Using Social Media RIGHT.

April 20, 2010

We can’t say enough how important networking is. We’ve talked about informational interviewing, social networks, phone calls, and face-to-face meetings. However, we want to talk a bit more about how to harness the power of the ever-expanding social networks for your career’s wellbeing. Many people use facebook to tell the world about their breakfast sandwich or their hourly mishaps. This is an effective way to annoy friends and contacts with pointless information. However, other people use facebook to thank people for meeting with them, to comment on stories, notes, companies, and pictures. This is the beginning of a strategy to gain something from facebook instead of just using it.

For a facebook profile to be useful, there needs to be interaction. That’s the whole “social” part of the “network.” So if someone spends their entire time blasting their friends with personal updates about the trivial moments in their lives, they are only broadcasting boredom, and not encouraging interaction. If someone is posting interesting facts relative to their field and common enough to be enjoyed by an outsider, they’re going to start wrangling comments and interaction. Once the relevant dialogue starts taking place regularly, they begin to appear as somewhat of an expert in their field. It’s then easy to post occasionally about looking for a job or needing employment, because all their friends know they’re an authority on the subject. If their friends hear of an opening, they’re already going to think about their contact who knows so much about the industry in question.

The other huge benefit is that doing research to find information and examples to begin conversations, helps that person actually gain new knowledge and brush up on topics they may have found rusty. So tell your friends about what you do, not what you eat or that the rain made your socks wet. It’ll make you a better facebook friend.

Back to articles

Archive