Making Work Flow

Let’s not forget, LinkedIn is a business focused networking site, so letting in all your tweets – all personal and business – will have the exact opposite effect you were hoping to achieve by using the site. And, by that, I mean it’d end up hurting the same business relationships you were hoping to nurture.

The appeal of LinkedIn is that other professionals can keep up to date on why you're remarkable in a professional context. I agree with this post that it's a mistake to water down that stream with anything else. You shouldn't be sending a firehose of all your updates, including personal and off-handed comments into LinkedIn. Another common mistake is hooking up a generic feed of company news to your LinkedIn profile. If your professional connections want updates about your company, they'll visit its website or subscribe to its blog. You'll stand out and be more interesting if your LinkedIn stream is focused on what you are doing professionally. Read the full post for tips for cleaning up your stream, like the use of filtered hashtags.

"Do you spend much time on Facebook?"

It was a standard question in our hiring process, but the job candidate visibly stiffened and said, "A bit, I guess. But not every day. And only after work. I mean, never at work. I mean, never on my work computer."

And that was a standard response. I let her off the hook. "I'm not asking because I'm worried about you wasting time," I said. "I'm asking because we like to hire people who enjoy using social media tools."

Alexandra Samuel shares some great starting points for developing the right attitude and educational effort around your organization's use of social media.