Social Networking

I don’t think that I’m stepping out of line if I said that social networking is the phenomenon of the last three years and that these days it is almost impossible to escape its daily influence on our professional and private lives.

There are endless social networking sites, ranging from YouTube and MySpace which are predominately aimed at a younger generation to the likes of Facebook and Bebo for personal networking and LinkedIn, Viadeo and ecademy which are aimed at the business networker. Then there is of course Twitter.

The fact that you are reading this – if anyone is reading this – means that you are already an integral part of its existence. Whether you have signed up to one of the sites or receive daily spam asking you to change your Facebook password, you cannot have escaped its influence on the way that we interact with each other.

So far this year my colleagues and I have been invited to six business briefings on how to maximise social networking to our best advantage. Whilst attending one might almost certainly be worthwhile, attending all six would use up quite a few hours of our working time and in reality add very little to our knowledge. So, which should you choose?

Whilst not wanting to be responsible for wasting hours of your time, I’d suggest that LinkedIn is the place to start, but have a look at the others and the many that I haven’t mentioned before committing yourself. All offer different routes for you to put both yourself and your company in front of a much wider audience. They offer the ability for you to sell yourself or your products and for the wider community to see what you can offer them. There are many successful businesses out there that have used them. Why not you?

And finally.

A quiet word of warning. These are all public sites, so be a little careful exactly what you post on them. Many potential employers use them to check out candidates and aren’t likely to be hugely impressed with candid photographs or graphic descriptions of nights out!