Social networking has revolutionized the way everyone connects online. Instead of traditional email and instant messaging, social networking lets individuals connect through various forms of messaging offered by social networks. But aside from simple exchange of greetings, social networks have also enabled users to share more than simple data about themselves. Photos and videos could also be shared to everyone that’s a part of the network. Everything a person needs to know about the individual could be known through their social network profile.
But social networking has transformed in different forms in terms of services. Originally, social networking is geared towards individuals who wanted to connect for personal reasons. Today, social networking is now used by professionals to be recognized in the industry or to simply connect to persons that could help them boost their chances for a better career. Social networking has become a tool for professionals for career enhancement.
Professional vs. Social Networking
There are currently two forms of social networking: personal and professional social networking. The former is regarded as the traditional social networking wherein the sole purpose of this type of networking is to connect and gain friends. Many social networks offer this as most users sign up to different social networks in order to connect to as many people as possible in order to gain friends and acquaintances everywhere.
Professional social networking on the other hand, is geared towards career or business enhancement. This type of social networking aims to increase the credibility of the professional wherein he or she could use the connections in social networking to prove what they have done and what they can do. Businesses could also use social networking with the same goal of credibility. But businesses could also take it further by developing a product and use different social networks to sell their products or offer their services.
E-Discovery and Social Networking
In case you’re not familiar yet, e-discovery is a form of data gathering that digs the online data of a person or an organization. This is often used as evidence when lawsuit happens between two parties. Electronic files and data could be used in lawsuits and the data could be extracted from practically anywhere.
E-discovery could also be used in social networking. As the profile owner, anything that you say, do or act in the social website is digitally recorded and will be available for a very long time. If you’ve done something incriminating, the data could be used against you. Instead of improving your reputation through social networking, your credibility greatly suffers.
But even though some will not resort to e-discovery to discover something bad about you, the convenience and accessibility of the internet will always be there which means anyone familiar with online processes could extract the data they need. With enough research tools, the photo, and videos could be used against you.
For that reason, it is important for professionals to be on guard with what they say or post online. As a professional, the data, photos and videos posted could be against your professional reputation.
Industry Specific Social Networking
Professionals who wanted to improve in their chosen career could use different social networking websites to connect to people that could help them achieve this goal. But with the increasing number of social networks, focusing on one social network might not work against the goals of the professionals since there is a possibility that the people that you want to connect with are not part of your social network.
To increase your chances of connecting to the right people, it’s highly recommended to search for social networks that focus on a specific industry. Although there are social networks geared towards professional profiles, connecting to industry specific social networks really help not only in connecting to like minded professionals but also for information sharing. As everyone is facing the same challenges, data sharing would be possible which helps the industry move forward faster.
For industry specific social networking, be prepared to pay a fee to be part of these social networks. Although inconvenient at first, the fee is just a small price to pay to keep up with the latest news in the industry and be part of a network that could help boost your professional career.
