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As a Project manager you need to keep in touch with messages from clients, stakeholders, developers and team members, arranging meetings, keeping up with project updates. This takes a lot of time, in fact you could say that this makes up most of your job. There are emails to check and send, phone calls to make, meetings to attend, information and reports to chase.

Having done all the above, you then need to update your project plan, communicate the updates to senior managers and stakeholders, creating reports, communicate the progress of the project. Knowing the importance of personal relations, you probably wish you had more time to talk face to face with important clients, but your time gets eaten away with endless e-mails, phone calls and meetings. Not only that, you will need to keep on top of being able to locate and distribute the latest updates of documents for yourself and for your team.

This will not only eat up your time, all the emails and updates need to be read by your team members and it will subsequently eat up their time too. If they are unsure about whether they have the latest updates they must contact you directly, probably by email again to make sure they are up to date with project changes and deadlines. They may lose emails or miss them in the ocean of updates. This will keep you even busier as you may feel the need to check receipt of messages.

Project managers are busy people sometimes it’s easy to get stuck in a rut, endlessly trying to keep the ball rolling, much too busy in fact to contemplate strategy or your team’s motivation. You probably work long hours, and worry about work after you get home.

Using social media can enhance the value project managers bring to their organisations.

Using a Web-based project management system

How about taking a deep breath, forget about the pressure and the race and take a moment to think about your project routine differently. Imagine a world where you only receive a small percentage of those emails that need reading in the morning. Imagine using a Web-based project management system. Using such a system allows everyone to check the project progress online, no matter where in the world they are, no matter what time it is, and no matter whether they are senior executives, or an individual with a small role to play. With such a system in place team members could update their progress online keeping the project plan up-to-date.

Click here for the Top 5 Project Management Apps that connect with Google Apps – using these you can connect your project to GMail, Google Docs and Google Calendar.

Create a Project Blog

WordPress is so simple and free, consider creating a project blog. Here you can publish your project development vision.  Is a very simple method of getting feedback from team members, it allows collaborative discussions. Here you may be able to identify potential problems early on and deal with them before they get bigger. Team members could share their ideas and project-relevant thoughts.

Consider using Skype or Google+

The great things about Skype are instant messaging, call and video conferencing features all in one place. Of course if all of your team members had a Google+ account you could use hangouts instead. You can hold virtual meetings with team members and global customers.

Consider using Twitter, Google+ or other microblogging systems

Team members can use team members use it to report what they are working on real-time. You can allocate a project project hash tags to ask project specific questions. Team members can share links to files they are working on. Google+ would be ideal for this as you can create circles for key stakeholders, departments, senior management etc. You can share these circles with the appropriate people and then you can send messages and with just the relevant circles, or you can make announcements to all of your circles documents. Team members can ask for help and advice here, and everybody can check and create updates from their phones. It’s instant, it’s free and available to check whenever and wherever you may be.

Consider using a Project Wiki

Avoid document version confusion with a project wiki. Your wiki can become a universal reference resource. Its advantages are that it’s easily searchable, editable, and available.

Consider using Social Media channels to build relationships

As maintaining personal relationships is so important for any project manager. Think about using Facebook, Google+, Twitter and LinkedIn, and check in now and again to stay connected.

Social Media encourages and enables collaboration

The more your team collaborates and communicates the fewer mistakes they will make, the more they will share and understand project goals and objectives. There will be much more of a sense of community even when team members may not even be working on the same continent. Team members will begin to recognise each other even if they have never met in person. Those who are experts in particular fields will stand out so that other team members will know where to go to ask advice.  As a project manager if you use these social and collaborative tools you will also establish yourself clearly as a project leader that your team members will respect.

Use Social Media to learn from your peers

Find other project management thought leaders on twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.

Know when to turn off

Make sure that you have a purpose and a plan for everything you do using social media networks, otherwise you will begin to waste all the time you have saved!

Manage your social media activity by downloading this free Social Media Schedule. There is also a great list of social media management tools to help you keep track of your accounts.

Be careful what you publish and who can see it.

It’s important to understand what information is public and choose friends wisely.

Conclusion

Social networking sites are powerful communication tools for project managers. There are over 3,000 groups related to project management on LinkedIn. Social media allows businesses and organisations to efficiently, organise and deploy teams, collaborating across borders and between departments.

If you are new to Project Management you may be interested in our Project Management Training, Microsoft Project or PRINCE2 courses.

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Tags

PRINCE2 Training, Project Management, project management training, social media

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