A Must Read for Using Social Media (In Your Job, At the Office)

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you've likely noticed that I've written only sporadically for the past few months. I've spent most of my time off-line, talking to people, swapping ideas, and writing, writing, writing while collaborating vigorously with two great colleagues, Deb Dib (@ceocoach) and Susan Britton Whitcomb (@susanwhitcomb) and heaps of other collaborators and co-conspirators. You'll learn exactly what we've been up to in March when JIST Publications publishes theTwitter Job Search Guide, but I'll also be sharing some information about what I learned along the way in the interim. And to that end, here is one of my biggest take-aways from attending Jeff Pulver's Los Angeles 140 conference on Twitter's impact and potential.

Kodak is doing amazing things with social media. You may think that traditional film has gone the way of the typewriter, but Kodak is showing no signs of obsolescence that I can see. (I won a Kodak Z18 video camera at the 140 conference which I love.) they are paving the way for innovations in communications--and while they are at it, they are sharing their own best practices.

For a great overall summary of social media platforms and trends, check out Kodak's free Social Media Tips Guide.

In addition to providing a broad overview of social media platforms, user demographics, and tips for getting started, Kodak shares their own employee-developed social media policies. These policies are a great go-to guide for both employers and employees--and a list of best practices that you can use if you haven't been given any guidelines for social media etiquette.

My co-authors and I liked them so much that we asked for--and received permission to--republish them in our upcoming book. But you can look at them here!

Kudos and Thank You, Kodak!

Learning Professionalism in a Creative Workplace

Several weeks ago, a University of North Carolina senior asked me a question, "How can I find a job as a strategic creative?" My answer: She's already positioning herself to do just that with smart use of LinkedIn, Twitter, and careful social networking. I'm not worried about her job search; she's doing great already.

That being said, I think job search fever can sometimes lessen the attention given to an even more important part of the process--that of keeping and thriving in a job once it is yours! To that end, I asked my friend Rennie Mapp, a seasoned writer and veteran of creative workplaces to share her thoughts on learning professionalism. Here is Rennie's story--and advice:

My first job after college was as a jack-of-all-trades newspaper reporter for a small-town paper that came out twice a week. I loved my varied set of responsibilities, from covering hard local news to writing personality profiles to taking photographs. Some aspects of the job did surprise me, however, because unstructured but creative behaviors that had worked well for me in college simply didn’t fly in this creative but more structured environment.

Fortunately, I had a good boss who appreciated my writing skills and curious mind. He was quite patient in helping me develop the small habits that really add up as a foundation for any kind of creative, self-starting profession.

So here are four professional behaviors that I was surprised to learn when I started my first job:

1. Look at your calendar the instant you sit down at your desk. Creative, motivated people often already know what interesting work they need to do on a given day, and they are excited to start it when they arrive at work. It’s often the annoying little responsibilities that slip their minds. If you look at your calendar before you start any project, you can plan to handle the little responsibilities in a way that doesn’t interfere with your enthusiasm for your more interesting labors.

2. Hit your keyboard by nine am. Planning your responsibilities (see #1) is important, but thoughtful people can spend a lot of time planning their work. It really helps to have a hard-and-fast time when you actually start. My boss gave me this rule, and I can still see him “just happening” to walk by my desk at 9:03 to make sure he could hear me typing. (This rule is based on arriving at the office at 8:30—you can adjust it according to your own office arrival time.)

3. Don’t use your computer at work for anything that you wouldn’t want your boss to see. This rule includes private email accounts as well as work accounts: many companies now have software that can snoop on any screen you have open, and they search for keywords that indicate improper use of company resources. But even in the days before sophisticated snooping, I managed to offend my copy editor by making fun of her in a private email to my boyfriend. He and I were rather full of ourselves as clever satirists, and my witty comments were about her pedestrian attitude and lack of insight. She just “happened” to find it (on MY computer) and then, once she had the evidence that I was using my computer for personal messages, my boss felt he had to support her. It was embarrassing but instructive. It’s easy to feel superior with talent and a fresh degree, but it was really inappropriate to crow about her failings, especially on my work computer.

4. If you want to develop a professional relationship outside of the office, couch your overture in a professional way. Here’s another embarrassing story: I met a guy whose work interested me, and I asked him if he’d like to have lunch some time. He was married, and in our small-town atmosphere he got the idea that I was hitting on him. I had thrived in the relaxed intellectual atmosphere of a large public university, and in my dull little town I was craving interesting conversation. I would have been better served if I had been specific in my interest in his work when I asked him to meet with me, and had mentioned someone else whom I wanted to include as well. I’m not suggesting that you can’t make personal friends out of professional contacts, but that your initial interactions need to be clearly understood as happening within professional boundaries.

I loved that job. I still miss the heady days of dashing around from murder trials to interviews with scientists, firefighters or any odd little old lady that my editor thought might interest me. It was also an important step in the process of my professionalization as a creative, thoughtful writer and teacher. Most of my work experiences since then have been in environments with less top-down structure, such as in college classrooms and at my own desk as a scholar and free-lance writer. I am grateful that I worked in a creative but structured atmosphere in my first year out of college, because I was able to internalize structures and habits that have been as important to me since then as they were when I was 22.

Rennie Custis Mapp, PhD, has taught English literature at the University of Virginia, Princeton University, the University of South Carolina, and Dickinson College. She writes and blogs on taste, aesthetics, ethics, literature, and food. You can find her on Twitter (RennieM).

From the Round Table to the Tweet?

In college, I was an English major, a "worthy procrastinator," and avoided coffee like the plague. These three characteristics led me to stay up well past my bedtime working on almost due papers. I'd stare at my screen bleary eyed and make desperate attempts to draw parallels between two (often disparate) or three characters or events. The results were mostly good (with the exception of a disastrous paper in which I tried to compare the AIDS virus to a sports metaphor without appropriate knowledge of either); the tendency to seek connections between old and new became ingrained.

I still seek to compare and connect much of what I see with what I've read about or observed before.

Last week, I attended the New York "Twestival," a charity event and gathering of Twitter users and an off-off Broadway play. While I have no paper deadline in sight, I still couldn't help but see a potential connection worthy of public debate:

Is Twitter the millennial equivalent of the Algonquin Round Table?

As you may know, back in the 1920's, a group of writers, actors, critics and wits met daily for quips, lunch, and back stabs at a round table in Manhattan's Algonquin Hotel. Regular attendees included Dorothy Parker, New Yorker founder Harold Ross, and Robert Benchley. Many of the members wrote about their adventures in newspaper columns published across the country, and they became famous for their insights.

As I gazed upon the hundreds of "Twitterati" at the Twestival, I couldn't help but wonder if we're on the cusp of a new kind of Round Table: people are rapidly becoming "micro-famous" for real-time, sometimes insightful, often thought-provoking messages of 140 characters or less. Will this, in the future, have the same type of lasting legacy as the Round Table that brought us the New Yorker and oft quoted Dorothy Parker gems such as "Men never make passes at girls who wear glasses?"

If you are participating in this brave new Web 2.0 world, how you choose to share your knowledge is entirely up to you. Do you see your status updates on Twitter or Facebook as the equivalent of writing a newspaper article?  Should you guard your privacy and hold your tongue? We'll cover these and other issues in upcoming posts.

I think some caution is warranted: Who hasn't heard of the employer that made a decision to axe a prospective or current employee based on what was found online? But I'd love to hear your perspective--especially as it relates to Facebook's recent change in membership agreements. Facebook now has the right to "freely use anything people add to the website even after members delete material or close accounts."

Will you keep your fingers quiet, be your own censor, or rush head-first into this brave new world?

I'm on the edge of my seat.

Send (or Techtiquette Part II)

I don't love writing posts on "what you must do" topics. I hate to feel like I'm on a soapbox. And sometimes I wish I could get over my insistence on why spelling remains in style. But I think this is really important, and if you do this well--you can stand out.

If you're like me, you think nothing of sending 30-50 e-mails a day. You've probably cracked jokes about your ability to send e-mail in your sleep.

Don't. Or at least not until you read this gem: Send: Why People E-Mail So Badly & How to Do It Better

Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence (ever heard of "marshmellow experiment" for assessing smarts?) describes this gem by David Shipley & Will Schwalbe as the Elements of Style for the digital age.

Ever witnessed a career gone bad as the result of a simple e-mail? I can still remember a senior-level executive wandering down the hall at work asking "how do I take the 'reply all?' command back?" And the college senior who was so hurt by not getting invited to an interview that he wrote the recruiter to say that it was "their loss." (As it turned out, he suffered a bigger one: the company forwarded his message to a network of other recruiters--and he was shut out of campus interviews he'd worked towards for years.)

But beyond the negatives, Send provides invaluable tips on e-mail etiquette: how to title your messages, how to make the best use of a CC or a blind CC, and how to ensure that they will be read.

If you don't have time to buy the book, check out NetM@anners.com and have a look at their e-mail Etiquette 101 tips...and stay tuned. Coming soon: When to send an e-mail, and when to pick up the phone or seek out face time--advice from a Google Exec.

To your success,
Chandlee