USING YOUR SOCIAL SKILLS IN THE BUSINESS WORLD! - Nunya Gemegah (03/01/2014)

If I were to tell you the things you do on a daily basis on social networking sites, were actually key skills that could help your career and financial goals would you be surprised? Terms such as 'preeing' can be useful for market research and hash tags & Instagram Captions for branding and advertising. Sounds confusing? Try and relate this back to the products we buy and the way markets are structured, there isn't really much of a difference at all. 'Preeing' has become a habit to the majority of us young ones. It’s embarrassing to admit, however takes up much of my own time. It’s my endless clicking on various Tumblr blogs and Twitter accounts, which have inspired many of the things I write about, and have sparked many issues that I now use as coursework titles.

Think about those people on Twitter with over 20k followers. Sometimes I'm surprised that many people use twitter, but really any of those people can end up on your account at any given time. A celebrity could ‘retweet’ something you've said, or a person from half way across the world may follow you. It may be because you seem to have something to offer that person. Right now you are at university, college, full time work or attending a work placement scheme and these are the most important times of your life for self development and growth. From now on when using social networking sites, make sure that you are constantly making yourself appear useful as anyone could come across your page.

'No man is an island.'

And it’s true, regardless of how self sufficient you may be, you can't get anywhere in life without the help (and sometimes through the short falls) of others. You’re never too young or old to understand the power of efficient networking.

Put your self out there.

Networking can be used to allow the people near and far to work for you and to help build your brand name. You can experience important lessons and great opportunities from interacting with people online. Especially since we all know, it’s  is not just what you know but who you know, with one in ten university students being unemployed after graduation or entering jobs that have no relevance to their degree.  A daunting statistic deterring many away from university.  But people still fail to realise that experience and strategic networking holds more relevance than their degree in most cases. 

For a generation that spends the majority of our time engulfed by social networking sites it is amazing how little we use them in terms of working towards our career goals. To people that study business, events management, fashion or media related subjects social networking is you’re greatest tool as it’s free and efficient. Use it to its best potential as the effortless time you spend browsing, could be used to connect you to people to build your empire. However it doesn't just apply to these sectors the ‘online world’ is open to all without a doubt there is something that applies to you.