Professional development, networking, and #Twitter: Making it work for you

In the last year, I have become a convert for using #Twitter as a form of both professional development and networking with people with shared interests in healthcare, data analytics, and technology innovation in healthcare. Before this "conversion", I simply saw social media sites such as Facebook and Pinterest as places to connect with family, friends, and acquaintances and share hobby related interests. Back then, I would have viewed Linkendin as a primary source of career related professional development but using Twitter more purposefully has changed my mind.

Below are some tips that I have found useful when navigating the maze of Twitter:

1) Create lists on Twitter

Believe it or not- I have 34 lists on Twitter. Some lists have been created by others but the majority are lists that I have created over the past year. I started off with a few lists but found that 500 people in one list defeats the purpose of finding posts with a specific interest and I would benefit more from dividing up the big list into subtopics. It also is great to use when you are at meetings and conferences to keep lists of twitter accounts for  interesting speakers or people that you have met or want to meet at conferences. Definitely a great way to break the ice with a speaker when you have looked at their twitter account before a meeting.

 I also use lists as a networking tool to follow posts of people who commonly interact with me on Twitter, people who I find quite interesting to follow  and follow people I know from the past through school, work, Linkendin, etc. Occasionally, I keep such networking lists private for the privacy of other people that I know personally and its not my intention to make it a competition to showcase the people who I commonly chat with on Twitter.

2) Mute people you follow on Twitter that have posts that are of little interest.

Sometimes people are temporarily annoying with posts of personal photos or frequent posting but then start posting material that is of common interest after a few days or weeks. Some people on Twitter decided to remove people on Twitter who they have had little contact with over months or weeks or have limited shared interests.

3) Become more #hashtag savvy

Keep track of popular #hashtags in areas of interest or from popular conference that you would like to follow. You can include such #hashtags in your tweets to improve discovery of such posts in twitter and follows others who post with similar hashtags. I like to include my favorite #hashtags in my Twitter profile for easy tracking and change it up depending on when an interesting conference with lots of tweeting is coming up. For example, I use Symplur Hashtag conferences to search for hashtags for upcoming healthcare conferences of interest .

4) Give credit to others when retweeting posts and add a brief comment related to tweet post.

Its really easy to just retweet a post of interest or add a person to a list of shared interest. However, I find that I usually get more interaction through either a reply or an additional follower by adding the account name of the person who posted the tweet of interest and the person who created the post. One example is to write:

RT @cbcnews post content on Zika outbreak via @twitterfollower #cdnhealth

5) Being a "professional" in professional development and networking

I am sure that many of us associate social media with personal connections and it can be challenging to suddenly transform into a professional using the same form of media. Some people that I know like to keep such worlds separate and keep social media accounts such as Facebook and Twitter private. I definitely agree with such action but encourage professionals to consider having at least one public  form of social media account devoted mostly to professional and or educational interests. Some people have a private Facebook for personal connections and Twitter and Linkendin accounts for professional and educational interests. In addition,  future people that you wish to professionally network with, recruiters and current and or future employers will judge you based on the types of posts that you like and the way you conduct yourself on social media.

Have any of the above worked for you when using Twitter?  I encourage you to comment on ways that have worked or maybe have not worked so well when navigating the Twitter maze.  

You are welcomed to join me on Twitter @hoque_michelle