Social media tools, in my work?
I have been working a system specialist for some time. My work revolves around certain social and health care -application and I am part of the maintenance team of it. So, one could say that my job is pretty much about using digital tools, even making one better all the time! Of coure, to do our work in the best possible way, we need some additional tools to complete the tasks around the application we maintain.
The most used and most important tool for me personally would be Microsoft Teams. Teams is a team collaboration application which is part of Microsoft 365 product family. In my work, I use most of the Microsoft 365 products, such as Microsoft Word and Microsoft Powerpoint, but Teams is by far the most imporatant digital tool for me. I use Teams to communicate with my colleagues during the work day, be it a quick question or a longer meeting. I use it to send or present files to my colleagues or to clients. I think most of my communication in work goes throug Teams. And like in every job I’ve ever been to, it seems to me that communication is the key to success. That is why Teams is the most important digital tool for me: it allows me to communicate with whoever i need to, whenever I need to and in a way I choose to.
Social media is also all about communication, but in a very different way than in Teams and such. To me, social media is all bout who to communicate with a public audience, not to have confidential conversations. That is why I don’t really use social media at my work. We got a public relations team at work who use social media as their tool. But next, I am going to look into five different social media tool and imagine how I could use them as part of my daily work.
1 Blogger
For the first tool I got familiar with Blogger. Blogger is a content management system, which is mostly used to publish blogs. I chose Blogger because I didn’t know too much about it, but I realised I have sometimes ready some Blogger-blogs without actually realising they are published with a specific tool do that. The blogs look like a pretty regular websites with varying content. In Blogger, the content is what really matters and that is why I consider Blogger to be something I in a way could use as part of my work. I like writing and I could easily keep a blog about my work, without revealing too much about it. I don’t know if it is possible to make a private blog in Blogger, but I could also imagine having a blog for a limited audience. Then again, I have written a few blogs at my work and they have been published in our companys internal website. So I think, Blogger wouldn’t be a tool I could use at my work because of it’s publicity, but I wouldn’t propably need it to keep blog as part of my job.
2 Doodle
Secondly I checked out Doodle. Doodle is a time management website, from which you can create suggestions for example for dates for having a meeting. You can send a doodle to a group of people of your choice and then those who recieved the doodle will answer their preferred dates. Afterwards you can see the results and decided which day you will have the meeting in. I choose Doodle because I have never used it, but I have heard about it. After reading about it, I can’t really see myself using it in my work. The meetings we have are arranged through Microsoft 365 tools and there is no really a need to use Doodle for that. I could see myself using it outside of work, if I would be arraging a get together or a party for a large group of people. Doodle is free to use, so it could be a worth of trying!
3 Todoist
Todoist is a management tool which allows user to create different kind of to-do-lists for varying amount of persons. One could do a task list for one working day or create a task list for one team for a week or a month. Or one could do a meeting agenda for one single meeting. I hadn’t heard about todoist before but I fell in love with it at first sight! I am a person how lives of making lists, be it a to-do-list for work or a shopping list for grocery store. To have a digital tool in which you can make lists for varying amounts of persons and varying spans of time just sounds great! And with a quick search I found out that todoist has a integration with Microsoft 365! In other words, todoist could simplify my sometimes chaotic line of work. I have to look into this one with colleagues, it seems like something the doctor ordered!
4 Asana
Asana is a poject management tool which helps a team to manage and collaborate on a project. It is a bit like todoist, where you can schedule tasks and set goals for teams and it’s individual members. You can also use it to report on a project. I chose to look into Asana, because I wondered if it could be even more versatile application that Todoist. At first glance Asana looked like something I could definetely use at my work to help my team to go through different kinds of projects. But when I found out about the fact that Asana uses a lot of AI within it’s workflows, I started to think otherwise. Before even suggesting using Asana, I should really carefully look through Asana’s user agreement -file, to be sure how the AI restores it’s data and who has access to it. AI can be a great addition to digital tools, but you cannot be too careful with it.
5 Issuu
Issuu is a publishing platform that basically can turn ordinary PDF-files into different kinds of formats from GIF-animations to articles on a social media platforms. I chose to look into Issuu simply because I use PDF-format at work a lot. PDF seems to be the industry standard but sometimes it would surely be nice to use some different format just to have some variation. I think I could use Issuu sometimes at work, when there would be a need to convert PDF into something else. Maybe I could use it to share something among my colleagues? It would certainly make things easier, because now if I have to change the format, I have to build the file from scratch.
There you go, I got familiar with five new applications previously unknown to me. Some of them would be more useful than others, even though I think it would be a difficult task to try to get them to my work use. Everything costs money and I think the licenses for Microsoft 365 are costy as they are. In addition, most things that I need to get done at work are done easy enough with the applications we got in use right now. I think having digital tools as the tools you are working with comes down to the question of meeting the goals of your work. If the tool is good enough for you to reach the goals you want to reach succesfully, use that tool. If you really need additional tools, then get them in use. It is everything about the usability (and of course the cost) of the tool, when you mirror it to the goals you are reaching out to. It is not good idea to get new tools for fun. You should get them for your needs.
Self Evaluation
I got familiar with different kinds of digital tools which fall under the social media -category. Making this article really made me think differently about the term of social media. Of all the tools I checked out, I only considered Blogger to be associated with social media. But in fact, all of the tools are social in their own way, because using them always involves socialicing with other people. Not always publicly, but with a certain group of people. That’s the biggest insight I had writing this article. I also really thinked critically the tools I am using at work and what could I benefit from. It’s always good to be critical at the tools you are given, even though you would have little to no chances to change them. It was a good run, and I surely will be keeping my eyes more open in the future!