My Unintended Social Media Education Strategy?

You might be familiar with the idea that very action has an unintended consequence. Well, this week I discovered another of mine when a connection on LinkedIn asked me about how I went about managing my presence in social communities. I had not really given this much thought until I settled down to answer this question.

In past posts you have heard me allude to social media as me "graduate school class", "community center" and "a training & development tool" and this value continues to grow for me as both give and receive value in these venue. I find, owing to how I am "fearfully & wonderfully made" (Ps. 139:14), that I am a natural teacher & student. As such, I am gratified to use social media as an extended and ongoing university where I can exercise this role within a broader community.

Below is the reply I wrote to my inquiring LinkedIn connection. It is round about but I hope it helps you in some way as you too think about how you can leverage social media for your own purposes whether university, employment office, corner (like in the old neighborhood) where you enjoyed good times with friends, etc.
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My social media methods include:

1. blogging on www.wiseworking.com, facebook.com, www.eyeforpharma.com and twitter about the topics of meaningful working & careering, social media, health games, healthcare marketing, etc., all topics I am passionate about,

2. keeping and sharing my delicious bookmark links (which autofeed into Facebook and Plaxo) up to date with just about everything I am researching online,

3. keeping status updates in Facebook, Linkedin, Plaxo and Twitter (which autofeed into my Plaxo newsfeed) with just bout everything beneficial I am thinking or research and doing so from my laptops, Blackberry and iPhone,

4. joining relevant communities and subgroups in Facebook, Ning, CollectiveX and other relevant social communities online, and keeping these lists as delicious bookmark lists by interest area so I can find them easily. (Here is an example of what I mean for mental illness: http://delicious.com/cadelarge/mentalhealthcommunity),

5. making relevant counter comments with resource links in Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn & Plaxo and using my delicious bookmarks as a way of being able to very quickly find these resources,

6. posting relevant content on my SlideShare and YouTube Channels which I then feature as blog posts. (See http://wiseworking.blogspot.com/2009/03/finding-your-natural-gifts-1-day.html and http://wiseworking.blogspot.com/2009/03/storytelling-critical-success-factor-in.html),

7. keeping a collection of all my portfolio pieces at http://delicious.com/cadelarge/cadelarge_portfolio for easy reference and sharing,


Read the following and email me to discuss further if you like:
http://wiseworking.blogspot.com/2008/01/on-using-wwwlinkedincom.html

http://wiseworking.blogspot.com/2009/01/facebook-community-center-graduate.html

http://wiseworking.blogspot.com/2008/07/on-using-twitter.html

http://wiseworking.blogspot.com/2008/08/on-using-delicious-social-bookmarks.html

http://wiseworking.blogspot.com/2008/08/ipoditunes-training-development-tool.html

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By the way, all this seems to be a collection of disparate activities I enjoy more than a strategy until I wrote it all down and looked at it. Again, I hope this is beneficial to you. As always, if you have additional strategies you use, please comment here to help others who are working to figure our how to benefit from social media.