After living in the UK for several years, I’ve recently relocated back to my hometown of New York City. I’ve started to rebuild my professional network in person and wanted to see if I could do so in the virtual world.
When I asked my friends, business colleagues, and acquaintances about their view on social media and networking, they unanimously said, ”Facebook is for personal and LinkedIn is for professional”. Mostly all of them tried Twitter and found that it did not add any particular value to them.
Over the last few weeks, I immersed myself in understanding Social Media. I started by attending various webinars and found that many share best practices on how to market products and very few, if at all, offered how to professionally network on social media.
Since I already had a LinkedIn account, I decided to open up a Professional Facebook and Twitter account but wasn’t really sure what I was supposed to do with them. Up until that point, my personal Facebook account was used to update friends on my trips, personal activities etc.
What I discovered (as many of you may have already) was that I needed to:
- have a Brand
- find my Voice
- and determine Contribution
Although I’m not selling services, I am marketing my expertise and myself (especially when it comes to Twitter). So I really had to really think about what I want to say and how it comes across to individuals that don’t know me.
Building a Brand for myself was not difficult because I already know my expertise and passion – applying industrial psychology to how projects are managed.
Finding my Voice, on the other hand, was a little harder because outside of work, I never had to think about how I came across on text. I found that sending professional messages require more thought, especially if you want to send quality over quantity.
Determining Contribution has opened up a world of ideas and topics I would like to share with people.
The challenge is taking the time to put thoughts down on paper and finding individuals that want to network with me to share best practices and ideas.
Let me know if you have any suggestions as I continue my social media journey.
http://www.bernardotirado.com/
Bernardo,
Finding your voice IS hard to do. Especially in a context like social media where pleasure and business find a way to mix, even if you try hard to keep them separate. I try to start my business blog posts with a little insight to my personality, share a story, and then end with something that relates to my personal life / family that might be entertaining to others. I've found this to be a good strategy.
The post I wrote tonight is a good example. I begin by opening up about how the eBook is plodding along and what troubles I am having with creativity, inspiration and structure, I joke about being an Engineer and then go into the technical stuff. I had lots of trouble getting the kids to bed tonight, so I ended with a bit about that.
Thanks Jule. You're right finding ones voice is challenging. The last time I wrote was research white papers which can be very dry and technical. I've had to soften my writing to allow my personality and voice to come through without compromising what I think would be valuable to share. I will check out your blog.
Interesting points! I am also on the way to understanding my brand and voice online. I use those three tools as well. Facebook is more for keeping in touch with family and friends. I use Twitter to meet new professionals that I have no connection with besides having a common interest (although I do follow friends, too). It's a good way to get and share ideas. In addition, I have found LinkedIn quite useful for more rigid, strict professional information and networking purposes. I even got a part-time summer job (I'm a college student) through my networking contacts on LinkedIn! I also wrote a blog post about using LinkedIn effectively here: http://justruthings.com/2010/12/07/using-linkedin…