Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand.
Putt's Law
All this social networking is impressive..... There is uncanny ability to communicate in ways unheard of before, but what does that mean to your everyday life?
I think a core principle to remember is that everyone has different reasons and objectives for social networking in their life. There is no "best way" to do any of this, the trick is finding your stride and keeping on top of your priorities. That being said, it' helps to have some guidance. Below I've outlined my basic social networking / media use -- it works for me and maybe you'll get some value from it.
1. Decide your personal / professional balance.
I'll always say there is a great value to merging parts of your personal and professional life. But everyone knows there needs to be a separation point. It's important to decide what social networking mediums you'll use for each early on. Since the privacy settings on most social networking services are controllable, it's easy to filter out your private information.
I know a lot of people who use Facebook for personal use only. If that's your decision, you can either refuse all non-personal friend requests (not as offensive as it sounds, trust me) or set your account up so that all your status updates, activity, pictures, links, etc. can only be viewed by a specific group of people.
LinkedIn is purely professional, so that's a no-brainer. Twitter can be either, or both.
Here's my breakdown:
Twitter - I'm about 65% professional and 35% personal now
Facebook - around 20% professional and 80% personal
Myspace - never use, there are links to my Facebook and LinkedIn profiles the Myspace page
LinkedIn - 100% professional
2. Define your goals.
My goal for using social networking in my professional life is to share my experience, gain insight, and build a robust network of peers, clients and resources.
I share my experience through this blog, gain insight through following smart people on Twitter and build my network with all three of my core services. True, I also use Twitter to share my experience and help other security professionals, and use other blogs to learn from smart people - it's all interchangeable. My point is - it's easy to be caught up wasting time on things that are valuable on the surface, but distract you from what you should be doing. Defining your goals helps you build your daily methods of use in a way that's beneficial.
If you are a manufacturer or vendor, you can use these tools to keep your clients up to date with news and info that's useful to them. You can scan Twitter to find anyone talking about your product, and communicate with them first hand. For instance, I made a comment about a popular feed reader on twitter and one of the engineers replied, helping me fix a problem -- how's that for customer service!
Communicating with end users and consultants helps get the word out about your product or service (just to SELL all the time - people will ignore you). Give them value, and interact with them in ways that are beneficial to both.
If you are a consultant or practitioner, you can share valuable information with others and exchange dialogue on current topics. Having first hand access to manufacturers and users is a huge benefit when feeling out opinion, asking about experiences and forming your own opinion. Using these tools to build your network will definitely help broaden your resources and understanding.
If you are an end user, you can get real-time, first hand information on products, services and industry news. You can have a direct line to industry shakers and movers, discuss the topics that are real in your world.
3. Define your daily methods.
My wife may disagree, but for most accounts I think I balance my on-demand life well. It's easy to get zoned in on the blackberry when there is nothing else going on so it's important to develop ways to process all this information without letting it overtake you.
Twitter - When I'm at work, I have TweetDeck running on my laptop (I run two systems/three screens). It's segmented with columns for security people, local people, replies and direct messages. When I'm on hold, taking a break between tasks, eating a snack, etc.. I scroll through the posts to see what's up. I have Twitterberry on my phone and tend to scroll through tweets when I'm sitting in waiting rooms, stuck in traffic, or have a short amount of time with nothing pressing to do. The only alerts that I have routed to my phone (via SMS) are direct messages and specific RSS feeds made from hash tags I'm following closely.
When I post security related information, I try to keep it to interesting articles or breaking news- the kind of thing I'd find interesting or valuable if someone else posted it.
I use Twitpic a lot to post pictures I snap from my camera-phone. Most of these are either of my son, or interesting / funny things I see everyday.
Facebook - have the Facebook app installed on my blackberry and scroll through friends status messages in the same way as scroll through Twitter messages.
Since I use status messages for both professional and personal reasons, I use the Selective Twitter Status app to post to both when I want - by including "#fb" on the tweet.
I post mostly personal pics when I do, the kind that friends and family are interested in but am often surprised when a professional contact strikes up a conversation after seeing new pics.
I see Facebook as the great bridge between personal and professional life and a unique way to help enhance all my relationships.
LinkedIn - I set up my LinkedIn account in a way that would help define my professional career to people looking for information about me. I did list past employment positions, but not specific duties. You'll see many people set up their profiles just like an online resume. There is nothing wrong with that, but I just choose to keep it at the basics. If someone wants to know more about what I did in a job 15 years ago they can just ask me.
Media - I didn't get a chance to talk about the "media" part in the last segments, but I'll throw it in here for good measure. I use Picasa to share photos with both personal and professional contacts (setting up albums for specific reasons/groups) and Flickr for personal use. I use the entire Google online suite of apps for online sharing, collaboration and storage but that can be a series in itself.
To help keep up with everything,I use a lot of RSS feeds . Just about every social networking or media service provides RSS feeds, customized the way you want them. FriendFeed is the perfect social media aggregator that helps you keep up with all your friends' activities. You don't have to keep up with everyone all the time, but it's helpful to have something like FriendFeed set up with your contacts so you can use it when you want.
I recently made a FriendFeed group called Physical Security Online.
Maybe it's just me, but I believe that social networking should be an open format. You'd think that the security industry learned it's lesson with proprietary systems, but I see more and more industry specific social networks pop up. Using open services like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn help tie sister industries together and foster advancement and value for everyone. That doesn't happen with proprietary networks - and they make people have yet another service to stay on top of. There is nothing these closed networks can do that can't be done with the open ones. You can even have password protected groups (LinkedIn / Facebook), rooms (FriendFeed) and maintain control of the information that's public.
To me, these closed networks are either safe wading pools for people to start out in, or captive audiences for someone to cash-in on having a market segment use one service.
The Physical Security Online FriendFeed room is an open network aggragator. I run members' Twitter feeds into the group feed so there is one central RSS feed you can subscribe to and get all the groups updates. Members can post links of interest directly to the feed as well as comment on items posted by others. As an added bonus, the room is a directory of industry people and their social media accounts! You can read more about it here , and visit the room here. To join, just get your FriendFeed profile set up and add your services, than join the group.
I'll always say there is a great value to merging parts of your personal and professional life. But everyone knows there needs to be a separation point. It's important to decide what social networking mediums you'll use for each early on. Since the privacy settings on most social networking services are controllable, it's easy to filter out your private information.
I know a lot of people who use Facebook for personal use only. If that's your decision, you can either refuse all non-personal friend requests (not as offensive as it sounds, trust me) or set your account up so that all your status updates, activity, pictures, links, etc. can only be viewed by a specific group of people.
LinkedIn is purely professional, so that's a no-brainer. Twitter can be either, or both.
Here's my breakdown:
Twitter - I'm about 65% professional and 35% personal now
Facebook - around 20% professional and 80% personal
Myspace - never use, there are links to my Facebook and LinkedIn profiles the Myspace page
LinkedIn - 100% professional
2. Define your goals.
My goal for using social networking in my professional life is to share my experience, gain insight, and build a robust network of peers, clients and resources.
I share my experience through this blog, gain insight through following smart people on Twitter and build my network with all three of my core services. True, I also use Twitter to share my experience and help other security professionals, and use other blogs to learn from smart people - it's all interchangeable. My point is - it's easy to be caught up wasting time on things that are valuable on the surface, but distract you from what you should be doing. Defining your goals helps you build your daily methods of use in a way that's beneficial.
If you are a manufacturer or vendor, you can use these tools to keep your clients up to date with news and info that's useful to them. You can scan Twitter to find anyone talking about your product, and communicate with them first hand. For instance, I made a comment about a popular feed reader on twitter and one of the engineers replied, helping me fix a problem -- how's that for customer service!
Communicating with end users and consultants helps get the word out about your product or service (just to SELL all the time - people will ignore you). Give them value, and interact with them in ways that are beneficial to both.
If you are a consultant or practitioner, you can share valuable information with others and exchange dialogue on current topics. Having first hand access to manufacturers and users is a huge benefit when feeling out opinion, asking about experiences and forming your own opinion. Using these tools to build your network will definitely help broaden your resources and understanding.
If you are an end user, you can get real-time, first hand information on products, services and industry news. You can have a direct line to industry shakers and movers, discuss the topics that are real in your world.
3. Define your daily methods.
My wife may disagree, but for most accounts I think I balance my on-demand life well. It's easy to get zoned in on the blackberry when there is nothing else going on so it's important to develop ways to process all this information without letting it overtake you.
Twitter - When I'm at work, I have TweetDeck running on my laptop (I run two systems/three screens). It's segmented with columns for security people, local people, replies and direct messages. When I'm on hold, taking a break between tasks, eating a snack, etc.. I scroll through the posts to see what's up. I have Twitterberry on my phone and tend to scroll through tweets when I'm sitting in waiting rooms, stuck in traffic, or have a short amount of time with nothing pressing to do. The only alerts that I have routed to my phone (via SMS) are direct messages and specific RSS feeds made from hash tags I'm following closely.
When I post security related information, I try to keep it to interesting articles or breaking news- the kind of thing I'd find interesting or valuable if someone else posted it.
I use Twitpic a lot to post pictures I snap from my camera-phone. Most of these are either of my son, or interesting / funny things I see everyday.
Facebook - have the Facebook app installed on my blackberry and scroll through friends status messages in the same way as scroll through Twitter messages.
Since I use status messages for both professional and personal reasons, I use the Selective Twitter Status app to post to both when I want - by including "#fb" on the tweet.
I post mostly personal pics when I do, the kind that friends and family are interested in but am often surprised when a professional contact strikes up a conversation after seeing new pics.
I see Facebook as the great bridge between personal and professional life and a unique way to help enhance all my relationships.
LinkedIn - I set up my LinkedIn account in a way that would help define my professional career to people looking for information about me. I did list past employment positions, but not specific duties. You'll see many people set up their profiles just like an online resume. There is nothing wrong with that, but I just choose to keep it at the basics. If someone wants to know more about what I did in a job 15 years ago they can just ask me.
Media - I didn't get a chance to talk about the "media" part in the last segments, but I'll throw it in here for good measure. I use Picasa to share photos with both personal and professional contacts (setting up albums for specific reasons/groups) and Flickr for personal use. I use the entire Google online suite of apps for online sharing, collaboration and storage but that can be a series in itself.
I recently made a FriendFeed group called Physical Security Online.
Maybe it's just me, but I believe that social networking should be an open format. You'd think that the security industry learned it's lesson with proprietary systems, but I see more and more industry specific social networks pop up. Using open services like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn help tie sister industries together and foster advancement and value for everyone. That doesn't happen with proprietary networks - and they make people have yet another service to stay on top of. There is nothing these closed networks can do that can't be done with the open ones. You can even have password protected groups (LinkedIn / Facebook), rooms (FriendFeed) and maintain control of the information that's public.
To me, these closed networks are either safe wading pools for people to start out in, or captive audiences for someone to cash-in on having a market segment use one service.
The Physical Security Online FriendFeed room is an open network aggragator. I run members' Twitter feeds into the group feed so there is one central RSS feed you can subscribe to and get all the groups updates. Members can post links of interest directly to the feed as well as comment on items posted by others. As an added bonus, the room is a directory of industry people and their social media accounts! You can read more about it here , and visit the room here. To join, just get your FriendFeed profile set up and add your services, than join the group.
