LinkedIn is a business social network where you can connect with other professionals in the same or different occupation as yourself. For example, you can follow a specific person, who may or may not be in the same vocation, but you’re interested in their business perspectives. Similar to sending & accepting friend requests on Facebook, LinkedIn requests are sent to individuals, companies or groups you’re interested in following. All the people you’re connected to will send out updates, but the information posted must be career-related and professional. You can receive articles, links to jobs, professional development tips and any specific news related to your field. If you’re looking to hire employees, find work contacts, follow business trends, market & promote your company, LinkedIn is a great tool for this. The downside to using this network is when people are trying to sell their services you get pitched a lot. Then the connections are not very helpful because they’re not adding to what you’re trying to do.
Compared to my experience using the other social networks, like Facebook & LinkedIn, I’m still relatively a new user with Twitter. I like the fact that posts are kept short and to the point (no more than 140 characters), which means you get a lot of posts or “tweets” with links and attachments to more detailed information. You choose whom you want to follow on your Twitter page, based on the hash tag & topic, and anything posted about that topic will display. Anyone can follow your tweets, even people that you don’t know. Twitter is a good tool to use if you want to get involved or create a following around a cause, event or movement. Some people use it to follow celebrities, trends or popular public opinion. One drawback is if you follow a lot of people, then you’ll get a lot of tweets that you’ll have to scroll thru to read the ones you want. Since you’re limited to 140 characters, the good news is your list will not be as long.
Using both social networks, LinkedIn & Twitter, in a library environment can be valuable. Librarians can connect with other professionals in the Information Science field, share updates about upcoming events, job postings, and follow career news. Twitter can be used to communicate with patrons as well as other library professionals. If the library wants to get the word out to the community about a new book arrival, an author signing, upcoming presentation or workshops, sending a tweet to its followers would spread the message quickly. Also, Twitter can be used to notify the public about branch closings due to bad weather, change in hours and general alerts about the surrounding community.
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