I did a presentation for Suffolk University tonight about the use of social media for brand building that can impact your career and/or business. It was very interesting to listen to the questions folks asked and the comments made to me in private. Here is a sample:
- is a blog the right thing for me?
- how can I get any value out of LinkedIn?
- what do you do about sharing info that would show your hand that you are looking for a job?
- can you hire someone to do this work for me?
- how do you get all these services to work together?
There were quite a few others but they are in the same vein. The questions show me that there still remains this fear about social media and an extreme lack of knowledge about how these services work. The biggest thing I noticed was that no matter where the attendees were in their career -- grad student to 30 year veteran --all face similar fears and concerns, all of which circle around an unknown factor.
The great thing about social media is that it's ok to test, fail and learn. There is no right way to use any of these services. They can be leverged for different types of professions and utilized for all types of personals and professional brand.
The underlying theme however, is the unknown. Unlike folks like myself, this social media stuff is still the wild west. Embracing the unknown is a hard thing to do.
What prevents you from leveraging social media for you brand?