Thing 12 – Putting the social into social media
Using the #cpd23 blog posts for Thing 12 which come up first in a Google search as my ‘background reading’, here are my thoughts on the use of social media to build professional communities.
I love social networks. I love people but sadly as I’ve grown older and left student land to enter the real grown up world opportunities to meet new people have become less frequent. Social networks are my solution to this as they offer opportunity to find new people and interact with them. I chose to do this in a professional capacity. Ever since I started my library career I have used Twitter as a way to communicate with others in the profession. Thanks to social networking I’ve been able to develop my knowledge and awareness of the profession much more than I would have been able to without Twitter.
Other #cpd23 bloggers LOVE social networks too.
In the personal sphere social networking means we keep in touch less, or put less effort in to keeping in touch Facebook spoonfeeds us news about people in our lives so we know the latest without ever needing to communicate with a friend. But social networks have potential excel in the professional sphere. Elaine Andrew hits the nail on the head when it comes to the value and benefits of Twitter;
“[Twitter] enables professionals to share knowledge with a large number of peers, more than could ever be possible through face to face interaction alone; it enables collaboration with that network of peers; building an online network on Twitter leads to ‘real life’ networks”
Personally Twitter has led to ‘real life’ networks. Interaction with people on Twitter means that when you go to a conference or other event there are people that you’ve already had some form of contact with. Twitter can also lead directly to meeting up with people, in the form of a Tweetup.
@jothelibrarian mentions the power of Twitter in creating communities in a blog post here, giving the #oxfordlibrarymafia as a brilliant example. In this case the hashtag was an extension of an existing ‘real life’ network into the social media world. Oxford graduate trainees starting using it for self-reference and self-identification (after the phrase was coined at the 2010 New Professionals Conference by Ned Potter if I recall events correctly!) The hashtag grew and brought together Oxford graduate trainees past and present.
As with most things in life there is of course the downside. Some of the blogs cover the negatives of social media.
Katy Stoddard echoes my thoughts about the pace of social media in her Thing 12 blog post. Social media moves quickly meaning that quite a lot of time needs to be devoted in order to get the best experience. The fast pace means it is easy to fall out of the loop, if you go away for a day or two then you might miss something major but even by disappearing for half an hour you can find yourself only catching the end of an interesting discussion. I can often find myself accidentally losing half a morning or a whole evening to Twitter.
Jothelibrarian points out some other downsides, the blog post is very well written and sums things up nicely so I recommend reading it. Jo highlights that social media can be dominated by youth. New professionals have a strong presence on Twitter which is great but sometimes it can be perceived as cliquey. Social media communities can also fall prey to the echo chamber.
The downside mentioned by Jo which I agree with most however is about how much of yourself to put out there via social media. I try to keep my tweeting professional but with a splash of personal. I hope to become more professional with my tweeting, but at the moment I’m not leading a very professional life in reality so perhaps where life goes my tweeting shall follow. One of the main problems with the professional/personal balance has arisen as a result of fostering friendships with library tweeters. When social media in the professional context becomes social the lines increasingly blur and tweet conversations about life beyond libraries starts to occur with those from libraries. I quite like this though. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, opportunities to meet new people have become less frequent recently but Twitter helps make me feel part of something.
