Archive for September, 2011

The channel that gets to close our series on how social media helps engineers is YouTube. The only social media platform that we never hear anyone complain about or say they would never use is YouTube. Why is that you ask? Because everyone loves video! If you don’t have a Facebook page, refuse to open a Twitter account and are happy with your rolladex of business cards instead of LinkedIn, we still bet at one time or another you were on YouTube and enjoyed it.

YouTube isn’t just for funny home videos, music videos and movie trailers. It is a great place to learn and see things you would otherwise never have the chance to.

YouTube is especially great for engineers because it is a source for many valuable videos including how-tos, product demos, technical reviews and technical answers to questions you just can’t seem to solve.

Below is an example of a video that engineers could find useful. In the video MCCI explains how to migrate your drivers to USB 3.0 designs on Synopsys USB 3.0 IP.

If a picture can say a thousand words, then a video can say a million. YouTube allows companies to take you places you wouldn’t normally be able to go.

When you are watching a video on YouTube and realize that it has over a million views, I’m sure sometimes you think, wow, how did that happen? Well that is the power of YouTube. If people find the content valuable, for whatever reason that may be, people are going to share that content with their friends, family, co-workers and so on and so forth. A YouTube video can become viral very quickly.

Unlike some of the other channels, YouTube is very straightforward. If you can figure out how to record your own videos, you will definitely be able to start your own personal channel on YouTube. Finding videos is also extremely easy because it is just like any other search engine.

Everyone loves a good video. They are much easier to digest than an article or even a podcast, so YouTube makes it easy for you to share them whenever you find one you like on any channel you like.

What is your favorite part about YouTube?

This concludes our series on how social media helps engineers. Is there anything we missed that you would like us to touch on or anything you would like us to explain more? We would love to hear from you!

So far we have told you how we believe engineers can benefit from blogs, LinkedIn and Twitter. Now it’s Facebook‘s turn. Facebook is a tough one, because although people understand how to use Facebook, it is the one channel that usually gets the label “For Personal Use Only“.

Many may choose not to friend request their colleagues on Facebook to avoid a merge between work life and personal life. This aside, we’d like to share how valuable we find Facebook as an information source. The best thing about Facebook is you can choose who to follow and who not to follow. This also includes companies.

When we ask those who are aware that companies have Facebook pages if they follow companies, most shake their head because the misconception is that if they do so, they will get spammed. They don’t know that companies cannot send you private messages, and they cannot write on your wall. If you choose to follow a company, their posts will show up on your home feed, but many companies understand that the posts they share on Facebook need to be valuable and the quantity of posts reasonable. If you begin to follow a company that start clogging up your feed, you can back out at any time and “Unlike” the page.

If you have a few minutes, take some time to find your Facebook search bar and start typing the names of some companies and check out their pages. Some might have photos, others might have deals, an interesting video, or a link to a webinar you didn’t know about. The list of what you might find is long.

Both of us love to follow companies.  Each morning, we log onto Facebook and it’s like we each have our own our morning newspapers.

For example, Hannah can get on the her Facebook home feed in the morning and in 30 minutes she can…

• See the top social media story from Mashable
• Find out what the latest article from EDN is
• Find breaking news from CNN
• See the latest new toy on Engaget
• Get a good digest of what the hot topics are from her favorite social media bloggers
• Discover that Best Buy is having a sale on the laptop she’s been wanting
• Get a “Facebook fan exclusive” promocode from her favorite airline for a flight down to L.A.
• Hear about a boot sale that Nordstrom is having
• Catch a status update from her sister who is away at college

All the information Hannah wants each morning is in one place.

If you do happen to be friends with some of your colleagues or people with the same career interests, you too can be part of their morning digest of information and news.

Don’t be afraid to like and comment on the posts of a company’s Facebook page. This is exactly what they want. Liking a post lets them know what kind of content you find valuable, and commenting allows you to give the company feedback or showcase some of your own knowledge.

The beautiful thing about social media to us is the ability to share content, thoughts and information. If you find a post on Facebook valuable, chances are, one of your friends will to, so share share share.

Stay tuned for our next post on YouTube which will be out final entry in our series of how social media helps engineers.

When we talk to engineers about social media, most have a basic understanding of what LinkedIn is, what Facebook does, and how great YouTube is, but many openly admit that they do not understand Twitter. Most people have the misconception that Twitter is just people talking about what they had for breakfast and miss the value that Twitter brings. For this post, not only are we going to explain how Twitter helps engineers, but we are also going to explain some of the Twitter jargon, since many find the platform somewhat obscure and confusing to use. Twitter is a very powerful listening tool that also has an extensive reach, if you know how to use it.

We suggest that the best way to figure it out is to start using it. Once you have a Twitter account, observe how other people are using it. Start searching for people and keywords. You’ll find that Twitter is a great way to get news, share content and keep up with anything and everything you are interested in. Twitter is a great place to stay up to date with what is going on in your industry. By following key influencers, you can set up a feed that alerts you to the very latest content and the most up to date news.  Give it a try. Go to the search bar on Twitter.com and search some keywords like “engineering” and see what people are talking about.

The key takeaway of this post is that Twitter is not just about what you had for breakfast. Twitter is a source of endless knowledge that you can digest while you eat breakfast each morning. You just have to know how to tap into this knowledge. Inside Twitter, you can find topical conversations and a great deal of shared information. We only listed a few examples above because the possibilities are endless.

On Twitter you can follow people who you already know or those you think just have something interesting to say. Unlike Facebook and LinkedIn, you do not send requests to be “friends” or become a “connection”, you simply follow people or companies that you are interested in hearing from and interacting with. By searching different topics, you can see the people that are talking about them and the conversations that are developing.

Now let’s talk about the 140 character limit. Every tweet you make should be adding some kind of value and with the limited characters, you have to think of the most important thing that you want people to know. You might have to word tweets differently then you would if you were saying it out loud, but with practice, the 140 character limit actually helps you to be a more relevant and concise writer.

It is good practice to make sure that you are @mentioning a company or a person when you talk about them in a tweet.

A retweet is almost like forwarding an email. When you see a tweet that you like, or a tweet that you would like to comment on, a retweet allows you to do this and share it with your followers.

You can send a direct message two ways, either by clicking on the “message” button located on the top of a person’s profile (button looks like small envelope) or by starting a tweet with the letter “D” followed by the person’s username (without an @ symbol).

As mentioned briefly, one way you can find information and help your tweets to be found is by searching for and using #hashtags for topics.

A #hashtag is a great way to make sure that your tweet gets a farther reach then just the people who follow you. Anyone who is searching that particular #hashtag will also potentially see your tweet.

For more details on how to use Twitter, read Twitter 101: How should I get started using Twitter?

@YouWhoReadThis Thank you for reading. Have questions or comments? Please share your thoughts below. #twitter #engineers #engineering