Connect with Meaningful Comments

Hello everyone and welcome to the last module of our course. Now that you have a strong e-potfolio. We are now going to look at the ways that you can use English to network with other professionals online. Networking is an important skill in any field and in any country and it is especially for your professional success. Thanks to social media like Twitter, Instagram and even YouTube, you can start conversation with professionals in your field. To achieve specific purposes, like getting a new job, creating new professional opportunities or exchanging experiences. So over the next couple of lessons, we will focus on how to create dialogue with new people within an online environment. And how to create effective post for new career opportunities. One of the processes of networking with other’s online, is going to other people’s online profiles and seeing their work. Some may have e-portfolios just like you and some may have really interesting social media accounts or blogs. You can network by following individuals or liking what they post. But in order to really make more meaningful conversations and connections. It is important for you to contribute and share your opinions. So in this particular lesson, we are going to learn how to reach out to other professionals by commenting on their works and their post. The comments we’ll work on will include giving a compliment, making a request, and showing appreciation. This type of comment increases your chances of starting a longer conversation. Which in turn, will allow you the opportunity to exchange experiences. Being positive is one important part of many cultures, so positivity will be an important component of your comments. A compliment to somebody else’s work sample is a great way to convey positivity. There are many ways you can write a compliment, the simplest way is to write positive adjectives. Like amazing, awesome, impressive, great or nice, to name a few. These adjectives are very general and do not talk about a specific part of someone’s work. Instead, they can they your personal opinion for the overall quality of a work sample. Using specific adjectives in these comments is not recommended, since you are assessing the overall quality of the work in this situation. Therefore, avoid commenting on specific parts of the work using descriptive adjectives. Like, thin, big, expensive, solid, or bright, to name a few, they are too specific for this type of post. You’re a graphic designer and you see another graphic designer’s work online. Which adjective would you choose to write a compliment? If you guessed c, you’re right. Looking at other’s work and telling them that their work is great helps you network with people. That you might not know, and grow as a professional. Besides writing positive remarks, showing interest on somebody’s work is also part of writing a comment. Questions such as when did you complete that, how did you do it, or what did you use to make this. Show that you’re truly interested about someone’s work. Notice that all these questions start with a WH word. This is because these kinds of questions are used to ask about specific parts of someones work. For example, if you’re commenting on the work of a computer programmer. You could ask what kind of software did you use? You can use yes, no questions such as, did it take a long time to do it or, was it easy? But, these kinds of questions can be answered quickly, so I recommend using questions with wh words. Like who, what, when, where, why, and how. This way, you can create a better opportunity to start a more meaningful conversation with the other professional. Another way you can make the connection continue is, by asking your fellow professionals to comment on your work by writing a request. In this case, you should use question words that are polite. For example, “Could you look at my work?” Or “Would you like to review my e-portfolio?”. Making requests for looking at someone’s work is common in online environments So don’t be shy. And of course return the favor when someone requests that you check theirs. Now, because you know that you’re asking your fellow colleagues for help, you should thank them even before they look at your work. There are many polite ways to say thank you for your help. You could write could you look at my work and let me know what you think. I would greatly appreciate your feedback or your feedback would be appreciated. A thank you sentence in the end may seem unusual to many but it completes your comment on a positive note. And will leave a great impression of you, let’s review. In this lesson, we have learned how to network by commenting on others work. We’ve learned that commenting on others work involves writing compliments, requests, and a thank you sentence. We saw how different question types serve different purposes. In our next lesson we are going to learn how to network to find new job opportunities. I’ll see you then.