Mentoring Through Social Media – Part II

I have a love/hate affair with social media, as mentioned in my previous blog.  For me, mentoring is personal.  One of my challenges with putting mentoring out in social media is finding a way to personalize the interchange so a mentoring relationship can be formed and flourish.   For many people, mentoring = 1:1, face-to-face contact.  (I am one of those people.)  I do belong to an online mentoring network, but I haven’t seen any action there for some time.  To find out more, I posted a challenge question to the group.

I asked, “How helpful is this LinkedIn mentoring group for you?  As a learning and development professional with a passion for mentoring, I would to like hear from students and other alumni.  How can we get involved to make a difference for all of you?”  Three days went by with no response.  I tried again.  This time I said, “In my post last week, I said that I would like to hear from students and alumni, but the silence is deafening so far.”  Then, about a dozen comments streamed in – all from alumni, one of who was actually matched with a student!  There were lots of good suggestions for how to get more students involved.  As a result, we were assured by the group facilitator that we would be seeing some changes.  But how useful will it be, really?  We’ll see…

Mentoring Through Social Media – Part I

Social media is one of those things that I either love or hate – sometimes both.  There’s LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and now Pinterest.  Social media is a great way to keep in touch, make new virtual connections, and explore ideas.  However, there are days when it takes up way too much of my time.  This past week, I was touched when someone that worked with me several years ago reached out to me via one of those social media.  His message said that he just wanted to thank me for having made a difference for him.  He had some other very nice things to say.  His kind comments were humbling and gave me pause.  Am I making the best use of all the tools available to me to advance mentoring now?  I know I could be a more active participant in an online mentoring group that I belong to.  (Have I been too busy exploring Pinterest?)  I could post more of my mentoring materials to this blog.  I know for certain that I will do what Don did for me, and that is to thank some of the people who made a difference as mentors for me!  Other ideas?!!

Social Media Mentoring?

Last fall, Career Services at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh started a Mentor Network through LinkedIn.  The objective of the group is to facilitate connecting interested students (mentees) with alumni (mentors).   I am an alum, so of course, I joined the group!  Over the past several months, I’ve read entries by alumni who are interested in sharing their knowledge and experience, but so far, I haven’t witnessed a lot of student activity in the group.  This surprises me because I had expected that computer savvy students would be jumping at the opportunity to exploit their skills and knowledge to make connections with graduates in their major area of study.  Are students too busy?  Maybe they don’t even know the group exists?  Could it be that alumni with the right majors haven’t joined the group or made their willingness to be a mentor more widely known?  Do students appreciate the value of networking in making career decisions or launching a successful job search?  Or —- is social media really the best vehicle for building a mentoring relationship?  What do you think?

Let me know your thoughts on this topic.  I’d be interested in hearing from anyone with experience in social media mentoring.