Making the Most of Social Networks

Social networking sites are a great way to nurture your professional network. For business professionals, the most popular are Facebook and LinkedIn. These tools greatly facilitate your ability to meet people, exchange information on a consistent basis, build relationships and position yourself as an industry expert.

Getting started is easy. On Facebook, you simply fill out a profile and upload a picture. LinkedIn is similar in that you fill out a profile and upload a photo, but because it is mostly business oriented, users typically include a synopsis of their resume.

Facebook is largely used as a way to notify a group of people about something you want to promote. Users do this by creating postings, uploading photos and sharing links and videos. With over 200 million members worldwide, Facebook truly is a global market. And it’s not just people who have profiles and networks. Places, products, companies, services, stores, restaurants, etc., also have profiles and networks. For example, Starbucks Coffee Company has a profile and a network with 3,385,090 fans; Lamborghini has 807,270 fans.

LinkedIn is an interconnected network of experienced professionals from around the world, representing 170 industries and 200 countries. You can find, be introduced to, and collaborate with professionals who you need to work with to accomplish your goals. LinkedIn also has some proprietary business tools. Polls is a market research tool that allows you to collect data from your connections on LinkedIn. Results to your research questions can be broken down by company size, job function, age and gender.

The easiest way to extend your professional network is to establish or join a network based on your business or industry category. Also, both Facebook and LinkedIn allow users to upload contacts from Outlook automatically, as well as contacts from web mail accounts such as Hotmail and Gmail. Users can immediately identify which friends and associates are members of the network.

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