportunities to make money,” Puls said.

The trouble is her social networking endeavors were causing Puls to be less productive and took away time from family, friends and her own interests.

“Eight hours would go by and I would only end up doing two hours of work. I said, ‘Wow, I’ve got to figure out a way to manage this,’ ” Puls said.

To remedy the problem, she sets a timer for 30 to 60 minutes, at which time she breaks from her work to tend to her social networks. After 15 minutes, she resumes working.

Social networking is gradually taking over our lives. This is supported by a recent survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project that shows the number of adult Internet users who have a profile on a social networking site has quadrupled in the last four years, from 8% in 2005 to 35% today. Not surprisingly, a Nielsen Online study shows that social networking is more popular than e-mail.

Time management is becoming a huge problem for Americans consumed by social networking, e-mail, blogs, RSS feeds, and other tools in the expanding Internet world.

“You can’t escape it,” says Rieva Lesonsky, a national small-business expert and former editor of Entrepreneur Magazine. “We now have all this info available that we used to have to go out and pay a consultant for.”

While social networking can be a useful tool for building your brand and making business connections, it’s easy to lose sight of the business reasons for social networking, said David Allen, author of “Getting Things Done,” “Ready for Anything” and “Making It All Work.”

An expert on personal and organizational productivity, Allen recommends that you define your commitments and manage your time accordingly.

The average person has 30 to 100 projects going at one time, he says. With time spent on social networks, researching on the Web, reading blogs and checking e-mail, it’s becoming more difficult to tend to real-life responsibilities.

“Once a week, step back and look at the commitments in your life,” Allen says. “If you find yourself too distracted, you have to decide how important is this, and how much of my life and attention does it deserve?”

Even veteran entrepreneurs, like Nancy Cavanaugh of Wauwatosa, struggle to stay on task in the age of social media.

Cavanaugh is president of Cavanaugh Interactive, a Web and print design firm she launched in 1982.

She enlisted the help of a business coach to help her better manage her time online. One important lesson she learned: develop a strategy and categorize each of your social networks in terms of their importance and what you want to accomplish.

“If you don’t sit down and think about your priorities and how you’re going to handle your social networking, it can be very quickly overwhelming and seemingly unmanageable,” said Cavanaugh, who is on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.