Leveraging Social Media for Work

I am a believer in Social Media. I use our run of the mill sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn almost on daily basis. I get up with a device (smart phone)  in my hand to see the updates of the day and sometimes when I am trying to put my son to sleep I sneak in the updates with my smart phone at night too. Okay, I admit I check my social media updates every night before I go to bed.

In the early years of online community forums such groups communicated via email. Yahoo groups for instance was huge and still is being used worldwide for sending information on When is the next group meeting? What can we do at our next event? Things like this. Once you become part of the group you would start getting emails and you could choose to reply or just be a silent observer. A great tool but didn't feel real time and sometimes the discussion got lost in too many emails. As a training professional and an individual who is always interested in learning an email just didnt do it.

For the past year the idea of using Social media at work has garnered more strength. For companies like Google and Salesforce this is a given but in the semi conductor industry things were catching up. Some companies did better than others. These social sites were special. These social media or platforms were specially built or customized for companies. As companies want to make sure that employee comments and inputs are not seen by the world. They are only meant for internal eyes only. This also helps to foster trust and openness to create internal communities with similar likes or interests inside the company. These could be work related or could just be some fun activities. A platform for spreading ideas. Does this also help in learning?

I am currently using Salesforce Chatter to announce various training events at work.  This becomes a great way to get comments and feedback real time. For instance when a training is announced and if someone is traveling or for some reason cannot attend it they just reply to the post by saying 'Where can I find the reference material or the recording?' This way whatever our reply is to that person the entire teams has visibility. The communication messages and information become visible is to a larger audience. Plus it is there when you need it. The other advantage of using a medium like this is that is functions based on your behavior. If you are a person who is too busy to actually login to the platform to see what is latest you can set up email triggers to be sent in your inbox. This way when you come to work and read your emails you can also see what is going on in the Chatter (Social Media) space. It is also a great platform for sharing pictures and ongoing stories. We have global events and our teams add their pictures of the work events and notes to share with all. This truly has a community feel and fosters stronger work culture. Till now learning about the company and the work culture through Social media has been the best experience.

I am not signing off with this post but rather will continue to write about my experience using Social media for learning.