Five ways social media can help you get a promotion

By Mamta Saha

June 21, 2012, 5:07 AM PDT

Takeaway: Managers often take a dim view of staff who use social media at work, but research suggests these networkers are the very employees who really get ahead.

A waste of time, a distraction and a drain on resources - those are all accusations that managers have levelled at the use of social media at work. But research suggests that far from being a barrier to productivity, using social media actually helps employees advance their careers.

Working recently on a Google project on the use of social tools in business, I thought one finding really stood out: those using social tools at work are more likely to get promoted than those who do not.

The research showed that 86 per cent of frequent users say they have recently been promoted and 72 per cent say they are likely to be promoted, compared with 61 per cent and 39 per cent of non-users. The report hails these workers as the new social climbers, because they know how to employ the tools in the right way to get ahead.

In reality, there are a number of reasons why social networkers are more likely to progress in their career, and it appears that the most successful, visionary companies are already acknowledging the benefits of these tools to make it easy to connect and work together online.

According to the Google research, high-growth companies are most likely to use social tools, so it is important not to ignore their potential for the workplace.

So what are high-fliers doing differently when it comes to social networking? There are a number of ways in which social tools can help with career progression:

1. Showcasing depth of knowledge

When social media first appeared on the radar it was the more introverted individuals who started to use it, creating blogs, answering questions on forums and generally understanding the technology's potential as an outlet for sharing knowledge and exchanging views. This experience put them one step ahead, helping them to get noticed for their expertise.

In a professional situation, in-depth authority on a relevant topic is extremely attractive to employers and helps get introverts noticed without the need for active self-promotion because others are drawn to them to tap into their knowledge.

2. Making connections

Those using social networking in the workplace have recognised its potential to broaden their circle of contacts, which can lead to all sorts of useful business connections.

Building a network of contacts also offers an effective means of solving problems, giving access to a wider panel of individuals with different areas of expertise, whose knowledge can be tapped into to help solve problems and give advice on unfamiliar situations.

3. Building a personal brand

The most successful social networkers are not the ones who give away vast quantities of information about themselves online. Such behaviour can look unprofessional and even damage your reputation.

It tends to be those who have distilled personal information to build their own brand, including their skillset, experience and connections, who are most likely to be successful in using social networking to progress their careers.

That said, individual touches such as occasional updates on hobbies and interests can also lead to more meaningful connections with all kinds of influential people. In Google +, for instance, these contacts with similar interests can be grouped together, making it easier to ensure your updates and requests are relevant to those receiving them.

4. Tapping into knowledge

Another great opportunity for using social tools to excel comes in using them to learn about your organisation. Many companies have already established a network or blog and are using these channels to provide information about staff skills, company news and initiatives. So taking an interest in these forums and communities can be very informative.

Using social media to track company references is also a good idea. For instance, if a story about your company breaks on Twitter, and you are the first to spot it, this shows senior staff you are taking an interest in the organisation, which can impress them.

5. Time management and productivity benefits

Today's social climbers are also using these tools to help them work smarter. Most of us are familiar with being bombarded with emails that we don't have time to read and being pulled into meetings that seem to last longer than necessary.

Through thinking creatively about what social tool could do the job more effectively, you can change these time-draining practices in your company. Instant messaging, for instance, can be a time-saver when you want an answer to a question quickly.

Collaborative documents edited online by multiple people at the same time could replace some meetings. It is only through trying out different tools that you will learn these shortcuts for yourself and be seen as a more efficient member of the team.

It is important to remember that opportunistic, driven individuals are likely to grasp any opportunities that come their way to make themselves more successful. That's why they are getting ahead through using social tools.

They know that these services can help make them better informed, better connected and more productive. So if you're reading this and wondering what all the fuss is about, it could be time to open your mind to what social media can do for your own career.

10 things you can do to conserve Internet bandwidth

By Brien Posey

Takeaway: You can take a number of practical steps to reduce your organization's bandwidth consumption. Here's a rundown of some strategies to consider.

As organizations move more and more services to the cloud, it is becoming increasingly important to make efficient use of the available Internet bandwidth. Here are a few techniques you can use to conserve Internet bandwidth in your own organization.

1: Block access to content-streaming Web sites

 If your organization allows employees to use the Internet for personal use, the first thing you should do is block access to streaming media sites, such as Netflix, YouTube, and MetaCafe. Playing the occasional YouTube video probably isn't going to have a crippling effect on your Internet connection, but streaming videos do consume more bandwidth than many other Web-based services.

2: Throttle cloud backup applications

 If you're backing up your data to the cloud, check to see whether your backup application has a throttling mechanism. An unthrottled cloud backup solution will consume as much bandwidth as it can. This might not be a big deal if you're backing up small files (such as Microsoft Office documents) throughout the day. But when you first begin backing up data to the cloud, an initial backup must be created. I have seen this process last for months, and if left unchecked, it can Vendor HotSpot

Here to help you with your Document Management Needs

3: Limit your use of VoIP

 VoIP is another bandwidth-intensive protocol. If you plan to use VoIP, you might implement a policy stating that phones are to be used for business calls only. While I will be the first to admit that employees sometimes need to make calls that aren't specifically related to work, almost everyone has a cell phone these days, so limiting the office phones to business use only shouldn't be a big deal.

4: Use a proxy cache

 A proxy cache can help limit the amount of traffic created by Web browsers. The basic idea is that when a user visits a Web site, the contents of the page are cached on a proxy server. The next time that person visits that Web page, the content does not have to be downloaded because it already exists in the cache. Using a proxy cache not only saves bandwidth, but it can give users the illusion that your Internet connection is much faster than it really is.

5: Centralize application updates

 Today, almost every application is designed to download periodic updates over the Internet. You can save a lot of bandwidth by centralizing the update process. For example, rather than let every PC in your office connect to the Microsoft Update Service, you should set up a WSUS server to download all the updates and then make them available to the individual PCs. That way, the same updates aren't being downloaded over and over again.

6: Use hosted filtering

 If you operate your own mail servers in-house, a great way to save bandwidth is to take advantage of hosted filtering. With hosted filtering, your MX record points to a cloud server rather than to your mail server. This server receives all the mail that's destined for your organization. The server filters out any spam or messages containing malware. The remaining messages are forwarded to your organization. You can save a lot of bandwidth (and mail server resources) because your organization is no longer receiving spam.

7: Identify your heaviest users

 In any organization, there will be some users who use the Internet more heavily than others. It's a good idea to identify your heaviest users and to determine what they are doing that's causing them to consume so much bandwidth. I have seen real-world situations in which a user was operating peer-to-peer file-sharing software even though the administrator thought that the users' desktops were locked down to make it impossible for anyone to do so.

8: Aggressively scan for malware

 Malware can rob your organization of a tremendous amount of bandwidth by turning PCs into bots. Be aggressive in your efforts to keep the desktops on your network clean. Here are some resources that can help: 

• 10 ways to detect computer malware
• 10 more ways to detect computer malware
• The 10 faces of computer malware
• Five tips for spotting the signs of malware
• Rescue CDs: Tips for fighting malware
• 10 free anti-malware tools worth checking out
• Virus & Spyware Removal Checklist

9: Use QoS to reserve bandwidth

QoS stands for quality of service. It is a bandwidth reservation mechanism that was first introduced in Windows 2000, and it's still around today. If you have applications that require a specific amount of bandwidth (such as a video conferencing application), you can configure QoS to reserve the required bandwidth for that application. The bandwidth reservation is in effect only when the application is actively being used. At other times, the bandwidth that is reserved for the application is available for other uses.

10: Make sure you're getting the bandwidth you're paying for

 A lot of factors affect Internet bandwidth, so you can't expect to connect to every Web site at your connection's maximum speed. Even so, your Internet connection should deliver performance that is reasonably close to what you are paying for.

 I haven't ever seen a situation in which an ISP intentionally gave someone a slower connection than they were paying for, but I have seen plenty of situations in which a connection was shared between multiple subscribers. In the case of a shared connection, a neighbor's online activity can directly affect your available bandwidth. If your Internet connection isn't as fast as it should be, talk to your ISP and find out if your connection is shared. You might pay a bit more for a non-shared connection, but the extra cost may be worth it.

E-mail needs safe rendering

At the moment, the only really safe way to view e-mail is plain text. What if someone actually went to the trouble of creating a safe rich content rendering mode for an e-mail client?

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In A practical example of why HTML email is a bad idea, I provided a very simple example of the kind of security dangers that can be avoided by nothing more complex than viewing email only as plain text. Of course, it’s reasonable to expect that there will be occasions people will send you HTML e-mails, and you’ll need to view the contents — and it is reasonable to expect that you will want to be able to view these emails without having to visually sort through everything to find the parts that aren’t extraneous, unnecessary markup. It is the convenience of not having to try to sort through the tangle of bad HTML in many emails that drives many to ignore security advice about viewing emails as plain text.

Much as I wish it were otherwise, it doesn’t seem likely that everybody in the world will forsake their unnecessarily HTML-laden ways when it comes to composing emails, not only because many modern email clients default to HTML-formatted e-mails, but also because many people get deeply involved in choosing the right “stationery” background image, fancy fonts, and other pointless frippery when sending intensely interesting and highly informative e-mails like “yo, whats up? how r u?”. Luckily, a lot of those clients do “the right thing” when composing HTML emails, which is to offer a plain text version as well without the person composing the email even having to know about it.

Sometimes, however, we don’t get plain text versions along with the tangle of spaghetti HTML. This may be because, when certain things are done in HTML that cannot be reasonably well degraded to plain text, the email client just skips the plain text version; it may be because some Website developer doesn’t know any better when he designs the automated feedback form reply script; it may even be because someone stupidly turned off the plain text copy capability. It may also simply be the fact that someone is using a particularly low-quality email client that only offers HTML formatted functionality.

Regardless of how it happens, the fact remains that sometimes we just need to be able to sift through the contents of an HTML-formatted e-mail, and probably don’t want to have to do it without getting a headache. The choices are usually limited to:

1. give up on secure practices and just view the rendered HTML e-mail somehow — either within an HTML-capable email client or by viewing the email in an outside application that renders HTML
2. live with the inconvenience of parsing all that markup by eye
3. delete the offending email and request another copy without the unnecessary markup scattered through it

I used to run with number 2 all the time. After a while, I decided to write a simple script I call stripmark that would parse HTML out of the email so I could just view the plain text. Over time, it has acquired a few more capabilities, including translating linebreak tags into actual newline characters in the plain text output. This sort of thing is relatively easy to do, with tools like the Ruby programming language and a highly functional text-mode mail user agent such as Mutt. This, however, is far outside the range of what the average user is able to do, and isn’t exactly within the range of what most technically oriented people are willing to do — especially those whose tools are mostly limited to the MS Windows platform.

The script I use is gradually changing into something akin to the opposite of what text parsing libraries like Markdown do. Such libraries define a simplified markup language that is much easier to use to describe how text formatting should be specified via the keyboard, then parse text formatted in that manner, translating the document into an HTML or XHTML formatted document. In fact, I type these articles in plain text files using Vim, entering Markdown formatting signifiers by hand, then run a script that uses a Markdown library to transform the text formatting signifiers into Web markup before it gets published here at TechRepublic.

If it keeps evolving to that point, my stripmark script will eventually do the inverse: it will translate HTML or XHTML formatted documents into text with simple text formatting signifiers that make emphasis, linebreaks, and other simplified “rich text” characteristics obvious without making the text nigh-unreadable the way an actual Web markup language does.

At the moment, the script is just a dirty hack. Even if it was cleaned up, prettied up, and made worth distributing, though, its use would still be a dirty hack. What’s really needed is for mail user agents and email clients to incorporate such safety related functionality directly, either via official plugins in the case of Unix MUAs or as integrated functionality in the case of mainstream GUI email clients.

By default, a “safety mode” for any e-mail client should perform a number of tasks for the user. A few examples include:

1. Disallow embedded images, Flash objects, or anything else that isn’t actual text and markup in the rendered “rich text” email display without a warning and specific user intervention.
2. Disallow hiding URLs behind link text so that even the most casual, security-ignorant user will not be fooled into thinking a link that says “PayPal” but has a URL with a phishing.example.ru domain is a legitimate PayPal link.
3. Disallow execution of any dynamic content, especially including JavaScript, VBScript, and similar programming languages, without a warning and specific user intervention.

The list could go on at great length, but it would probably be easier to just list things that should be allowed — like italicizing text, bolding text, underlining text, manipulating colors, and physically altering the visible location of content on the screen in a manner that doesn’t hide any content (such as via tables or CSS positioning). It should also clearly indicate when any text uses characters that are not part of the standard ASCII character set, just for good measure, in case someone wants to copy and paste a URL from an email to a browser.

This, at least, would allow people like me, who are aware of the security dangers of normal HTML e-mail rendering, to view the occasional marked up email without having to go to inconvenient lengths to read it without making ourselves susceptible to the dangers of rendered HTML emails.

Unless and until such a MUA or e-mail client that I want to use lands in my lap, though, I’d appreciate it if you’d all default to sending plain text e-mails only. Considering the overwhelming tendency of spammers and phishers to use HTML e-mail, and that most legitimate email users at least offer plain text along with the HTML formatted versions of their messages (whether they know it or not), my spam filtering identifies all HTML-only emails as high-risk targets. If I don’t expect your email, and it’s HTML formatted, you should be resigned to the expectation that I may never read it.

I value my security more than unsolicited emails, and — contrary to my usual policy of avoiding false positives at any reasonable cost — I’m willing to accept a few false positives to protect myself.

Chad Perrin is an IT consultant, developer, and freelance professional writer. He holds both Microsoft and CompTIA certifications and is a graduate of two IT industry trade schools. Read his full bio and profile.

Learn how to effectively communicate with these tools

Communication skills are necessary not only for interpersonal relationships, but they can also aid your career in incredible ways. If you can effectively communicate the need for a new tech initiative, for example, the better the chances you’ll get the go-ahead. Here are some tools that can help you improve your communication skills.

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In information technology, it’s not difficult to find employees who are intelligent, hard-working, and have great passion for their work. But more and more headhunters and hiring managers are finding that interpersonal and business communication skills seem to allude even highly educated tech workers. The ability to effectively communicate is highly sought after in every job market, but most especially in the tech field where there is often the need to explain technical concepts in ways that other company employees and executives can understand.

I’ve done some scouting around and found a couple of tools from Global Knowledge that can improve your communication skills exponentially.

A two-day course called Effective Technical Communication teaches you best practices for authoring effective documents and composing your communications with clarity, relevance, and precision. In this course, you’ll learn how to prepare documents that clearly and concisely convey technical information to both technical and non-technical audiences. You will learn the five Cs of writing — correctness, clarity, conciseness, coherence, and contro — and how to apply them to your own writing. You will also learn how to copyedit documents written by you and others. (The cost is $1,495 USD, and vendor registration is required.)

A white paper called Four Key Elements of Effective Business Communication offers a perspective on business communication that involves four key elements: purpose, style, listening, and follow-up.

Does money make you happy, or does being happy make you money?

It’s highly unlikely that any employee would object to making a good salary. But is it too simplistic to think that money buys happiness?

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We’ve just published our 2009 IT Skills and Salary Report. Here’s an excerpt from the report:

“The base majority of IT professionals are satisfied at work with 4 out of 10 being either ‘very’ or ‘extremely’ satisfied with their jobs. Indeed, the results show a direct correlation between job satisfaction and the amount of money that one is paid. Since more money equals greater job satisfaction, one could infer that for some, money does buy happiness–at least at work.”

While I’m not denying money can put a smile on most people’s faces, I’m wondering if this may be a case of what came first — the chicken or the egg. Instead of considering that money buys happiness, how about thinking of it as more money comes to people who like their jobs. If you like your job, you’re more likely to put in that extra effort, which is recognized by your manager who, in turn, issues you raises. If you’re happy in your job, it may have something to do with the fact that your talent is recognized with positive attention from your managers and others in the company. And that positive attention results in more money.

On the other hand, if you’re unhappy with what you do, you’re less likely to respond readily to new intiatives, and your negative attitude might impact effective communication with your co-workers.

What do you guys think?

Toni Bowers is the Head Blogs Editor of TechRepublic. She has been in the publishing industry for 20 years, with concentration in IT-related topics. She has edited newsletters, books, and web sites pertaining to software, IT career, and IT management issues.