Work the social networks ... before you need work

As a technology journalist and Internet marketer, I use tools like Twitter and Facebook constantly to make connections with other professionals. They aren't just for telling people what you had for breakfast. They're tools for getting ahead at work by keeping in touch with professional peers and potential customers.

The key to doing it well is you have to enjoy it. You have to appear natural. Nobody's going to listen to what you have to say if you only use social media as a platform to promote your work, any more than anyone is going to pay attention to you if you go to a party and all you do is try to sell life insurance. But if you behave pleasantly and demonstrate professionalism online, you'll attract business without appearing to try to find it.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch, who is writing "The Freelancer's Survival Guide," asked me to contribute to a section on online networking. This is my response.

I very much enjoy conversation over Internet text. I find it gratifying. I became active on Usenet and the GEnie online service in 1989 and just stuck with it, until sometime in this century someone slapped a label "social media" on the activity, and it became mainstream. Now, politicians and TV and movie stars do it, as well as just us nerds.

Pick one or two services you're most at home with and focus your attention. I'm most at home on Twitter, where I'm @MitchWagner. I post there all day, mostly links to articles I find interesting and the occasional dumb joke or observation. People seem to find what I tweet interesting. I have 3,500 followers on Twitter, which isn't a lot, but which seems like a lot to me.

Facebook is a close second for me. I try to keep my friends list on Facebook to people I know and like, either in real life or by reputation.

Second Life is where I do interviews for my podcast, Copper Robot. I like the community there, and graphics and sense of place. We have a good bunch of people who come to the show regularly and make smart comments and ask intelligent questions.

I use my personal blog, Mitch Wagner's Blog mostly as a feed of articles I've published elsewhere, as well as the occasional professional announcement or -- very rarely -- a personal post. I'm finding it more rewarding to post on other people's sites rather than try to build an audience for my own blog. Hopefully my name will be the brand people look for, not the URL. To tell the truth, I've been trying to establish my personal blog as a Big Name Blog for well more than a decade now, and it just hasn't been happening. I'm thinking maybe it's time to give up.

I use LinkedIn as an extended business card or resume. I've never found the kind of community on LinkedIn that I get from other social media.

When I left my previous job in December, I announced it on Twitter and my blog (making sure first that it was OK with my soon-to-be-former employers, whom I expected would hopefully soon be clients). Within a day or so of announcing my availability, I had several offers of work, and within a month I had lined up two really sweet jobs, blogging here at the Computerworld Tool Talk Blog, as well as writing occasional features here. I also work as social media director at Palisade Systems, which provides Data Loss Prevention solutions for business. I believe both of those clients found out about my availability over social networks. One of them contacted me; I think the other one is someone I called first, but he'd already been planning to reach me because he'd heard I was available.

The guy who hired me at Palisade Systems is someone I knew through Second Life, back when he was at another company and heading up their Second Life marketing and collaboration initiatives.

The key to networking on social media is just like working a conference or a meeting of a professional association: Spend a lot of time talking with people, not at them, and listen to and respond to what they have to say.

The other rule (and, again, this is the same as with real-world networking): Think more about how you can help other people than about how they can help you. You'll get more from your networking efforts if you think about helping others than if you think about how to help yourself. It's a Zen thing.

Mitch Wagner is a freelance technology journalist and Internet marketer. Follow him on Twitter: @MitchWagner.