A personal network is a set of human contacts known to an individual, with whom that individual would expect to interact at intervals to support a given set of activities. In other words, a personal network is a group of caring, dedicated people who are committed to maintain a relationship with a person in order to support a given set of activities. Having a strong personal network requires being connected to a network of resources for mutual development and growth.
Personal networks can be understood by:
• who knows you
• what you know about them
• what they know about you
• what are you learning together
• how you work at that
Personal networks are intended to be mutually beneficial, extending the concept of teamwork beyond the immediate peer group. The term is usually encountered in the workplace, though it could apply equally to other pursuits outside work.
Personal networking is the practice of developing and maintaining a personal network, which is usually undertaken over an extended period.
Types of personal network
Personal networks can be used for two main reasons: social and professional. In 2012, LinkedIn along with TNS conducted a survey of 6,000 social network users to understand the difference between personal social networks and personal professional networks. The "Mindset Divide" of users of these networks was compared as follows:
1. Emotions:
Personal social networks: Nostalgia, fun, distraction.
Personal professional networks: Achievement, success, aspiration.
2. Use:
Personal social networks: Users are in a casual mindset often just passing time. They use social networks to socialize, stay in touch, be entertained and kill time.
Personal professional networks: In this purposeful mindset, users invest time to improve themselves and their future. These networks are used to maintain professional identity, make useful contacts, search for opportunities and stay in touch.
3. Content:
Personal professional networks: These provide information about career, brand updates and current affairs.
Personal development networks: These provide access to those who can provide information, knowledge, advice, support, expertise, guidance, and concrete resources to learn and work effectively—thus those who support the continuing professional development.
Personal network management
Personal network management (PNM) is a crucial aspect of personal information management and can be understood as the practice of managing the links and connections for social and professional benefits. Some ways to do this would be:
• being authentic and consistent
• paying attention to status updates
• following wisely
• contributing
• seeking to be worth knowing
• appropriate tagging
Tools for personal network management
Although it is easy to build a network, the real challenge is maintaining and leveraging the connections. Information fragmentation makes it this even more challenging. Information fragmentation refers to the difficulty encountered in ensuring co-operation and keeping track of different personal information assets (e.g. Facebook, Twitter etc.)
According to Dan Schawbel, there is a lot of value in a contact management system. It "allows you to keep organized and aware of which contacts you haven't spoken to in a while, and who works at companies that you either want to collaborate with, or work for". In many ways, a contact manager can incorporate new, innovative services to not only help users take a smarter approach to meeting new people but also transmit readily available information from social media profiles directly into that contact profile. Some of the apps that are available on mobile and desktop devices are Plaxo, Evernote Hello, Smartr, Tacts and Soocial.
Ref: Wikipedia
