This is an overview of the Guide that can be found at http://bit.ly/some4job

1. A WORKING SMARTER RESOURCE
A Practical Guide to using
Social Media in your Job
An overview
Jane Hart
Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies
bit.ly/some4job

2. About this Guide
In the workplace, individuals are making increasing use of
social media tools to support their own as well as their
team's performance and productivity.
The free availability of a huge number of online tools
means that it is now very quick and easy to set up and
use these tools for your own purposes.
The Guide looks at a range of activities you are likely to
encounter in your job and how using social media tools
can help you and your team become more productive.
The complete Guide is available at bit.ly/some4job
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3. Contents
1 – Finding things out on the Web
2 – Keeping up to date with new content on the Web
3 – Building a trusted network of colleagues
4 – Communicating with your colleagues
5 – Sharing resources, ideas & experiences with your colleagues
6 – Collaborating with your colleagues
7 – Improving your personal productivity
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4. 1 ‐ Finding things out on the Web
If you are looking for
help or information
whilst you are doing your
job, what do you do?
Where do you go first?
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5. If you can't find the answer in your
organisation's intranet or learning
portal, then you, like millions of other
people probably go to Google. In
fact Google.com receives 7.2 billion
daily page views and 620m daily
visitors. But are you getting the most
out of Google? In How to use Google
to search effectively, we look at some
of the clever ways you can use Google
to get the best search results.
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6. But don't forget there are also
a number of other and tools
around to search the web.
You'll find some suggestions in
Search the web with other
tools
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7. Wikipedia and YouTube usually rank quite highly on a
search results list. But what other sources are useful and
valuable that you should know about? We list some useful
sources of information and instruction.
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8. 2 ‐ Keeping up to date with new
Web content
The world is changing fast, and
your job may require you to
keep up to date with what is
happening in your industry. In
this section we look at some
ways to do this.
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9. Be kept informed
about what's
happening by
monitoring the web
for new content using
Google Alerts.
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10. Read industry, analyst or organisation
blogs where new postings are being
made all the time.
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11. Even better, subscribe to blog and
website news so that it is sent to
you automatically, rather than you
having to spend valuable time
searching for new content, and
aggregate all your news feeds in a
reader like Google Reader
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12. 3 ‐ Building a trusted network of
colleagues
Another very important
and key way of keeping
up to date is to be in
constant contact with
colleagues whose
opinions and thoughts
you trust and value.
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13. Although Facebook is often
frowned upon in business circles, it
has over 400 million users, so there
are plenty of opportunities to build
a network of colleagues from all
over the world if you so desire.
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14. LinkedIn is a large network aimed
at professional people, where its
focus is to help members establish
professional connections with
others.
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15. Twitter is a public micro‐updating
service which allows individuals to
keep in touch with one another
using tweets of up to 140
characters.
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16. Yammer is a private micro‐sharing
service for both in‐company and
community use ‐ based on 140
character updates.
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17. 4 ‐ Communicating with your
colleagues
Communication is a key
aspect of working
effectively and
productively in your
team, department or
organisation.
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18. Email has become the standard way of
communicating online, whether it be
friends, family, colleagues or
business. Web‐mail has now become
very popular, particularly Gmail, because
it is accessible from any computer ‐ at
home or work.
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19. There are also a number of spin‐off systems that
extend the functionality of webmail even further, i.e.
Google Buzz ‐ which extends email into a
conversation, and Google Wave ‐ which extends
email into a real‐time conversation
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20. Instant messaging (IM) has also
become a very important way for
people to communicate with one
another immediately. Skype is an
important tool supporting both
text chat and voice calls.
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21. If instant messaging is blocked in your organisation, as
it sometimes is, other alternatives are online talk and
video groups, like Voxopop and Zorap.
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22. Although many web meeting
systems are enterprise tools,
there are a range of web
meeting tools that offer a range
of functionality for small
meetings that anyone can set
up, and for free.
For instance Dimdim is free for
up to 20 users
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23. 5 ‐ Sharing resources, ideas and
experiences with your colleagues
A key feature of the use
of social media is that
it supports sharing ‐ of
resources, ideas and
experiences.
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24. Sharing calendars: One of
the simplest things to share
is your calendar, this will let
you easily schedule
meetings and events with
others. One useful tool for
doing this is to use Google
Calendar
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25. Sharing files: If you want
to share files across
computers or with others,
there are a number of
tools to support
this. Dropbox is a very
popular tool.
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26. Sharing web links. If you want to share weblinks
with others, then social bookmarking tools are an
easy way to do this. Two popular social
bookmarking tools are Delicious and Diigo
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27. Sharing resources: If you want
to share resources like photos,
videos, documents,
presentations, etc) with others,
there are a number of major
hosting sites that allow you to
upload your own resources and
then share them privately or
publically with others, e.g. Flickr
for images, YouTube for videos
and screencasts, Slideshare and
Prezi for presentations.
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28. Sharing ideas, experiences and
more: You might want to consider
using blogging or podcasting tools
to do this. With blogging tools
you can write regular blog
postings that document your
thoughts that others can
comment on. A very easy tool to
get started with blogging is
Posterous. If you prefer to create
podcasts, then these can easily be
achieved using a tool like
Audacity.
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29. 5 – Collaborating with your
colleagues
A further aspect of the
use of social media is that
it supports group and
team collaboration.
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30. Collaborative working normally refers to a group
of people working together to create a
document, presentation, spreadsheet
etc. Online office suites let people work
together on a file and have an equal ability to
add, edit, or delete items in it. Working
collaboratively in this context means only one
version of the document is maintained ‐ rather
than multiple copies showing different
edits. Google Docs is the most online
office/collaboration suite.
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31. There are also a range of live text
collaboration tools that support
real‐time collaborative writing and
useful for ad hoc collaboration, e.g.
TypeWithMe.
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32. Wikis ‐ or editable web pages ‐
provide another way of working
collaboratively on a common
resource, e.g. building a knowledge
base or resource area. Once again
there are a range of wiki tools
available to do this, but PBWorks is a
useful one
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33. When working within a team or group you
might want to have a shared group
workspace where you have access to a
number of social media tools to work
together as a group. Grou.ps is a free tool
that easily lets you set up a secure, private
group space with social networking
functionality, forums, blogs, wikis etc as
well as RSS feed.
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34. 7 – Improving your personal
productivity
Here are some further tools that will
help to improve your personal
productivity as well as aggregate
the resources and tools
you already have.
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35. Having a good online experience is
essential in order to manage your
own personal productivity, so it goes
without saying you need a good web
browser, as it is your "window on the
web world". Firefox is a very popular,
free, open source browser. One of
the reasons for its popularity is the
thousands of add‐ons available for it
which increases its functionality.
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36. Another useful tool is a personal
online dashboard. This lets you
keep track of all your online
activities in one place, and is also
know as a "start page". One of the
most popular dashboards is iGoogle,
which lets you create a customised
version of the Google home page as
your personal start page, where you
can aggregate content from
different social media tools.
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37. There are many other tools that
can help to improve your
personal productivity, e.g. tools
for keeping your computer
backed‐up, for information and
time management, as well as
note taking. Many tools also
provide collaboration features so
can also support team
productivity.
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38. Find the complete Guide
at
bit.ly/some4job
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