6 Easy Steps to Embrace Social Media and Networking
This guides suggests 6 easy steps to help you get started with building your online social reputation and image. This guide will help you avoid common mistake in how people manage their online reputation.
Why
Our society is shifting rapidly to an internet / online network because managing your online reputation is becoming imperative for companies and professionals. Those with an online presence, who utilize social media and networking are discovering ways to flourish that have not been seen / thought of before. Companies are online more than ever before looking through social networking sites to identify candidates for prospective employment. How you cast your image matters!
Purpose
Using these 6 easy steps will help you build a foundational understanding of social media and social networking . An understanding will lead you to mastery over how to manage your online reputation so that you build your professional career. While these tools are easy casting a sophisticated professional image that demonstrate domain specific savvy and understanding takes time and patience.
Terms
- Social media is a shift in how people discover, read and share news, information and content.
- Social Networking service focuses on building online communities of people who share interests and/or activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others.
- Online Reputation Management (ORM) is the practice of consistent research and analysis of one’s personal or professional, business or industry reputation as represented by the content across all types of online media. It is also sometimes referred to as Online Reputation Monitoring, maintaining the same acronym.
The steps for this guide are broken down into 3 groups to help you get started
- Tools (Why, I don’t Want to, Where it leads)
- Use (Your 1st start, How to make a habit, Training for Professionals)
- Growth (Explosion of ideas, like minded folks, )
Steps
1. Setup Your Wordpress Presence
Today’s blogging tools are easy and approachable. Wordpress has become one of the mainstays for easy website publication. A good tool, like Wordpress, will take less time to master than common desktop tools like Word or Office. Your identity and reputation are out there on the web right now. How are you managing it? You can take one of our courses to help move down this path.
Managing Your Online Reputation and Identity, this course comes loaded with everything you need to get started. It covers training, adaptive planning, site hosting and experience pathway validation.
Read naming conventions on Starting a Blog
2. Setup Your Twitter
Have a quick thought? post it. The main problem people are having with twitter is what to use it for.
Join Twitter.com and connect.
Twiiter is a fast way to get a feel for social networks and see how people are changing the way they think. It is a first easy dive into the deep pool of social networking without having to jump into the deep end of the pool.
3. Tweet One Short Thought Every 1-2 Days and Follow Someone Once or More a Week
Common emotional/rational barriers to Twittering
“I feel I need to be selective in what I get sucked into. … If I don’t think my involvement will move the needle, I probably won’t try…”
“I’m scared of the invasion of technology into my personal life. This will somehow take away my freedom or suppress who I am…”
Use Twitter for thoughts and ideas that are relevant to your Professional pursuits.
- Avoid posts about the sandwich you are eating for lunch. Although , these are popular with younger crowds who are accustomed to texting about everything that pops in their heads. However, these are conversations that most adults have grown tired of and busy professionals simple don’t have time for them.
- Twitter about questions you have or thoughts you have related to your professional experiences. You will find many useful responses and receive a personal benefit of accelerating your thought process.
- Recruiters, Relations and Companies are turning towards social media to find highly qualified applicants for positions. How you appear in these communities matters. If you appear matters. Appear smart. Appear focused. Appear with the professional image you are trying to cultivate.
Getting use from twitter is all making sense on how to leverage the tool for a smarter purpose. A great little article on useful twittering can help you think about how to post. Try a post. It is not permanent and can always be deleted from you Twitter home page.
4. Post One Blog Every 1-2 weeks or even 1-2 months (Slow Long Rhythms are Ok)
Start writing. This one is simple and there are countless ways to do it.
We are all being forced to write emails. A post or a blog does not have to be long and it does not have to be exhaustive.
Two types of posts
i) Post a short “musing” email that had something you were passionate about. Avoid specifics, don’t call out a company or person by name. Instead speak in a generic way and speak to the ethics or content of the thought. Do not bash a company or individual. Unless that is how you build your reputation (infamy is a living for some). Musing is a way to say something I am thinking about but, don’t necessarily feel committed to writing.
ii) Experience Reports are for individuals and Case Studies are for Companies. That’s how I separate the two. Write-up your experiences. Keep it generic if you have to. Then you can begin to build your timeless track record of work that can always be validated.
5. Find Friends To Follow On Twitter
Read some other tweets. Find someone of like mind or something that interests you to follow. See how they are thinking and using twitter. This will stretch your head and give you ideas on how to use Twitter to build your social reputation and influence thought.
Try following a fellow Twitter’er
6. Find Others To Collaborate With
The least obvious and most powerful is the final step. This will accelerate your career, thinking and ability to reach boldly into the world.
Summary
Social media has brought forth a revolution in the rate at which an thought evolves and ideas spread. We are seeing an explosion in its use and a growth wave that is still growing exponentially with no signs of a plateau. What is unfolding is a ubiquitous de-localization of expertise and the ability to acquire that expertise on demand. What each of us does is special, but in no way a monopoly and the number of people that can move rapidly into any given thought pattern is exploding. Social Media and Networking (Twitter, Mashable, SMS Text, Web Video, HD Video Conferencing, Skype, Google Search, eMail, Lists etc.) is ushering in a whole new way to consider, evolve and sustain socially responsible systems that lead to more altruistic patterns of behavior. These altruistic patterns connect people together more deeply and richly thereby benefiting the connector with accelerated learning and vast influence.
To take full advantage of the social wave and not be relegated, each person must t learn to cast their identity and influence their reputation.
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