Social media may seem to be an endless stream of selfies, political rants, and clickbait articles, but there’s a lot you can learn from it. In fact, you can use social media to build professional skills, knowledge, and relationships. Start by thinking about what you want to learn. If you’re keen to know more about your industry, follow smart industry leaders on LinkedIn and Twitter to see what they’re reading and talking about. You can find industry hashtags on Twitter to discover great new resources. If you know the specific subfield or topic you want to learn about next, you can focus your reading in that specific area to develop expertise. Think about skill gaps, too: If you do a lot of presentations and are getting tired of those boring old Excel pie charts, start looking at infographics on Pinterest to get inspiration for how you can do a better job of presenting data.
Adapted from "Using Social Media to Build Professional Skills," by Alexandra Samuel
