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Rick Telberg of CPATrendlines recently caught up with Gregory L. LaFollette, CPA, CITP, Executive Editor of The Progressive Accountant and asked him about his thoughts on Social Media and Public Accounting. Hear what he had to say by clicking play below:

So, what are your thoughts? Is social media a valid medium or should we categorize it as a time waster? Keep in mind that it wasn’t too long ago that people were discounting email and the uses of it in the business world.

I remember when I first got into recruiting there were several occasions when Controllers that I was speaking with did not have a business email address for me to email my contact information to them. Even worse, the “Recruiting Gurus” were telling Recruiters at the time to not email resumes but to fax resumes and then talk through the resume with the client or just call the client and talk through the resume without them even being able to view it in front of them.

Those same industry guru’s are now telling there recruiters to use email blasts, newsletters and set up Linkedin accounts.

3 Tips for Using Any Social Media Site

1. Watch Your Time. The amount of information is over-whelming when you join these various social media sites. Before you know it you have spent several hours and not really accomplished a whole lot.

2. Be a Middle of the Pack Player. Don’t jump on too early to every single social media site as it is introduced. Give them time to work out the kinks and gain some popularity first. Most people saw Twitter as a goobleguke of information that was for computer nerds or instant message teenagers who had too much time on their hands. Then not long after Oprah and President Obama started using Twitter publicly did the real phenomena really begin to take shape. At the same time, don’t be a late player to everything that happens in life. Change is inevitable, just make your move at the right time.

2. Do a blog search for fast learning. I have learned the greatest amount of information in the shortest period of time just by doing a blog search. Blogs are typically between 200-700 word articles that normally take complicated topics and break them down into easy to follow steps. The best way to do is search is to head over to google and type in:

“Twitter Job Search Blog”

By adding “blog” to your search string it will bring up blogs that have posts about the information you are seeking. If you want a simple 5 step plan for using Linkedin for your job search click on my free resource to the right of this page.

My Question To You

So, what are your thoughts? Will social media change public accounting or accounting more in the next ten years then email has in the last decade? Would love to hear your comments below.