Internet today is undoubtedly the strongest medium to connect worldwide, explore new ventures, career possibilities and grow your industry expertise by participation. Definitely, every professional who has access to internet along with many available social platforms for connecting to peers, should be part of at least one professional networking site in today’s arena.
There are many platforms available for professional & business networking, some of them are listed below:
Yorz
Ecademy
Ryze
Xing
LinkedIn
The one I find most appropriate and has a balanced mix of professional & businesses is LinkedIn.
LinkedIn allows you to have your complete profile listed for others in the platform to know more about you.
The way it works is, members create their own niche groups and like minded professionals join and participate in the thread. Such discussions not only adds to your industry knowledge but also opens up your understanding on what and how professionals from various geography and background think about the topic.
You as a member can also create your own group, what is important is to get other members participate in the discussion.
Look for your past and present colleagues, sent them invite to add you in their network. This will be your first step to start growing your connections.
While participation, do not hesitate to put your point of view and request members you get inspired with to add you in their connections, allowing you to get real time updates on their activities in the platform.
Something that can strongly complement and lift your overall social media experience is to register yourself in twitter, start twitting and connect your linkedin account with your twitter account. It is less time consuming to tweet then to participate in various discussions. Such integration keeps your page updated regularly.
One thing that works strongly in the social media platform is regular participation and updates.
An icing in the cake would be to have your own personalized blog and also integrating your blog with your twitter and linkedin accounts.
Use your blog platform to share what you think, use twitter to write quick notes and use linkedin to learn from the industry by active reading and participation.
There is no end to what more can be done specifically in the social media space.
Based on the understanding, believe someone who is always open to share by blogging, tweets short notes and participate in industry discussion, will be building a strong presence and industry expertise with time.
Online space is ever changing, and what is great about this space is there is always scope to learn, know and share..
Cheers,
Pankaj J
