Develop a Strategy for Social Media

If you only think that social media is a playground for personal folly, think twice as the majority of employers use social media to evaluate potential and current employees. In addition, social media has become the premier method for professionals to promote themselves and enhance their career. This all necessitates having a professional persona using social media that you control. 

A persona is what you project about yourself. This is the person you want others to think you are.

Can you have more than one persona? Yes, we act this way all of the time. If you behave differently when you are with your relatives than with your friends than you are representing a different persona. People will judge you based on how you portray yourself.

Getting and maintaining a job requires the development of a professional persona that will represent the qualities employers are looking for.  It is not just about your skills and abilities, it is also about how well you ‘fit’ into the culture. Do you share the values of the organization?

Developing a persona that represents you professionally will help others to understand your values, ethics, and interests when looking for a job or advancing your career opportunities. The use of social media is the best environment for developing and maintaining this persona.  Will your persona change over time? Probably, that is why your persona should never be considered static. As with your life itself, it is something that needs to be maintained and not left to wallow.

Establishing a Persona Strategy is a way of recognizing and establishing what you want others to see you as. You can have different persona's, such as the one you may have for your family, another for your friends, and another for you work.  At the heart of it all is still you, who you are, but there will normally be a different perspective that each group needs to know and identify with.

Think about it as if looking in a mirror. Are you the same person you were five years ago? Probably not. What is different? Do you like it? What do you need to accept or change? This is how others see you.

This all comes with living socially.

The use of social media has increased the opportunity for individuals to share and engage with larger numbers of people. A way to build your communities. It also becomes a tool for self promotion and development. .

Social media is based on trust. If you want to build your network you have to be trusted. This provides a greater need to have a Professional Persona Strategy.  A strategy is a plan to obtain what you want to achieve. A Professional Persona Strategy is a plan to ensure that others will find what you want them to find as well as how you want to portray yourself.

Here are factors that should be considered in developing a Professional Persona with social media:

Your Name - consider if you want to use your full name, family name or use a professional title.

Handle - a single user name that represents your persona

Bio - what do want to say to others about who you are, what you can do, where you want to go.

Age, Gender, where you live, contact information, education - this is information that is publicly available, what and where do you want to share this needs to be identified

Picture - a picture is worth a thousand words. What do you want your profile picture to represent? what pictures do you want to display? what pictures do you NOT want to appear?

Interests & Activities - select the interests to share: sports, hobbies, political, educational, etc. How much and often do you want to share?

Social media goals - determine why you are using social media, what purpose will it serve, how often you will use it.

Social media use - determine what tools are to be used, how they are to be each used, and how frequently you will use them.

Social media success criteria - how will progress be measured and evaluated? what are you looking for as outcomes from using social media?

Isn’t it time that you started to take social media seriously? Isn’t it time for you to think about how you are using social media professionally? Before you do anything else, sit down and craft a strategy before you start building profiles, sharing, and engaging.

Goodbye Glass?

Google recently stopped manufacturing the Explorer version of Glass. Since I have had Glass Explorer for over a year this has prompted people to ask me about the status of Glass. As an active technology professional and educator there is not a simple answer.

The 'official' answer from Google is that Glass has been moved from Google X to a profit oriented division of the company. Basically, Glass is not going away. What was learned from the Glass Explorer program is being developed into a marketable product.

Glass Explorer was a concept rollout, not a product rollout. This was done through Google X, the research arm of Google. Developers and the public began to petition to 'get their hands' on this thing that Google was developing. As Google began to release, first to those invited and then, to the public it was clearly stated that this was an Explorer program. Glass Explorer was truly not ready as a consumer device.

There were and still are some major hurdles facing wearables that Google had to explore.

There was not a wearable operating system in the marketplace when Glass Explorer became available.  It was not clear how users should and would interact with a wearable device.  Google Explorer allowed Android to be investigated as a wearable platform. Cards and the use of voice had to be considered as part of the user interface.

Similar to the introduction of mobile/smartphone devices the type of data and the screen size for wearables is different.  Web pages are no longer a viable option. Even trying to reformat for a specific size would not work. All of the current web pages and services will have to be adjusted to provide for the use of more specific information that is served to meet specific inquiries. The introduction of the use of the Card as the display object allowed for a good display, but the web is not ready to identify and serve small pieces of data from its mass amounts of information.

Although voice inquiry and activation have been around for a couple of decades, it has not been an integral part of any operating system. The use of a keyboard, mouse, or touch to execute commands in a menu/hierarchical system has been the standard format. Voice tools such as Siri or Google Now are only an extension of the menu format. The more specific the question, the better the answer. Glass Explorer attempted to assess voice as an integral part of an operating system. Yet, it was being used in a hierarchical command process that was not user adaptable.

One of the limits of Glass Explorer was the perception of extending current technology without providing anything that was truly new technology.  Walking down the street one day, a man passed me talking on his phone. The man glanced up as he passed, then quickly stated incredulously into the phone, "I just passed someone that was wearing that internet on his face thing." When people asked what I could do with Glass Explorer, they would sum up what I was saying with, "Basically, it is a smartphone on your head." Glass Explorer was about creating a better experiential environment of current technology.

Wearables are hardware that allows for a better experiential environment. Glass Explorer was an opportunity for Google to discover how it can best serve the marketplace and make money with wearables. Google will have to take the time to examine its position in the wearables marketplace and the Internet of Things.

It remains to be understood exactly what will come next. My best guess is that Google will be focusing on its strength, which is software development.

Whatever happens next, I just hope I get another invite......

A Wink and a Smile #throughglass

Google Glass creates happy faces.

There are smiles whenever I wear Google Glass. There are stares and questioning looks, but most people break out into a smile as I pass by.  When the curious ask what I am wearing, the smiles become a happy face.

To demonstrate what Glass can do, I ask, "Can I take your picture?".  As they say "Yes", I wink to take the picture. This action brings on not only a smile, but an entire happy expression.

Hundreds of my photos show people caught in the process of discovering what Glass can do. The video contains some of these happy faces along with the appropriate music. Take a look and... Put On A Happy Face.