Using social networking at work

Networking is not only a way to increase productivity of a company as a whole, but also a way to advance your career. One way to do this is to engage in the work version of social networking.

When a company is small, it’s easy to know everyone and recognize them by face. When a company gets large enough, you can get to the point where most people you interact with you rarely or never see in person.

It’s important to know what everyone works on, but it’s also important to get to know people. If people know who you are, they will remember you when starting a new project. Higher ups in charge of the purse strings may remember you better around review time.

So, how might this work? In the absence of any framework for this, it could be simple as creating a page for yourself or perhaps a blog. Some things you might include:

• A simple bio explaining what you work on
• Some documentation that might be relevant to a wider audience
• A picture makes it more personal and helps when face-to-face is a rarity
• A picture makes it more personal and helps when face-to-face is a rarity

To promote your personal site, perhaps do a mass email or chat or include a link to it at the end of your emails. Link to documentation on your site when answering questions on a mailing list.

Eventually the company may want to create a directory of personal and team pages. Having your name and a brief description of what you work on can allow people to find members of a team and learn what they do. If you don’t know who works on what, how do you know who to contact?

Often companies have directories where team names don’t reflect what the team does. Perhaps the team name is Productivity Apps. What does that mean exactly? Even if you figure out what the team does, who are the people that work on an individual project?

Networking is a critical skill to have but you can’t network if you don’t know people and they don’t know you. This may help change that.

Also, see: Meet people in person!