Tuesday, January 04, 2011

Day 254–Transition -Keeping my Network Informed

A segment of a social network

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This is the fifth part on the series on Networking.  In this post, I will share how I attempt to keep my network informed as to what is happening with me and where I need to the help of my network.

I have taken the track that I need to continually be adding Image representing Facebook as depicted in Cru...value for my network and then every once in a while focus on my situation.  There is a balancing act associated with this; otherwise, my network will stop paying attention.  It is hard to judge the affect my communications are having, though I do have a few concrete areas to watch.  Blogging has associated metrics on how many people visit the blog and how many pages a person looks at. Image representing LinkedIn as depicted in Cru... I can’t identify individual users by who they are, but I can see where they come from, how many pages our read, and some other information from which I can put together a bit of a profile of blog usefulness.   Blog comments also provide a window into what readers  are thinking, though I wished this was a more active form of feedback.   On Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Email, I can see the responses I get and use this as a gauge to the attention of my network,Image representing Twitter as depicted in Crun... though this is a very incomplete metric.  I also receive quite a bit of direct feedback from people that I see them in person concerning things that I have posted.

I have three ways to provide value to my network.  The first is in amplifying what I am hearing.  What have people in my network posted and how can I respond in ways that would help the network.  Sometimes this is through  “liking” something on Facebook to insure that people know that they are being listened to.  Another way is through Re-tweeting information from others on Twitter, so that their voice is amplified across my twitter network and my network receives extra value through the information sharing. 

The second way that I feel that I provide value is through scouring the internet for information that I feel is important and then to bring this information to the attention of people in my network.  These  are somewhat  unique in that they are what I consider important and interesting and are based on my own quirkiness of thought.

The third area that I feel I provide value is in the creation of material.  This is done here through blogging, on Facebook through thoughtful and hopefully helpful responses to people, on LinkedIn through group participation and in person through group participation.

In between and interwoven into these three types of value messages are the messages of my current situation and where I might be needing help.  I do this on all my networking platforms.  I also like to send direct messages to people, many times to just to say hello and to remain in contact.

I try to have a fairly constant presence, though I have not been as successful doing this within the LinkedIn groups as much as I would have hoped.  I have been working on narrowing my focus in this area to fewer groups with higher participation in hopes of better consistency in  message and presence.

I use several tools for gather information for redistribution.  Google reader has Image representing Google Reader as depicted i...been valuable for gathering, in one place,  news articles from the myriad of sources I deem important.  As time permits, I am able to use Google reader to quickly determine which articles I want to read completely in save because I think they are interesting.    Google reader allows me to follow news feeds and blogs.  I use another program called Read This Later to create a list from Goggle Reader that I can access in Firefox or Chrome at my convenience.  Each time I go into Google reader I am accessing 1000 possible articles for review.  Of these I send 50 to a 100 to Read It Later for additional review.  In additional to working with Google reader, Read It Later allows me to mark any information I find in my browser including links in email messages for later reading.

Another great tool for keeping up  with my network is called TweetDeck. Image representing TweetDeck as depicted in Cr... Within Twitter, I have created list of twitter resources that I pay attention to.  I mine this list for information to retweet on twitter or share through Facebook and LinkedIn.  TweetDeck allows me to access watch my twitter list in real time.  It also gives access to Facebook and LinkedIn at the same time, so in one place I can pay attention to information across most of my networks.  A great feature of TweetDeck to the ability to post on all these networks and to time delay the posting until a later date.  This allows me to maintain a network presence at time of the day when parts of my network at active and I am not, or at least I’m not paying attention to posting at that time.

Another great tool for paying attention to my network is GIST.  Image representing Gist as depicted in CrunchBaseThis tool gathers information about everyone in my network, including companies, that I am interested in following.  Depending on the information that you have about people in your network, you can see in one place all the Facebook, LinkedIn, and twitter messages that the person has sent in addition to the email correspondence between us.  This provides a higher level of, or maybe provides a greater continuity of message for each person in my network.  It gives you a look at what they have posted since the last time you accessed Gist.  This also allows me to reply to these various networking platforms from this single tool.  Another valuable use of GIST is that you can see what you have shared with your network, again all in one place.

So those are the tools and methods that I have been using to keep my network informed of my situation.

Here are some additional resources:

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Posted by Chris M Abbey at 12:06 PM
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