If you attended this years’s SHRM national conference this year, chances are you’re getting a good sense of the shift to social in the global HR community. Whether you visited a Smart Bar in The Hive to get some one on one social media guidance from one of the many volunteers, sat next to someone feverishly ‘live tweeting’ on the iPad during a session, or tweeted yourself – social was omnipresent at SHRM 12. This is a great thing. Why?

SHRM had an epic turnout this year with over 10,000 attendees. Many more couldn’t attend a particular session (thanks to a great many options) or couldn’t make the conference this year. Most sessions have at least several attendees live tweeting content, so it can be shared with anyone not in the session. Live tweeting is the act of tweeting noteworthy content from a particular session or conference using a hashtag (like #SHRM12). Anyone can follow that hashtag and see a collection of tweets on that subject. This gives anyone with a computer or smartphone an opportunity to learn from what’s being shared.

As the community of global HR Twitter users grow, the ability to share more information with each other grows as well. I had the pleasure of speaking with several Twitter newbies at the Smart Bar this week and was asked the same question by each of them. Why should I be on Twitter? Everyone’s objectives with social media are different, but here are my main two reasons why every HR professional should be on Twitter – learning and networking.

I covered the learning aspect above. The networking piece is what you take home with you. You’ve all met some great peers the past few days. Don’t let those relationships fade away. Connect on LinkedIn, Follow on Twitter, connect on Google Plus (okay that was a joke). With social media, the learning and relationships last long beyond the 4 days you spent at SHRM12.

Let’s Do The Numbers

I wanted to take a look at the engagement on Twitter the past 3 SHRM’s, as well as a deeper dive into the #SHRM12 hashtag, to see how engagement has grown.

SHRM10 – *1,149 tweets

SHRM11 – *2,830 tweets

SHRM12 – *10,000+ tweets (*7,637 tweets in past 7 days) **659 unique contributors

* Stats from Topsy.com

** Stats from SocialBro

Let’s dig a little deeper into the #SHRM12 hashtag courtesy of TweetCharts.com.

• 61.4% of the tweets included an @ mention
• 31.5% of the tweets were re-tweets
• 9.6% contained a video or photo
• 52.75% of the mentioned users were male, 47.25% female.
• Top 5 mentions: @JerrySeinfeld @SHRMSocMedGuy @JimStroud @HRBartender @SHRM
• Top 5 sources: Twitter for iPhone, Hootsuite, web browser, Twitter for Android, Tweetdeck