Check Facebook. Update Status. Like. Check Twitter. RT. Check Blackberry. BBM. Check NYTimes.com. Check WSJ.com. Shake Head (or smile). Check Email. Reply. Check Blog Feed Reader. Post Comment.
This is a daily digital routine that may not be a far cry from your own. Sit back for one moment and ask yourself: What do I do every day that involves checking something online?
A large part of our daily lives have gone digital. Times Magazine author, Lev Grossman, observed this in an interview with Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher for The Social Network, when the movie was coming out. He wrote, “Doing things on Facebook, friending people, checking your news feed — these are so much a part of our daily routines now.” (Click here for the interview.)
I read that article and knew he was right. Frankly, it’s becoming hard to disagree. I have a daily digital routine, so do the majority of people I know. This is a shift in society that the film drew attention to – not just Facebook, but how we’ve gone digital. The question becomes, for a career services professional like myself, how can you move your daily digital routine in a direction that will help your career? That is, if you are not already.
This might seem overwhelming at first. You may think, “I already have so much to do, how can I add checking and interacting on LinkedIn to my routine?” The answer is – do what works best for you. There are so many platforms online today that you can leverage to build your network and help develop your career. You just have to do some research to identify those platforms and see if they could benefit your professional development. LinkedIn is not for everyone. Twitter isn’t for everyone. Facebook isn’t for everyone. But, are the companies you want to work for on there? Is a leader in your field on there? If so, then think about when and how you can incorporate those platforms into your daily digital routine.
For example, every Sunday will be professional digital day. Write a blog post. Check LinkedIn. Make a comment (or not). Check the company’s Facebook page.
These are tools to help you and you have control over them. You determine how frequently you log-on and what information you provide. Try incorporating more career building into your daily digital routine. If you don’t like it or it’s not worth it – then stop.
For resources to get started with platforms, go to our homepage http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/ and select the icons on the right for Vimeo, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.
Now this is advice I’ve never heard before, but it actually does make a lot of sense. If we put as much effort into building our professional presence online as we do into Twitter and Facebook we’d probably benefit ourselves quite a bit.
In the end, we are all being groomed as trained monkeys. The lead in song from the TV show Weeds I think said it best… its called “Little Boxes”.
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same,
Theres a pink one & a green one
And a blue one & a yellow one
And they are all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.
And the people in the houses
All went to the university
Where they were put in boxes
And they came out all the same
And theres doctors & lawyers
And business executives
And they are all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.
Happy Surfing / Stalking / Digitizing!
Well, it is true that online media has made its own presence. As said everything is getting digital and it is true that we need to put the best effort to get our online presence.
Even I am just amazed to even see the writing community getting online and working together. You know there are web portals making writers come together and exchange their views and comments on each other writing?
So you can imagine how online presence is changing our lives.
That’s a good way to do it in my opinion!
LinkedIn should be part of your daily review and commenting. You can find influential people for most large companies on linkedIn. You can then cross reference these people with groups they belong to. So if you think that someday you would like to work for x and the Director of X is active member of group x on LinkedIn. You then become an active member in that group, commenting regularly. After a while you may connect through the group or if you ever apply for a job at x you have a contact to connect with.
A daily social media workout doesn’t need much introduction as it speaks for itself. Establish a daily Twitter and Facebook routine, which is essential to successful social media management.
One thing that I think was not mentioned is to reduce the time you spend on instantly reacting to email. Instead make it a purposeful event that you read email every few hours and not have it set so that you are interrupted every 10 minutes by a new email coming in that leads to a crisis to deal with. If you structure email (at least for me it’s the biggest timesink during the day) then you gain a lot more time to work and/or to stay connected on purposeful platforms like the ones mentioned. Just a thought…
As NJ SEO mentioned, LinkedIn should be a daily task if you are in the professional world.