How are people using social media to build their careers?

There’s plenty of anecdotal evidence by simply observing the platforms – mainly LinkedIn and Twitter, followed by Facebook and Instagram.

But we live in a data-driven world, and numbers are important. So I ran a survey on the subject in March 2018.

As I tell my mentees in the USC Annenberg mentoring program, some of what I learned in grad school is surprisingly timeless in our fast-changing world.

“Uses of Communications Research” was one of those evergreen courses. My professor, Dr. Sheila Murphy, is with Annenberg today, exploring how message factors, individual level factors, and cultural level factors impact decision making.

One thing that has changed a lot is the functionality of Survey Monkey. It felt gamified in a fun way as I continued editing the survey until the platform gave it a perfect score. It also gave an estimated completion rate and time.

In my next several posts, I’ll share the survey results. This one covers survey goals, methodology, respondents, professional and personal use of social media, and a list of upcoming topics. (Note: opinions expressed in this blog are my own.)

SURVEY GOALS

The main goal of the survey was to learn how fellow professionals are using social media to build their careers. Specifically, it addressed:

1. What social media people use professionally and personally
2. Why they are active on social media professionally
3. How their social media activity has helped their career, others’ careers and their employer.

METHODOLOGY

The survey had 42 questions in 5 sections:

1. Your professional and personal social media use
2. Your approach to privacy
3. How you use social media to build your career
4. Your (open-ended) comments
5. About you

RESPONDENTS

Here’s how people were invited to respond:

1. Posts in this blog
2. A LinkedIn article and follow-up posts for 3,200+ connections and followers
3. A LinkedIn article on the USC Alumni Association page with 46,000 members
4. Tweets, including a pinned one in March, for 2,100+ followers
5. A Facebook post
6. Emails to everyone in my personal email contact list
7. Emails to the Forum-Group for senior-level communicators
8. Emails to the USC Annenberg Alumni Advisory Board
9. Emails to USC Annenberg Alumni Ambassadors

My original goal was to reach 500+ responses. It was humbling to put in so much work and hear from approximately 100 people. But for those respondents, I am extremely grateful. You know who you are, and thank you for being part of this initial experiment!

This is research I may do annually to view trends over time. And I may do a few shorter pulse surveys each quarter on a topic of interest. I’d love to hear from you if there are specific questions you want data on.

Nearly one quarter of the respondents provided their contact info for follow-up interviews. I’ll do those throughout the year and write posts about people who are using social media in innovative ways.

Data points on the respondents

76% are employed full time, 19% own a business, 11% run a side gig. Respondents could choose more than one answer

41% work in media and communications, 12% in marketing, and 8% in business and finance. The survey used occupation groups from the U.S. Department of Labor

24% are managers, 21% are directors, 17% are individual contributors, 16% are business owners, 8% are vice presidents, and 3% are C-Suite

56% have a bachelor’s degree as their highest level of education, and 33% have a master’s degree

45% are Gen X, 29% are Gen Y/Millennials, 18% are Boomers, and 3% are Gen Z/Centennials

59% are women, and 40% are men

In response to “how would you describe yourself?” 67% are white, 10% are Hispanic or Latino, 2% each are African American or Asian, 11% preferred not to answer, and 8% chose “other” and wrote a comment. My favorite ones? “Really? I’m a human,” and “You know this is becoming a trickier question to answer, right?” Yes, absolutely.

PROFESSIONAL AND PERSONAL SOCIAL MEDIA USE

For professional use, not surprisingly, LinkedIn was the #1 platform with 98% using it to build their careers. Twitter was a distant second at 47%. Facebook followed at 34% and Instagram was at 19%. YouTube was 12% and Snapchat was 2%.

Others mentioned in comments were Nextdoor, WordPress, Goodreads, Amazon Author Page, StumbleUpon and about.me.

For personal use, not surprisingly, Facebook was #1 at 88% on the network, followed by 75% on Instagram. Of note, the survey was fielded while the user data controversy news was beginning to be reported about Facebook, which also owns Instagram. As the story plays out, results might be different a few months or a year from now.

By comparison, Facebook is used by 68% of U.S. adults, according to Pew Research Center in February 2018. It also reported that 73% use YouTube, 35% use Instagram, 27% use Snapchat, and 25% use LinkedIn.

Many people blend the personal and professional in a single social media account on a platform – 38% for Twitter, 35% for Facebook and 22% for Instagram.

As far as maintaining separate accounts for professional and personal use on the same platform, 59% DON’T do that. For those who DO maintain separate accounts, 28% do for Facebook, 19% do for Twitter, and 17% do for Instagram.

While some respondents DO blend the professional and personal in social media, this data confirmed that LinkedIn and Twitter lead for professional use and Facebook and Instagram lead for personal use. Respondents also have higher social media usage rates than the general population.

UPCOMING TOPICS

Sharing the data from the survey will fill several upcoming posts. Those posts will then form the basis for a comprehensive report.

Here are the upcoming topics:

• Why people are active in social media and how it’s helped their careers
• How often people visit various sites and how often they post
• What content gets the most engagement and how people increase engagement
• The role and impact of employee advocacy programs
• How people approach privacy

Plus some synthesis of several open-ended questions:

• Do’s and don’ts in social media
• Lifelong learning strategies in social media
• Productivity with social media: boon or bane?
• Using video in social media
• Serendipitous moments in social media
• Bad things that have happened and how people handled them
• The next big thing in social media for career building
• Who’s doing it well? Interview series with some of the survey respondents

What else do you want to know about how people are boosting their careers through social media?