I do not think that Twitter is useful for networking in the traditional sense. Twitter’s character limit makes it hard to hold conversations with people. However it is useful to demonstrate your knowledge of a topic. I use twitter to keep up with the world. It is helpful to follow relevant organizations, such as planned parenthood or the UN. I can retweet their tweets. If someone else shares content I shared I know it is popular. Schawbel agrees that Twitter should not be used in isolation (2009). The chapter by Deckers and Lacy encourages networkers to share news stories with the contacts they build (2011). Twitter is one way to reach many people at once to do this. Also, Twitter is a great way to keep up with what organizations are currently bragging out.
Linkedin is the most obvious choice to use for professional branding. The first step for success on Linkedin is to fill in your profile with your full employment history. I have been contacted because of my profile for sales jobs. It is helpful to join relevant groups on Linkedin. This gives you the opportunity to network with people in your field of interest. I am in such groups but not participate enough. It is also encouraged to connect to places you would be interested in working. Some employers post their job opportunities directly on linkedin and you can receive an email when the are put up.
I do not advocate using Facebook for professional branding if you do not need to. In my line of work it is no longer necessary. I believe that everyone should have somewhere to be themselves. Having to be fake, putting up a veneer, or representing your brand always has a bit of fakeness, takes a toll on personal relationships. Thus it is good to maintain a place to be your authentic, unedited self. This presents a different problem then for maintaining your brand, keeping out of the public eye. It is so important to keep up to date on Facebook’s changes of their privacy policy. You do not want information to be shared accidently. Sometimes I participate in contests that require me to post publicly on Facebook so that a page can see it. After I post publicly, I have to change my posting settings back to friends only. I try to delete my public post after the contest is over. Pictures shared by others are another area of concern. You should always check what the sharing settings are of photos you are tagged in. Obvious things that should be removed are anything public of you drinking, doing drugs, mostly naked or being racist. “A third (34%) of employers who scan social media profiles said they have found content that has caused them not to hire the candidate” (Smith, 2014).
Even websites that are not traditional social networking sites have features that enable their use for job networking. For example Indeed and Monster both allow individuals to post their resumes so that recruiters can contact them. This is a form of networking. Another social network that is specific to job hunting is idealist.org. They focus on non-profit jobs. They have profiles of over 100,000 organizations. I have a profile on this site but I need to update my profile.
The type of jobs individuals are applying for should influence their level of use of online networking opportunities. For example if your brand is that of a creative, marketing type you should be using more online networks than a scientist. If you are a media type then you should be using Pinterest and Tumblr. I do not think that these are important for the average brand because this is more for fun than work. Pinterest could host your resume in a creative format but it is better to have a webpage. Tumblr is full of photos mostly but some major organizations have profiles that they maintain such as Planned Parenthood. Both sites are used to share infographs, which are pretty ways of displaying data. It makes sense for major brands to be interspersed with personal posts. They want to be relevant in people’s lives so they present their brand everywhere. Serious media networkers want the same thing. They want hiring managers to be seeing their brand everywhere so they can not forget it.
In summary, online networking is only a piece of the networking professionals should be participating in. Linkedin and Twitter are two sites that all people working on building their brand should be using. Most everything else should be saved for fun, non-networking purposes.
References
Deckers, E., & Lacy, K. (2011). Branding yourself: How to use social media to invent or reinvent yourself. Indianapolis, IN: Que Pub.
Schawbel, D. (2009, February 24). Top 10 social sites for finding a job. Retrieved from http://mashable.com/2009/02/24/top-10-social-sites-for-finding-a-job/
Smith, J. (2014, April 16). How social media can help (or hurt) you in your job search. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacquelynsmith/2013/04/16/how-social-media-can-help-or-hurt-your-job-search/
Top 15 most popular social networking sites. (2014, December). Retrieved from http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/social-networking-websites
