Get Started Using Social Media on Your Projects

Get Started Using Social Media on Your Projects is a 54-page ebook covering:Get Started Using Social Media on Your Projects

• 5 social media tools for project managers and suggestions as to which tools to start with
• Guidance and examples on the use of project blogs
• The business value of social media tools
• The pre-requisites are for making your social media deployment a success
• Guidance on privacy, security and social media policies
• Setting up your social media deployment as a project (well, what else would you expect in a guide for project managers?!)
• Introducing and customising social media tools
• Getting ready for the launch
• Going live with your new tool and training users
• Measuring success and keeping it going, including case studies and examples
• Checklist for your social media deployment
• Appendix with further resources

Learn new ways to improve communication and collaboration on your project

Project managers are primarily focused on creating participation in projects, and that means it’s important to know how to engage people. Communication is one of the most difficult things to get right on a project, and it is always the people involved that make or break a project’s success. Harnessing the power of social media technologies is one way to improve the communication and collaboration on your project, and this ebook will show you how to get started doing just that.

Social media in a business environment is collaboration and communication with purpose. It’s a broad subject, so in this ebook I focus on the things I feel are most relevant to its use in a business environment for project management. There are plenty of books about social media for brand-building, engaging customers and marketing. I will let other experts write about the uses of social media for selling or promoting something that a company makes – but I am very interested in how social media technologies can be used within a company to support the making of that product through the project management process.

Learn about a new way of working

One of the reasons I love project work so much is that it gives me the opportunity to work on a lot of different things. Each time I work on something different, or with someone different, it gives me a chance to expand my own horizons and see how things are for them. I learn how they work and what is important to them. And I learn from them, taking away the good bits and using them in other parts of my life (and avoiding the bits that really don’t work).

Social media and Web 2.0 feel a lot like this. It’s a new way of working to discover. It might not suit you in its entirety – or at all. But other people, our project stakeholders and team members, are using it, and that makes it a good idea to find out what it’s all about. After all, even if you feel it’s a waste of time, you won’t personally make social media tools go away just by ignoring them. As with all project management tools and methods, you have to know the rules before you can start ignoring them.