Welcome to the inaugural post of my blog: Professionally Speaking. This blog will cover issues and ideas relating to business communication. I plan to write about many topics relating to this subject: skills needed, techniques to use, principles to follow, and others. For this first post I’d like to talk about (appropriately enough) using social media to grow your career. The inspiration for this post comes from a New York Times guide that can be found at the following link: https://www.nytimes.com/guides/business/social-media-for-career-and-business.
The use of social media has grown to the point that it is currently being used by a large percentage of businesses. The use of social media is not limited to public social media networks like Facebook and LinkedIn; it’s also become common for large corporations to host their own internal social networks. For instance in the book “Business Communication Essentials,” the authors mention the Unity Network created by Lockheed Martin. It uses social media apps to help disseminate knowledge held by more experienced employees in a manner that younger employees are accustomed to. Whether you are using an internal network or public sites, the points made in the guide linked above will help you to craft your social media presence.
The guide starts by discussing some reasons to use social media, and includes some warnings about misusing social media. The reasons for using social media mostly boil down to increased exposure, both to people and ideas. After discussing the reasons for using social media the author discusses five of the most influential social media platforms ( LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat ). The author then speaks about how each platform works for different aspects of business: networking, expanding business, and job hunting. All in all this is an excellent reference for getting started with social media as a professional.
Professionally Speaking 