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One of the main reasons people give to avoid using online social networking tools at work is lack of time. This post gives four ways you can play a part in your organisation's learning network, without requiring much time to do so. In fact, some of them may even save you time!
Use the tools provided to increase your speed
As you're looking things up and learning stuff, you'll find items that would be useful to your colleagues. Many social applications come with bookmarklets, or small programmes that let you quickly post a link. In my case, I use bit.ly to easily post links to Twitter. Two clicks and it's done.
You can do the same with extensions in Chrome or Firefox. It's even easier on mobile devices, which have social integration at their heart.
Feed your posts to the right people
If you're using Yammer or similar applications, they often come with a means of automatically filtering your Twitter posts, and pulling them into the organisation's internal social network. This is great if you have an organisation where people are less likely to be on Twitter, but are happy to use the internal tools.
Build connections, and exploit them (nicely)
Once you've got a network of people you follow, and people who follow you, then start using it to ask questions. You'll find that those questions will quickly fly around the organisation, and you'll get answers from people a number of network connections away from you. This is especially true if you find those people who act as the hubs on your social network. They won't have the answers, but they will have the connections to get those answer. (See: Wikipedia - properties of small world networks)
Stop answering the same question many times
If you've answered a question by email, then that knowledge only exists between you and the recipients. If you answer it on a blog, on in a video post, then that knowledge is made available to the rest of the organisation. If the same question comes back to you, then you can easily point people towards the answer.
