Five Lessons on Twitter, LinkedIn And Innovation
I have been an active user of LinkedIn for a couple of years. At first, I ignored Twitter. It was too superficial and did not bring any really value. Six months of getting to know Twitter has changed my view. Twitter and LinkedIn are great tools when you work with innovation.
So what have I learned in the last couple of years? I made a quick summary of this below. Perhaps you can find some inspiration in this or post a comment that can inspire me to new ways of getting value out of Twitter and LinkedIn in relation to innovation.
1. TweetDeck for Twitter is a great tool for inspiration and staying updated
I used to follow blogs through aggregation tools such as Bloglines.com. Not anymore. Today, I use TweetDeck for Twitter to find inspiration and stay updated on innovation. TweetDeck allows you to organize tweets into groups and searches. On the latter, I have set up specific searches such as “open innovation”, “china+india+innovation” and “silicon valley+boston+innovation”. You really need a filter to get value out of Twitter and TweetDeck is my tool for this.
I check my groups and searches almost daily and I am impressed by the number of tweets that direct me to blogs, articles and websites worth looking into. Actually, this works so well that I have not visited Bloglines.com for a couple of months. Twitter is where I update my knowledge on innovation. You should give it a try.
TweetDeck is also where I post my own tweets. This leads me to a question to the innovation leaders and intrapreneurs reading this. Your communication department most likely has a strategy for Twitter, but do you have a Twitter-strategy for the projects you work on?
We work in a global world where speed to market matters more than ever and where you need to constantly communicate with stakeholders and monitor the activity in your industry. Can you afford not to use Twitter?
2. Real-time searches? TweetDeck is the tool for the job!
Do you need to know what is happening on particular topics right now? Use the search tool on TweetDeck. While Google and Bing battle it out on traditional searches, TweetDeck is the tool to use if you need to know what is happening right now. Of course, this works best on global events, but as Twitter grows you can begin to get value out of this on more specific searches as well.
3. Groups at LinkedIn have limited effect, but long-term potential for knowledge sharing
I use the group function at LinkedIn to facilitate several groups including Leadership+Innovation by Stefan Lindegaard. This group is for people working with innovation in larger, established companies only. Imagine what 800 such people can learn from each other. But nothing happens. Such people are too busy and they have not yet realized the potential in virtual knowledge sharing.
However, I still believe LinkedIn has a great potential for knowledge sharing. The key reason is that almost everyone already has a profile on LinkedIn and I think people prefer to do as many things as possible (display profile, build a virtual network and share knowledge) in one place.
So if you start a group, be prepared for a long-haul especially if you decide to do this without the key interaction drivers such as academics and in particular consultants.
4. Groups at LinkedIn are great for sharing news and starting discussions
This one might seem contradictive to the previous lesson. However, if you join groups rather than starting them you get access to a lot of people and you do not even have to buy a premium membership to be able to contact them directly.
In these groups, I use the News-function to share my blog posts and the Discussion-function to get input on different issues. This works very well so check out the search-function for groups and join those that are relevant for you.
Warning: Be aware that in groups with thousands of members and no facilitation you will find a lot of spam…
5. Use LinkedIn and Twitter to identify people with specific knowledge
Granted, we cannot get access to every bit of knowledge that makes real innovation happen just through virtual tools as much of this knowledge still resides in the heads of people or in propriety databases.
However, besides the vast amount of knowledge directly available to us, we can use virtual tools such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Google to identify and track the people and organizations to get access to the “hidden” knowledge. The speed of connecting the dots is amazing and it just seems to become faster and faster and it makes you wonder what you should do – as a company as well as an individual – to gain the upper hand on this.
As with any tool, Twitter and LinkedIn are only as good as the effort you put into it. Figure out your reason(s) for using Twitter and LinkedIn and then decide on a strategy for using it based on those reasons. I have found great value in using these tools and I hope you will too.
Thank you Stefan, I thoroughly enjoy your posts. One question for you: Why not open your LinkedIn group to participation by consultants? Speaking as a consultant, I see many benefits to your non-consulting members as well as you.
For example, most consultants have decades of corporate-side experience plus many years experience helping their corporate clients navigate change and embrace fresh ideas. Furthermore, we tend to pride ourselves on intellectual idea exchange and are vocal. As you point out, and in my experience as well, corporate individuals tend to read and “collect” information and are often reluctant to post their opinions publicly. Consultants, on the other hand, tend to be creators of information. Their points-of-view (whether you agree with them or not) tend to ignite response by others. And one last point: many consultants such as me are entrepreneurs. I trust you agree that most entrepreneurs are naturally oriented toward the type of fresh ideas and thinking that you want to bring to you audience, no?
All the best,
Donna Vetter
Hi Donna,
I fully agree that consultants can bring a lot of value to my Leadership+Innovation group. I might also open up for everyone in the near future, but I see the group as an experiment and I want to give a little more time.
One reason for trying this experiment is that many corporate practitioners really like the idea of having a community only for them. However, it is not too much use if they do not use and thus it might be relevant to include consultants to ignite the knowledge creation.
I actually have another group which is open for all. It is called Open Innovation by Stefan Lindegaard and you can join by clicking on this link: http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/1786948
Stefan
While you have much to say about sharing and the power of SN and group efforts, why would other experienced consultants want to join a group for Open Innovation if it is emphatically branded by your name ? Exactly what kind of people are you expecting, or hoping, will join that group and actively participate in it ?
Hi Don,
You raise a valid concern. I created the group as an alternative to the Leadership+Innovation group, but I must admit that it does not create much value to the members.
There are other great groups on open innovation that are open for all and perhaps I should just direct people to those instead.
I will consider this – thanks for being candid
Stefan
Hi Stefan,
I’m an intern looking at how innovation centres can effectively use social media. I was a complete beginner and have come to all the same conclusions as you put forward in your article!
The one issue I’m still struggling to address is ROI. How are you measuring the value of your use of social media?
Hannah
Hannah, I think the ROI issue is very individual. You can spend a lot of time with these tools and at the end of the day we have to ask whether this was worthwhile to us.
I have set up goals on what I would like to achieve and I know these tools help me. Not sure they will for everyone though.
Stefan