For our class on emerging social media trends, we’ve been asked to look into a few platforms that might be of use to us as digital media professionals. On the one hand, we may very well end up in a position to make recommendations to an organization about their social media strategy. On the other, the very least we can do is understand how to leverage social media to help us stay on top of industry trends, and build on our professional networks. This post focuses on the individual professional uses of a few social media sites. Note: I did skip over the obvious one, which is LinkedIn. Not because it's not also very useful, but because I thought the professional applications of the following three platforms were perhaps less obvious.
Twitter
Twitter began back in 2006 with the idea of sending group SMS messages. This Newsweek article from back in the day documents the early days of Twitter adoption, as well as early doubts about the platform's staying power. Seven years later, of course, Twitter is still one of the first innovations to come to mind when we think about social media's power.
Why use Twitter?
1. Ubiquity. According to Twitter's website, Twitter has 284 million active monthly users. 500 million Tweets are sent per day. Even people who don't use Twitter are likely to hear about Twitter trends, because media commentators frequently use it to assess and describe public opinion on current events, and Twitter activities often become news stories in their own right.
2. Ease of use. Twitter's brevity (the famous 140 characters or less) is part of its appeal - we scan our Twitter feed easily to find out what our followees find worthy of comment, without having to necessarily go into a lot of detail. As tweeters, we don't have to produce a lot of content, but we can say a few words and link to any articles, videos, websites and events we find interesting. We can also retweet the tweets of others if we think our followers would find them useful. It's a quick and easy way to stay in touch with - and contribute your ideas to - a variety of professional communities.
3. Great resource for getting questions answered, and for interacting with interesting people. As noted above, it's easy to participate in Twitter communities united by a common interest. It's also a relatively low-risk, low-commitment way of interacting with others. It makes it easy to casually ask questions, without interrupting anyone's day. It's also one of the easiest channels by which to approach people you don't personally know, and makes it easy for them to respond to you, a random stranger. Following someone you admire professionally and tweeting them a question or a comment can produce a meaningful interaction with a minimum of social awkwardness.
Further reading: "Twitter Best Practices: 11+ Tips for Tweeting Well" - for the Twitter noob. "12 Reasons You Absolutely Need to be on Twitter" - I would respectfully disagree that keeping tabs on celebrities is necessarily a reason you HAVE to be on Twitter - maybe it is. That's up to you. But the article gives you a great sense of the value Twitter provides to its users.
Quora
Remember how I mentioned that Twitter could be a useful way to get answers to questions? Well, Quora took that idea and ran with it. It's a social site that specializes in Q&A - users can post questions, answer them, and upvote the answers they think are most valuable. It's a smaller community than Twitter, though official numbers don't seem to be available. (Quora users' attempt to answer this question back in 2013 seem to have gone nowhere, and the question hasn't been asked on Quora since.)
Why use Quora?
1. Opportunities to learn. While Twitter offers a broad overview of your community's interests and concerns, Quora allows people to answer questions in more depth, and popular answers typically resemble actual blog posts (as opposed to Twitter's "microblogging") in their level of detail. For example, check out answers to the question "How can you use Quora professionally." While you can - and probably do - follow blogs in your professional areas of interest, following topics on Quora can lead you to thoughtful commentators you may not have been familiar with. And if you know of someone on Quora whose answer you would particularly like to hear, there's a mechanism for pinging specific users and soliciting their thoughts.
2. Opportunities to be an expert. Working in the digital industry, we're expected to be knowledgeable and aware of new ideas and trends. This means a lot of listening and learning, but also being seen to be listening and learning. Which means participating and contributing. On Quora you can ask thoughtful questions and, when possible, offer valuable answers. If your contributions are useful, it can only help your reputation in professional circles. Quora may be more time-consuming than Twitter in this respect, but it allows for a more in-depth exploration of ideas. This also relates to the learning benefit, because you'll learn more as you write more detailed, reflective responses.
3. Discovering new people based on shared professional interests. Okay, I mentioned earlier that it's pretty easy to interact with people who don't know you on Twitter too - you have "followers" on Twitter as opposed to "friends" on Facebook, so it's easier to incorporate people with whom you have no prior relationship. But Twitter still stresses your network, ie. the people that you have chosen to follow. Quora's feeds focus on topics, and are not as closely oriented to your existing network as other social sites. You can stumble upon people you've never heard of, yet have great insights (or, potentially, you yourself can be stumbled upon by others). Beth Kanter's blog post on what sets Quora apart from other social networking sites does a great job of elaborating on the element of serendipity inherent in Quora, and its value for professional learning and sharing. The platform's mechanisms also do a great job of floating quality contributions to the top of your feed based on user upvotes, which makes it a great way to discover new people with interesting and useful ideas.
Instagram
Twitter and Quora both tend to be about text, though many people also share photos and videos via Twitter. Instagram, however, is ALL about the visuals. For me, it was less immediately obvious how Instagram could make a positive impact on an individual's professional online presence. Businesses using Instagram are often encouraged to highlight their brand identity and personality through behind-the-scenes photos. My behind-the-scenes photos, as it were, are on Facebook, and probably not of great interest to many of my professional contacts. It only took a little poking around, however, to find out how individuals are able to use Instagram as a great professional tool, even if visual design isn't their focus.
Why use Instagram?
1.Visual communication - don't underestimate it. I refuse to use the old cliche about how many words a picture is worth, but still...images can communicate a lot. Especially in our industry, where creative types are used to communicating information and telling stories with a wide variety of tools. Check out this example:
I first found this photo when browsing Instagram under the #ux hashtag (a Google Images search turned up this Tweet). Other users shared UI elements they admire, infographics and poster slogans, photos that express what they're working on, and of course their own creations and business logos.
2. Even easier to browse content on Instagram than on Twitter. I mentioned above that an advantage of Twitter was its ease of use - because they're so short, it only takes a moment to catch up on the latest tweets. This is especially true of Instagram. Users don't even have to process text - just a sheet of tiled thumbnails. With a tap, they can enlarge anything that catches their eye, and read the caption and tags.
3. Almost as ubiquitous as Twitter, and also lends itself to cross-platform sharing. The total number of monthly Istagram users is fast catching up to Twitter: upwards of 200 million now according to the Instagram blog. But if for some reason you're concerned that your professional network isn't on Instagram in large numbers, you can set up your account to simultaneously share images to Facebook (which owns Instagram) and to Twitter (though currently not on Android it seems - see Instagram's Help Centre for details).
