Using Social Media to Develop a Professional Online Presence

Guest Speaker at University of East Anglia

Sue Beckingham | @suebecks | Sheffield Hallam University

Social Media is a:

• listening tool• conversation facilitator• stakeholder connector• personal learning network• news channel• social networking space• forum for collaboration

Social Media:

• can enable connections• enables two-way dialogue providing

opportunities for feedback and interaction

• is now an integral component of how we can communicate with others

How do you currently pass on

information within your team

and organisation?

Within your team/organisation

STAFF INTRANET

Meetings

Some findings…

The Message is the Medium Attention is Shifting

Email

• messages

Web

• documents

Social Media

• messages

Nova Spivack

Danah Boyd 2013

Social Media Scholar and Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research

“Social networks aren't technologies. They're relationships between people. And those relationships might be mediated through technology, but it's the relationships that matter more than the technology.”

Consider

Think about the information you currently share externally

• What do you need people to see?• Who is your audience?

• What do you want people to see? • Who is your audience?

Established conduits

Social Media can help to amplify your

online presence

AND to continue this dialogue face to face

CREATORS

CURATORS

CRITICS

CONVERSATIONALISTS

COLLABORATORS

COMMUNICATORS

Social Media EMPOWERS individuals to become digital:

A cultural shift to 'nowism'

life experiences

real-time participation

instant gratification

A focus on the present rather than the past or the future

Nova Spivak 2013

Care needs to be taken

What you say

What you share

Who you know

Where you are

Your settings

Anything digitally

represented on a file or on the

web

Profiles, Contacts,

Images, Audio, Video, Data, Documents, Favourites,

Websites, Blogs and more…

Understand Your Digital Identity

and make it work for YOU

Be mindful of your digital

footprints

What goes out there can have an impact in the future

Commerce

Communication

Search Engines

DATA

Be mindful of your digital shadows (others)

Regularly check your privacy settings on Facebook

Don’t disclose personal information

Be careful what you share and who you share it with

http://www.alexa.com/topsites/global!

will find you!

Be mindful of how people search for information

Social Media ranks highly

People searches every day

Beware of your Digital Doppelgänger!

Politician

Musician

Filmmaker

Explorer

Your digital profile is your online portfolio and your 'brand'

Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos once described your brand as:

“What people say about you when you’re not in the room.” 

Hootsuite 2012

“The conversation is happening about your brand whether you’re a part of it or

not.”Seth Godin.

What do people SEE when they Google your name? What opinions do they form?Who are these people?

Who do you consider to be your audience?

students

colleagues

family

friendssubject

specialism acquaintances

business advisors

helicopter parents

Audience

YOU

YOU

Audience

• professional bodies• teams• special interest groups• communities of practice• subject groups• funding councils• the press• employers• alumni

• Who will look at your online profile?

• What do people want to know about you?

• Where will they use this information?

• Why is your profile important?

• When and how often do you update it?

• How will you use your profile to your advantage?

Questions to consider

Spring Clean your Profiles

• Google yourself and identify what others see

• Where applicable complete sections, bios, add a profile photos

• Consider LinkedIn as your professional landing page

• Add links to your website or blog• Create a customised url and add to email

signatures and business cards

There were 5.7 billion professionally-oriented searches undertaken by LinkedIn members on the platform in 2012 alone

Understanding the value of

“People need to learn how to connect to new people on a regular basis. No person has all the knowledge needed to work completely alone in our connected society. Neither does any company. Neither does any government.

We are all connected AND dependent on each other.”

Harold Jarche

Connectedness

Why Social Media is important

The power of online connections• maintain connections • develop global connections• ongoing 24/7 networking• opportunity to learn and share• ability to be known and found• six degrees of separation• recruitment/job seeking • develop a personal brand

Network benefits

Access to information, knowledge and experience.

The goal in a network is to make all the experience, skills and knowledge

– tacit or explicit – available to anyone at the point of need

Anklam 2007

Such concerns are not new

“As long as the centuries continue to unfold, the number of books will grow continually, and one can predict that a time will come when it will be almost as difficult to learn

anything from books as the direct study of the whole universe. It will be almost as

convenient to search for some bit of truth concealed in nature as it will be to find it hidden away in an immense multitude of

bound volumes.” Diderot 1755

“It is not information overload, it is filter failure”

 

Clay Shirky

Digital filters through the development of my personal

learning network

Mavens

Mavens are "information specialists", or "people we rely upon to connect us with new information.

Malcolm Gladwell 2000

Knowledge from a network perspective is

about connecting experiences,

relationships, and situations.

Jarche 2013

(Hoffman and Casnocha 2012:06)

However building… weak ties can uniquely serve as bridges to other worlds and thus can pass on information or opportunities you have not heard about.

Begin by paying forward

• Sharing articles and videos relevant to your business

• Commenting on blogs• Engaging with tweets• Answering questions in LinkedIn groups

A quick look inside my PLN Toolbox

Your personal level of involvement is your choice

• Creators• Conversationalists• Critics• Collectors• Joiners• Spectators• Inactives

The importance of getting the 'boundaries' balance right

integrator:

bridge builder to over sharer

segmentor:

cautious to unsearchable

Grant 2013

Increase reach

• develop relationships

• develop visibility• develop credibility

How do you create and maintain

new links and connections?

COMMUNIC-

ATE

CO

NN

EC

T

CURATE

CR

EA

TE

COLLABORATE CRITIQUE

visibility

credibility

rela

tions

hips

LinkedIn updates

Blog comments

Blogposts

Tweets

Slideshare

YouTube& Vimeo

Newer digital mechanisms include

Academia

Explore new areas

• Conference hashtags• Tweet chats• MOOCs• SOOLs – social open online learning

Short Open Courses

https://byod4learning.wordpress.com/

Getting involved

http://www.celt.mmu.ac.uk/flex/oerweek.php

http://sachachua.com/blog/2014/02/excuses-guide-blogging-pdf-epub-mobi-free-also-notes-publishing/

Blog

Impact

Anklam 2007

The central premise of social capital is that

social networks have value.

Putman 2000

Building Social Capital

Putman 2000

Social capital refers to

• the collective value of all “social networks” [who people know] and

• the inclinations that arise from these networks to do things for each other ["norms of reciprocity"].”

LinkedIn

Slideshare

Academia.edu

Digital Bibliometrics: Using social media to

measure scholarly impact

Using the Activity Stream to uncover off-site engagement

Increasingly people engage with, share, and discuss content on social networks.

Over 80% of interactions with content take place on sites other than the content owner’s website.

So, it is likely that most people become aware of and interact with your blog posts, videos, and articles on

websites other than your own.

Mention

Create alerts on your name, your brand, your industry and your competitors and be informed of any mention on the web and social networks

https://en.mention.com/

Social Capital

“Social Capital is the stock of active connections among people; the trust, mutual understanding, and shared values and behaviours that bind the members of human networks and communities

and make cooperative action possible.”

Cohen and Prusak 2001

“The last 20 years were about forging, sharpening

and distributing all the new tools to collaborate and connect. Now the real

information revolution is about to begin.”

Friedman 2005

Using social media to develop a professional online presence

The exponential growth of social media and ubiquitous use of mobile technology has changed the way we communicate both socially and for many also professionally. It is important to consider the implications and the impact of the digital footprint our online interactions leave behind. This workshop will help you to reflect on what your online presence looks like when viewed by others, consider who your audiences are and how you can develop your digital profile in a positive way.

Sue Beckingham | @suebecks