Denton County Living Well Magazine Spring 2015 | Page 28

Social Media is no Longer About
Just Keeping up With Friends and Family:

It’s About Your Job

H

ave you looked at your friends who are active social media users and thought that they are wasting their time on a silly, frivolous hobby? Perhaps
they are wiser than you think.

By participating in social media such as Facebook or Twitter,
they are preparing themselves for the changing work world.
Businesses are beginning to adopt the social networking model
in the workplace to permit employees to collaborate in new and
more efficient ways.
What can you do to prepare for this rapidly changing
workplace? For one, practice using social networks. If you
lack the ability to use social networks to connect with others, share and obtain information, and communicate your
intentions and ideas, you will be obsolete in the coming
work world. Experts identifying future work skills recently
concluded that: “Connective technologies [like social media] make it easier than ever to work, share ideas and be
productive despite physical separation.”

Since social networking will be the model for business networking, to be proficient, you should be an active participant and in this way you can train yourself. It is important to
have good technological tools; that is, a fast and stable Internet connection and a mobile device (tablet or smartphone).

By Richard Lieberman

conveying. If you write a sentence that seems terse and
severe, learn how to soften it. In social networking, people
learn how to say more with less. In the business, you may
have also noticed how some of your colleagues at work
come across as dynamic in email communications, while
others convey no sense of their personality. Practice fully
expressing your personality as well as conveying clear information in the short social media formats.
People now use numerous social media platforms to present ideas. For example, a person’s tweet about breakfast
may contain a link to his YouTube video demonstrating how
to cook the perfect omelet, as well as another link to her
cooking blog containing his favorite recipes. This is a window into what will soon happen in the business world as
employees use the most effective social media platform to
express themselves.
Y