John's Blog

Many of my peers still do not understand why I spend time blogging, tweeting, and using LinkedIn.  It's simple, if you are not spending time on these key social networks you are quickly becoming obsolete.  Maybe it's time to consider a new career path, teaching people sailing in the Sahara desert perhaps?

As a CTO, what value do I receive by spending time on Social networks?

• Take a moment and read a recent post of mine regarding my Twitter Engagement Index (http://johnfmoore.wordpress.com/2009/07/21/johns-twitter-engagement-index/ ).  This will provide you with some insight on my overall goals and a little deeper dive on twitter success metrics.
• Education.  Given the pace of technology change CTOs and CIOs must be voracious readers.  I track more than 50 RSS feeds on a daily basis and I am generally on top of what is taking place in the world.  I supplement this information by tracking key topics on Twitter (Social CRM, CRM, SharePoint, and Leadership).  If something happens in the industries I care about, I know it.
• Networking.  If you want to advance your personal and corporate efforts it is critical that you build relationships.  In the past, if you wanted to network, your best bet was to travel from conference to conference.  Face to face contact remains the best form of networking, but you can supplement this by commenting on LinkedIn groups, tweeting on Twitter, blogging on relevant topics, etc...

Alright, you might be willing to concede that social networking is superior for self-education and networking, so what?  As a CTO my weekly challenges include:

• Recruiting.  The investment in networking makes these efforts easier.
• Coding.  I code in C#, JavaScript, SQL, etc. on a daily basis.  Still, I am far from an expert and I am sure I never will be.  When I get stuck I supplement my web searches with social searches.  My favorite example took place when I was chatting with my CEO about tools to solve a particular problem.  While we were chatting I quickly asked my Twitter community about the topic at hand.  Within 60 seconds an answer was in front of me.  No time spent thinking about how to phrase the question for Google, just the answer I needed.
• Planning for the future.  I have strong opinions about what the CRM industry will look like in 5 years and I intend to have a major impact on achieving these goals.  With that said, my views are regularly evolving, based upon the discussions I have, and the articles I read.

Hopefully I have convinced you to invest your time on social networking.  Let me know how it goes.

John