For a long time, my engagement with social media has not been organized. But now, much as we go through our holiday card lists, I'm looking at how I can use social media to connect and reconnect with everyone I know.

The Big Three
Social media and networking encompasses so many sites that it is overwhelming to keep track of them all. But there are really only three that are broadly adopted and serve specific purposes relevant to me: Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

What are these sites?
Facebook grew out of the concept of the freshman picture book. It puts a photo with the name of a "friend" where "friend" is a relatively loose term that I define as anyone I care to know what they are doing and who might feel the same about me. Facebook friends don't need to be people you could call to bail you out of jail or watch your kids while you go to the emergency room.

Twitter is like passive instant messaging. You "follow" people you are interested in. Everyone posts updates in 140-character bursts (the limit is to allow posting via text messaging from cellphones where the message is limited to 140 characters). When you log in to the twitter web site, you see all the updates from all the people you are following. "Follow" in this context is very light...it doesn't mean you follow like you follow a leader. It's more like I continue to "follow" the Oakland Raiders and hope someday they win a game.

LinkedIn has been around the longest and is the most professionally-oriented site. It's like an online rolodex, an address book of connections--people I know personally. I may not have worked with them, but I know them enough that I would feel comfortable connecting them with other people. There is a basic level of trust required for connections.

I believe these three sites are the key ones anyone needs. MySpace...I don't know. My Mom joined myspace and so I joined too, but I feel like it is more about creating your own personal web page--which I do through my blog. So I don't maintain myspace. There are tons more sites, but they are generally for the super-social media fanatics.

Why Bother?
I spend so much time in the social media space that I think many of the folks there just don't get that 99% of the population still doesn't "get it" or see the point. So here's why I bother--or at least why I think these services are worth my participation.

Facebook is great because every time someone updates any information about themselves, that update is visible to all their friends when they log in. It's like an on-demand Christmas Letter. If you don't log in, you don't need to care. But if you do log in, you can see what people are doing. You see photos they are posting, links to interesting websites they are sharing, and groups they are joining. You also see lots of "application activity" which manifests itself in weird status updates like "Joe just bit you and turned you into a zombie." Whatever. I ignore that stuff. Or maybe it is interesting to me. "Diana took the favorite movie quiz--see how you compare." The point is that you can keep up with what people are doing without being intrusive. It is fun to see what people are doing and may prompt you to renew old friendships.

I've also written about facebook in the context of how it can be used to build community. When we started attending the Dedham Unitarian First Church last year, I started a facebook group for them and continue to follow what people are up to, even though we have now started attending First Parish, United Church of Christ, here in Westwood.

Twitter is immediate. It is accessible. Like Facebook, it allows you to follow what other people are doing, but the 140-character limit forces people to be really concise. The magic of twitter is how quickly communications can spread through a network of connections. When anyone I am following replies to something someone they are following says, I see that other person's name in the feed like "@daveatkins." That might prompt me to go look at their profile and follow them. A conversation can begin and quickly create a network effect.

Twitter is not just about status updates like "I'm thinking of having a beer." The people with thousands of followers use it to push out interesting bits of news and information or to comment on current events. You can ask a question of the "twitosphere" and sometimes a person will answer you:

question for cyclists: what style do you call those handlebars on fixed gear bikes...short bars that go out and forward...not drops, not mtb 6:52 PM Nov 19th from web

AlanLamb @daveatkins time trial (TT) bars also known as bullhorns. 6:56 PM Nov 19th from twitterrific in reply to daveatkins

The real fun of twitter is the accessibility. It is like instant messaging in that you can fire off direct messages and replies to other people. If you are intelligent, genuine, and honest, you will likely engage them in a conversation. I've met people on twitter and cultivated working relationships in the real world. It can be like a cocktail party where your ideas and passion--forcibly limited to 140 characters of text--allow you to connect and communicate.

LinkedIn, at its most basic level, allows you to post a form of your resume online. But that is only the beginning. Much like facebook, you connect with other people you know and perhaps write recommendations for one another. You can see who your contacts know and ask them to introduce you. For example, if you are interested in working for a particular company you may search to see who you can find that works there and is connected to people you already know. At a bare minimum, you can see their public profiles which may reveal connections you were not aware of, similar interests and backgrounds, etc. I was just searching on a company and found that someone I worked with is directly connected to the VP of Engineering...so I shot her a quick email.

There is a great book and website, I'm on LinkedIn, Now What? that is full of ideas on how to better utilize this service.

Putting it All Together
Networking is HARD for me. For years and year, I KNEW that I needed to do a better job of networking, but I was always turned off by it. The idea of an "informational interview" seemed so stilted and uncomfortable for me. It felt like using people. Once I had a job, I was really focused on that job and that company and I didn't really have much of a life outside of the two separate spheres of job and family.

Now partly, I have changed. But I also think the social media tools we have today make a huge difference in our ability to maintain casual relationships and develop new ones. It is not about substituting digital relationships for real ones--it is about the ease with which we can stay connected to our real relationships with people and start new ones.

There are many, many cups of coffee in my future with so many great people to meet and talk with! No awkward phone calls and attempts to cold-call into companies, get around the gatekeepers, then spew a quick elevator pitch to arrange an inconvenient interview where you pretend like you are not just looking for a job. My life is out there...on this site, on my LinkedIn profile, and in the public timeline of my twitter ramblings. We are all so much more transparent now that genuineness and authenticity can be a way of life, not something we turn on during the job hunt.

My social media strategy is simply to make as many people in the world aware of who I am and what I can do. It's fun--as much fun as possible for a confirmed INTJ personality type like me--to be "out there" like this dedicated to the challenge of meeting people and stretching myself. I feel like I gain something with every person I meet and every old acquaintance I reconnect with--even if they have no connection to any job I might ever want. But of course the reality is ultimately practical and urgent...to land a position or launch my consulting business and cover the health care and mortgage. But I feel I have awakened an optimism and extroversion I did not know I was capable of and hope I will look back on this challenge as a great "kick in the pants" to take myself to the next level...