Twitter 101 – Success in HR in Under 140 characters!

As we mentioned last week, Kris Dunn, of HR Capitalist and Fistful of Talent blogs will be joining us at our 4th Annual Halogen User Conference, scheduled for September 14-15 in Ottawa, to share some social media lessons for HR.

In preparation for that, here’s a little bit of info on one very popular social media service – Twitter.

If you aren’t already using this service, you are probably wondering why you should bother, or why yet another social networking site is even needed. Consider this about Twitter: The Pew Internet and American Life Project’s study of Twitter users found the median age of users (31 years) is slightly higher than that of other social media services. The study also found that Twitter users tend to use and consume all sorts of media more than the rest of the population, and they are more engaged in blogging, and reading other people’s blogs.

For HR, this means a lot of things. First, that some of your employees are probably using Twitter. As an HR professional, you need to be on top of the latest technology so that you can ensure you have the right company guidelines in place for your employees. That’s not to say that you should ban Twitter, Facebook or any other social media service, but rather, you should have a handle on how it is used and what that could mean to your organization. More than anything common sense should apply. An employee working on a super confidential project should understand that they aren’t to share information on that project in any way, including social networking sites. There’s a lot of valuable information being shared on Twitter (and other services) and collaboration being done that could deliver real value to that same super confidential project. Think of it as the wisdom of the crowds, a discussion on a specific subject that your employee may participate in (or even just lurk in) can be valuable if they are engaged with other professionals. Another angle on the value social networking, is that it can help with employee engagement. Jessica Lee does a good job of explaining this in this blog post.

Second, if you work in HR, you or someone else in your organization deals with recruiting, and services like Twitter can become a valuable asset. You can identify candidates, learn more about prospective candidates, and even use services like Tweetajob that connect you with job seekers. If you are using Twitter for recruiting, you are connecting with individuals who are technology and media savvy, which may make for a higher caliber of candidate in the long-run.

A final great use of Twitter is that you can connect with HR professionals from around the blogosphere; there’s already hundreds (if not thousands) using the service and sharing best practices, news and ideas.

Do we have you convinced? To start using Twitter, all you have to do is sign up for a free account at Twitter.com, and then pick a user name. Once you have your account in place, it is important to get a handle on all the ins and outs of how it works. I’ve compiled a number of articles to help you get started. But first things first: Once you do sign up, don’t forget to follow us!
http://www.twitter.com/halogensoftware

• Top 10 Twitter Tips for Beginners (PC Magazine)
• Six Ways to Make Twitter Useful (PC Magazine)
• Five Things to Do as a New Twitter User (ProBlogger)