A Take on Social Media and Professional Networking

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/