So I have joined the world of twitter and have been exploring the vast amounts of instant information and dinner ideas for the past couple of weeks. What I have learned on my short time with twitter, it is a good way to receive massive amounts of up to date information as long as you are following the right people and or organizations. Two organizations that I obviously follow are AIA (@AIANational) and the USGBC (@usgbc). They tweet on a fairly regular basis about recent press releases, articles, and other random pieces of information related to the design & construction field. However you can receive equal amounts of useless information such as “homemade eggplant parm, steamed artichoke with sherry vinaigrette, and a mediterranean cucumber and tomato salad…rainy Saturday dinner“. But as I learned by listening in to a social media webinar by @LewisHowes & @SeanMalarkey, social media is exactly what it is called, it is another means of socializing with hundreds if not thousands of people and letting them know what you are doing. So it is a little more personalized to let people know more about you as a person rather than a company.
In this social media webinar that I attended they were presenting ways for the user to generate business and/or job leads for almost any company. But not just by using twitter, they also discussed other online networking sites such as LinkedIn and briefly touched upon facebook, which I am a user of all three. With the exception of facebook, I can see how these can be very effective marketing tools if you are active users of these two sites. However it could be difficult as an employee of a larger firm to use social media for marketing purposes. Although you do see some architectural firms creating their own twitter accounts. On the other hand, as an employee it is a great way to brand yourself and get your information out to others and try to have yourself seen as an expert, which can prove to be useful in these slower times if you happen to be job hunting. So I would like to offer my opinion on the different social networking sites.
