While many people tend to shy away from public speaking, I embrace and welcome the opportunity to exchange knowledge with others in a public forum. As such, I readily accepted an invitation to speak at the monthly meeting for the
Social Media Club of SWFL on the topic of
enterprise social media and human resources (HR).
In preparing for the presentation, I understood the audience make-up to consist of FGCU students and faculty, job seekers, business owners, SMC members and guests, and the general public. In anticipation of this, the presentation was prepared to address the most obvious questions or objections to using social media including: What is
Enterprise Social Media? Why Do I Need It? How Do I Use It?
With this in mind, I began the presentation by challenging those in the audience who were apprehensive about using social media to begin to dip their toes in the waters of technology. Their call to action was to allay their fears by first activating an account for their personal and/or professional use, followed by “lurking” around others’ conversations and then joining in the conversation, and/or contributing content.
Many of the people with whom I connected prior to the event had preconceived notions about the content or value of social networking applications and that Twitter, for example, was simply a means to broadcast what you were eating for lunch. We not only discussed the need for contributing content and adding value to the conversation but also the fact that you should continually review and evaluate the contributions of your followers and those you follow on Twitter.
After providing some answers to these questions and setting aside perceived myths, we delved right into an interactive discussion on the use of social networking tools and applications that are most prevalent in today’s workforce. Specifically, we focused on 3 tools that the audience could relate to and readily utilize:
1. Facebook
2. LinkedIn, and
3. Twitter
We touched on personal and corporate branding and the fact that a single account used for both purposes has the potential to minimize the overall impact of either or both. As such, it was recommended that users may wish to have an account for each of their personas – one for personal and the other for professional online interactions – in order to maintain individuality between the two.
Additionally, in attempting to focus on HR and address the needs of the employer and job seeker using social media, we reviewed the benefits and uses of LinkedIn. There was discussion surrounding how people are using this method. While there was a great deal of emphasis placed on the value of participating in and the overall power of networks throughout the presentation, it was further enforced through audience testimony of how some had recently used social media tools, (i.e. Twitter) to secure employment.
Finally, as a display of utilizing updated technology, I offered those with an iPhone to “bump” contacts with me through an iPhone application. Alternatively, through the hope of “going green” (but more importantly using Neighborhood America’s
enterprise social networking technology – especially its
mobile marketing application), I then offered up the ability to obtain my contact information via SMS text message (text “Lori” to 247365) in lieu of business cards. This was greatly applauded and widely appreciated by the audience – many of whom had text capabilities but not an iPhone.
