This is guest post from Rob Hanson, a web developer based in Grimsby. Rob is also involved in GeekUp, “a community of web designers, web developers, and other tech-minded folk from the UK”.

With the abundance of social networking web sites and ways to access them, using social media is becoming ever easier. These are not just social and promotional tools, they can also be very useful tools for improving your knowledge base in whatever area you choose.

Take Twitter for instance. I use Twitter a lot, and not purely from a social angle either.

“Aaah, Twitter. Isn’t that just for seeing what celebrities had for breakfast?”

Yes, it can be, if that is all you want from it.

One of my biggest uses for networking these days is to increase my knowledge on a specific subject. I’m involved in producing websites for small to medium enterprises, and I follow a number of web designers, web developers and graphic designers on Twitter.

I follow them not just for their more mundane tweets – although they can be fun too – but for the information they freely impart to their followers. This might relate to how they solved a coding problem, an idea they had for something new, something that inspired them…You get the idea.

Online beats offline?

“Ok, so I’m signed up with Twitter & dozens of other social networking sites. Can I stop all this ‘real life’ networking now?”

Actually, no. Not if you want to make the best of your connections. Online social media is great to a point, but there’s really no substitute for face-to-face interaction. Don’t get me wrong, the online networks are a great way to broaden your ‘friend base’, but I still reckon I get way more from an hour having a coffee with someone than two hours online.

The best of both worlds

“Now I’m confused. So I don’t actually need to bother with Twitter & the other sites at all?”

It’s simple really: online and offline work brilliantly when used together.

Here’s an example: I recently decided to improve my knowledge of CSS & HTML (they’re programming languages for those not in the know), and a trawl through Twitter produced a number of people tweeting information & links on those very subjects.

Chatting with them online has led me to meet some people local to me who can benefit from my knowledge and who can in turn help me improve my knowledge in just the areas I wanted – all without hours spent poring over Google Results and clicking through to countless websites that wouldn’t be quite what I wanted.

Tweetups and other gatherings

A quick way to meet like minded folks is to use one of the online methods such as Twitter to set up a meeting at a local pub or coffee house (if organised through Twitter, they are often called ‘tweetups’).

If you’re not keen on the idea of instigating such an event yourself, a couple of great resources to help you find relevant events in your area are Twitter Search (use this facility to search for relevant keywords along with mentions of towns local to you) and Upcoming (a user generated directory of local events).

Pretty much all other social networking sites come with some kind of search facility or events section, but if you’re struggling just send out a post asking about future events.

Just do it

I guess my main message is: go do it! All of the ways I’ve mentioned can help you improve your level of knowledge on a subject of interest to you, not to mention broaden your horizons too…and it’s fun. So, give it a try – you may be pleasantly surprised at the results.

This post is part of a week-long series of guest posts on the topic of real world networking. Read all about it here: Online networking is booming, so why network in the real world?