Social media is growing in leaps and bounds and is providing a new channel for people and businesses to gather information very rapidly. The challenge with Social Media is that the amount of information out there is truly daunting. Blogs and social media sites such as Facebook and Wikipedia provide an unbelievable amount of quality content (that is available almost instantaneously) but users of social media have to sift through an even greater amount of useless material to find it. Two tools that can help users effectively filter through this mass of information are Twitter and RSS Feeds.

Let’s start with a quick definition of Social Media (and what better place to get one than the social media site Wikipedia)

Social media is information content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies. At its most basic sense, social media is a shift in how people discover, read and share news, information and content. It's a fusion of sociology and technology, transforming monologue (one to many) into dialog (many to many) and is the democratization of information, transforming people from content readers into publishers. Social media has become extremely popular because it allows people to connect in the online world to form relationships for personal and business.

This is a fairly ambitious definition clearly written by social media enthusiasts but it certainly gets the point across. Social media is self published information that removes the filter created by professional editors and publishers. It is more work but by becoming your own filter you gain access to new information you would never see in formal channels. The key to gathering relevant information from social media is to find the tools to parse through the noise to get to what is of value.

Twitter –not just for celebrity gossip anymore (though you can get that too if you want!)
When I first heard about Twitter as a business tool I was skeptical to say the least. My vision of Twitter was a constant barrage of useless information and celebrity gossip in the form of 140 character texts and emails. It took a chance meeting with an acquaintance in PR to turn me around on this.

Twitter, as it turns out, is most useful from a business perspective in its online rather than mobile form. I now see Twitter as an information gathering tool. When I started with it a few weeks ago I did a search on ‘Construction’ and found a number of people that provide updates on information from the space. My favorite posts come from people that share links to longer material provided by themselves or other bloggers. I have found it a great way to keep up with what is happening in the space. A great guy to start with on Twitter in the Construction Technology space goes by the name ConstSoftware. Of course, you could also follow me at JonasCons.

At this point, Twitter is in very early stage use for the Construction Space and appears to used primarily by associations, service providers and other organizations (ENR provides daily posts.) This information is valuable and interesting but I am personally looking forward to seeing more information from contractors themselves. There may not be many on Twitter now but with the growth of the platform I expect that eventually there will be a good sized community of contractors sharing information and best practices. For those new to Twitter the following blog provides some great advice http://threefourteendesign.com/blog/?p=200. This is geared toward architects but I think that the information is generally applicable to any user.

RSS Feeds – Have the information you want pushed to you
RSS (or Really Simple Syndication) is a standard used by websites, blogs and other social media to provide an easy way for users to automatically pull information. Whereas Twitter is about finding information RSS is about getting updates from sources that you have already found and like. An RSS feed can be added in Outlook or viewers such as Google. Once you have subscribed to an RSS feed (as an example you can subscribe to this blog by clicking the little orange RSS icon at the on your web tool bar) any new update will be pushed to your preferred reader. I get feed through folders within Outlook where I follow about 50 feeds for construction, technology, and general business. I have found that RSS is a brilliant way to keep on top of the blogs that I really enjoy and a number of industry associations and groups (i.e. CFMA and NECA). Instead of having to visit each site a few times a week to see if there is something new I just subscribe to RSS and wait for information to come into my inbox.

RSS and Twitter together make a good combination. I follow a number of people on Twitter that send out links to various blog posts and other information and when I find something new I like I add the content producer to my list of RSS feeds to keep up to date. I have also set up a RSS feed in Twitter on the search term ‘Construction’ but have had mixed success (I am getting a lot of stuff about new website construction…) However, I think that, with some refinement, this is going to help me keep on top of Twitter as it continues its explosive growth.

Social media is going to continue its growth and will challenge traditional media as a primary source of information (not many people under the age of 25 read print media anymore.) The construction space has been quiet in this area up until now but that is going to change and change quickly. There is absolutely a lot of fluff and garbage information out there but there are also some truly excellent resources that provide some exceptional content. I will certainly promote these sources as I find them via Twitter and through this blog. Using social media as a means to gather information is the entry point for most people but to get the most out of it you need to join the conversation. Everyone has something to say and once you start saying it you will be surprised by the number of people that will engage with you and the value you will derive from those relationships.