How I use social media?

I was thinking about this for the past few months, how do I use or how should I use all the social “stuff” out there? As I thought about it, this is the picture that surfaced. It works for me, maybe it will work for you, maybe not. Maybe I’ll change some things in the future. I use the three main social sites: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter.

Facebook
Facebook is purely personal, I will not accept any professional invites. I only connect with family and friends. Sorry, I just don’t think someone who I met at a conference needs to see my family pictures.

LinkedIn
LinkedIn is of course a professional networking site. I will gladly accept invites to connect with people I met at conferences, trade shows, trainings and probably anyone else. Usually if I get a business card and I will look up that person on LinkedIn and send him or her an invite. I think it’s much better way to keep in touch than saving the business somewhere. I always connect to recruiters that are posting job ads, you just never know how they can help you in the future.

Twitter
My Twitter feed is open so anyone can follow me, professional contacts as well as friends. Probably 80% of what I post is work related and the other 20% are articles that I read and some other interesting stuff.

My blog
I also run a blog. If you are reading this than you probably know about it already. My blog is mostly work related. Occasionally I’ll post something on my travel or any other interesting stuff.

Posting
As you probably know, you can connect your LinkedIn account with your Twitter account. Once you do that, if you add #in or #li to any tweet, that tweet will also appear in your LinkedIn feed (it’s also possible for LinkedIn to read all your tweets, without using #in or #li). I usually forget to add #in. I started using a service called ping.fm which allows to post to multiple sites.

There are also micro-blogging sites such as Posterous and Tumblr. I still haven’t figured how to use them for either work or personal.

6 responses to “How I use social media?”

  1. Pranshu Avatar
    Pranshu

    Did you join these sites first and then figure out a use for them in your life, or did you feel like something was missing and then you found out that these sites serve that missing purpose?

    Reply
  2. joel hughes Avatar
    joel hughes

    Hi, great article.

    A quick note up Facebook.

    I think it is difficult to adopt the hardline you mention. I say this because IF you interact with a Fan Page etc then you do saw using your personal account.

    But, and this is good, you can segment your ‘friends’ into lists, control who sees what AND send different updates to diffierent segments – you can control all manner of settings which means that your “business” list CANNOT see your family photos.

    Hopefully this gives you something to consider as I think you may be misunderstand the ability of Facebook to deal with this issue.

    Please get in touch if you need any advice with this

    Joel

    Reply
  3. Debbie Hemley Avatar
    Debbie Hemley

    Max,

    Nice piece. Always good to hear how others are using their social media spaces and how they view them.

    I checked out Posterous too, but haven’t started using on a regular basis. For a personal blog I think it makes a great tool.

    I like what Joel says in his comment about Facebook.

    Debbie

    Reply
  4. max Avatar
    max

    @Pranshu: I first joined all the sites and then slowly figured out how to use them.

    Reply
  5. max Avatar
    max

    @joel: Thanks for the tip, I wasn’t aware such separation is possible. I will take a look at it. However, it’s more than just photos for me, it’s comments, status updates, etc. Instead of creating control lists, I can safely say anything I want without having to worry about it.

    Reply
  6. max Avatar
    max

    @Debbie: Posterous does make a great personal blog, you can even password protect it. The only issue I see right now is how to upload large video files. You won’t be able to email anything larger than 15-20 Mb. I found that you can do it from here: http://post.ly/ but it freezes every time I try to upload a large video.

    Reply

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