Why Guidance Professionals should be engaged with Social Media

I recently came across this useful presentation on the iCeGS website (International Centre for Guidance Studies).  The seminar was delivered by Tristram Hooley at the National Career Guidance Show in March.

He sums up the main reasons why careers practitioners (and by extension anyone whose work involves information, advice and guidance) should be embracing new technology and how it can aid professional development.  For example, he states that social media can be used to:

• Develop interaction with other practitioners and clients and build networks
• Share and contribute to good practice
• Provide information and ask for feedback

Evaluating and engaging with new technologies is already an important career management skill.  He emphasises that practitioners need to develop these skills themselves in order to promote the benefits of digital literacy to clients.  The presentation also provides a quick overview of blogging and Twitter and includes a range of useful links.

He finishes with a reminder that career practitioners work all over the world in a huge range of situations and are continually learning.  A small minority are already engaged with social media; providing support, advice and building a “community of practice”. He ends with the question “Why aren’t you there?”…

Catch-up with the North West Social Media event

If you missed the North West Social Media and digital technology event over the weekend you can catch-up and get a feel for it over at the BarCamp Derry website.

By all accounts it seems to have been very good.

More tweets

Social Media and in particular Twitter is certainly becoming very popular.

This week we read that Labour have given Kerry McCarthy MP the job of improving their presence in social media sites such as facebook and twitter.  She will train MPs in the use of these tools and promote best practice.

The BBC have quoted Ms McCarthy as saying:

“Rather than being something completely new, campaigning using new media is simply doing what we’ve always done in a new setting – and rather than replacing traditional ways of doing things, it is about making traditional campaigning methods even more effective.”

Ms McCarthy twitters at http://twitter.com/KerryMP

Elsewhere…

Stratagem, a local lobbying company, have introduced social media into their refreshed website and they can now be found tweeting at http://twitter.com/stratagemni.

NICVA is leading the way for the voluntary sector having incoporated many social media tools into their communityni website.  They can be found tweeting at http://twitter.com/NICVAweb , alongside their Chief Executive Seamus McAleavey http://twitter.com/SeamusMcAleavey