by Caroline Leach | Apr 22, 2018 | Learning, Social Media
What did you share in social media in the last week? How did your network respond? What did your analytics look like?
In part 3 of this series of posts on social media research I did in March 2018, I’ll share the data relevant to those questions.
Part 1 in this series covered the survey goals, methodology, respondents, and professional and personal social media use.
Part 2 looked at the reasons why people are active in social media to boost their careers.
Part 3 in this series covers:
- What types of LinkedIn content get the most engagement
- What topics on LinkedIn get the most engagement, and
- Strategies to increase engagement with your social media content, regardless of the platform.
How is engagement defined? It’s likes, comments and shares of your content.
LinkedIn content types that get the most engagement
By far, Sharing an article was the type of LinkedIn content that gets the most engagement, with 68% of respondents choosing it.
In second place, half of that at 34% said Sharing a photo.
Tied for third place was Sharing an idea and Resharing content of others at 22%.
In last place was Sharing a video at 19%. This surprised me the most, given how popular video content has become. However, the addition of video has only come to LinkedIn in the last year, so it’s still relatively early days. I expect to see this percentage grow over time, as more people experiment with video content.
Some of the comments added great ideas to the mix:
“On the job photos, specifically of participation at a company event, with a company leader, or an interesting ‘behind the scenes’ moment.”
“Articles on industry thought leadership topics get read/liked/shared by my peers.”
“Content that congratulates or promotes and tags others in exemplary work.”
LinkedIn topics that get the most engagement
The topics in LinkedIn content that attract the most engagement are:
- Industry trends (48%)
- Leadership (34%)
- News about your employer (30%)
This confirms two of the top three reasons people are active in social media to boost their careers – accessing news about your industry and profession (81%) and learning continually about your industry and profession (77%).
Strategies to increase engagement with your content
Lastly, what are effective ways to increase engagement with your social media content, regardless of the platform?
Two strategies rose to the top:
- Tag people in the post, if they’re in an accompanying photo or video (75%)
- Mention relevant people in the post (65%)
Some of the comments offered up more ideas:
“Hashtags generate interest, especially from young professionals.”
“When people are authentic with their voice and message and thank (tag) the people who helped contribute to the project or idea get a lot of organic engagement.”
“Provide my point of view when sharing an article – not a headline, but instead an insightful suggest that might entice someone to read it. Ask a question.”
Two strategies that were only selected by 20% of respondents are actions that I have found valuable in increasing engagement.
First is to tag people in the post, even if they’re not in the accompanying photo or video. Why? This alerts them to content that may be of interest to them or their network.
The caveat here is not to overuse this strategy to the point that it becomes annoying to others. A way to decide? When someone you’ve tagged multiple times does not engage with your content.
A group of people who do a great job tagging people in posts are colleagues at my employer. (Note: opinions expressed in this blog are my own). Sarita Rao, John Starkweather, Sarah Groves, John Stancliffe, Eisaiah Engel, and Knox Keith are a few good examples. By tagging relevant people in their LinkedIn and Twitter content, they make sure that their content is seen by a wider audience.
Second is to sent separate, tailored messages to relevant people, alerting them of the post. This strategy I learned from others who sent me brief direct messages in LinkedIn to tell me about an article and why I might be interested in it. They did not specifically ask me to like, comment on, or share their content. But if I found value in the article, I engaged with it.
Many people commented that they don’t post frequently as a career-building strategy. One respondent said, “I have not built the confidence yet to post my own ideas in LinkedIn. I’m trying to figure out my voice before posting my ideas and also what I want to represent with my personal brand.”
An easy way to get started with content updates is by tapping into an employee advocacy program, if your employer offers one. These programs serve up ready-make, on-brand content that you can share as is in your social networks, or add your point of view.
The next post in this series will share how survey respondents are taking advantage of employee advocacy. How are you using it?
by Caroline Leach | Apr 15, 2018 | Learning, Social Media
Why are people active on social media professionally?
This post answers that question, based on a survey I fielded in March 2018.
The main goal? To learn how fellow professionals are using social media to build their careers.
In this series of posts on the survey results, part 1 addressed the survey goals, methodology, respondents, and professional and personal social media use.
Now let’s turn to why people are active in social media to boost their careers.
Respondents could choose as many answers as applied, including an “other” option asking them to specify.
The top 3 reasons?
- Build a network (86%)
- Access news about your industry and profession (81%)
- Learn continually about your industry and profession (77%)
Lower down the list that I expected were:
- Find a new job (47%)
- Establish yourself as a thought leader (46%)
- Raise your visibility among key decision makers at your employer (40%)
- Position yourself for a promotion (11%)
- Change careers (10%)
It surprised me that Establish yourself as a thought leader wasn’t higher than its spot as the #5 reason. Because social media offers such a significant opportunity to share content and establish thought leadership, I hope and expect to see this number grow in the future.
In fact, it could even be considered the flip side of Learn continually about your industry and profession. In comments, many respondents wrote that they sought out and followed thought leaders for continual learning.
Here’s what a few said:
“I follow key leaders within my company on LinkedIn and Twitter, as well as best-selling authors and speakers and influential business men and women to know what’s happening in our industry, but also learn career advice that will help anyone regardless of industry.”
“I read articles daily on LinkedIn to find out more about my industry and learn about other industries I’m interested in.”
“I follow several thought leaders on social media … and they help me expand my horizons and my thinking, hopefully to the benefit of my entire team!”
With so many people looking to social media to continually learn new information that’s relevant to their career and industry, that creates an opportunity for YOU.
How so? If you’re not already sharing your experience and expertise in social media, consider what you could share that would add value to others who are looking to learn.
Are there questions that colleagues often ask you that tap into your expertise? This could be a place to start in thinking about the types of content you could share.
And you can begin with small steps. LinkedIn is a great place. From your home feed, share an article, photo, video or idea. Or experiment with posting an article once a quarter during the calendar year. See how your network responds and adjust your approach. More content ideas are in my post about engaging topics for LinkedIn.
You can try to same thing with Twitter. Share an idea, an article or a video. Keep it simple by sharing your LinkedIn content in Twitter as well, tailoring it for the micro-blogging, shorter format on Twitter.
Be sure that any information you share is appropriate to be posted in public, in alignment with your organization’s social media guidelines. (Note: opinions express in this blog are my own.)
Other great learning strategies that respondents mentioned:
- Join LinkedIn groups of interest and be an active participant
- View Twitter trending topics
- Tap into YouTube for how-to videos
- Follow influencers, brands and trade publications
- Check out competitor company social media activity
- Search hashtags, even attending events virtually by following hashtags
It was exciting to see the focus on continual learning in the survey results.
Why?
My post on telling your career story in Instagram, cited a 2017 report by the Institute for the Future. It estimates that 85% of the jobs people will do in 2030 haven’t even been invented yet.
That’s only 12 years away. Even if this estimate turns out to be much lower than 85%, there’s still a lot of learning we all need to do!
Speaking of learning, “a blog is a learning process,” says career blogger Penelope Trunk in her online course called Reach Your Goals by Blogging. “A blog is a document of how you’re becoming an expert.”
She also says, “you MUST learn something in each post. Write and write and write until something surprises you. The ending is your “a-ha” moment.”
My learning moments? My surprises?
First is discovering that the process of writing these posts about my survey is serving as an additional layer of analysis, beyond reading and thinking about the results. Writing about the results makes me think about them in new and different ways, perhaps because it’s more active.
This led to my second learning moment – connecting continual learning with thought leadership. In simply reading through the responses, I did not reach that conclusion. Yet it became clear that one was the flip side of the other, once I could see the words on screen in this post.
If you need a compelling reason to start establishing yourself as a thought leader, here it is …
People are seeking thought leaders, we all need to learn continually, and you have insights to share.
When you share them, you learn yourself, contribute to your network and start to establish yourself as an expert.
What will you share in the week ahead?
by Caroline Leach | Apr 10, 2018 | Learning, Social Media
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:
- What social media people use professionally and personally
- Why they are active on social media professionally
- How their social media activity has helped their career, others’ careers and their employer.
METHODOLOGY
The survey had 42 questions in 5 sections:
- Your professional and personal social media use
- Your approach to privacy
- How you use social media to build your career
- Your (open-ended) comments
- About you
RESPONDENTS
Here’s how people were invited to respond:
- Posts in this blog
- A LinkedIn article and follow-up posts for 3,200+ connections and followers
- A LinkedIn article on the USC Alumni Association page with 46,000 members
- Tweets, including a pinned one in March, for 2,100+ followers
- A Facebook post
- Emails to everyone in my personal email contact list
- Emails to the Forum-Group for senior-level communicators
- Emails to the USC Annenberg Alumni Advisory Board
- 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?
by Caroline Leach | Apr 5, 2018 | Social Media
Do you think your career story doesn’t lend itself to Instagram?
Do you believe your days full of meetings and screens aren’t visually compelling?
After all, Instagram is about high-quality photos and the overall vibe, say Brian Peters and Hailley Griffis in one of my favorite podcasts, The Science of Social Media.
The aesthetic bar is high. One strategy Brian and Hailley recommend is doing research to find top accounts and see what’s working for others.
Here’s a great way to fast track the research on people who are using Instagram well to tell their career stories: check out the Instagram for the Sparkset App.
Here you can see all kinds of work in a visual way. Lawyers, doctors, communicators, marketers, editors, social media analysts, cinematographers, scientists and many more are featured in the site’s posts.
Beyond that, you can check out the 1,700+ accounts that Sparkset App is following for more great examples.
Together, they show that your workspace, your presentations, your travels, and your interactions with people, data and things – plus so much more – are all ways to tell your professional story in a visual way.
Be sure, of course, to only post what can be shared in public. Always follow your employer’s social media guidelines, both the letter and the spirit. (Opinions expressed in this blog are my own.)
How did I find Sparkset?
In doing research about how people are using social media to build their careers, I invited people in my network to complete a survey and share it with their networks.
As a serendipitous outcome, Tom Henkenius, a storytelling expert, introduced me to a fellow USC alum in his network. Her name is Tiffany Frake, a senior account director serving the auto industry.
Tiffany’s three young sons were the inspiration for her to launch an app called Sparkset. Fascinated by how people choose their career paths – or mostly don’t consciously choose them – she wanted to help her children and others make better decisions.
Enter Sparkset.
As Tiffany explains, “It’s a visual platform for current and future generations to truly explore careers and job shadow professionals in a virtual way.”
Here you can:
- Job shadow contacts and professionals from around the world
- Explore and follow professionals in different industries
- Visually capture your professional responsibilities and accomplishments
- Discover new careers and companies.
Tiffany has a big vision. “The hope is that the platform can enable people to make conscious career choices,” she says, “and not just follow the path of least resistance.”
This is especially important as people make decisions about their first jobs, their next career steps, and their career transitions as their interests and the world change at an ever-increasing pace.
A 2017 report by the Institute for the Future estimates that 85% of the jobs people will do in 2030 haven’t even been invented yet. More than ever, we’re all lifelong learners. And we can share what we’re learning as one way of cultivating our personal brand.
When Tiffany embarked on this journey, she did research about current gaps in social media for developing a career and making valuable connections.
She asked two questions. The first: can people tell their professional stories through images? The second: who is doing this well?
She has captured her ongoing learnings in both her app and her Instagram. In each you can see all kinds of day-to-day work in a visual way.
Who else is sharing their career story well on Instagram? A few of my favorites …
TeNita Ballard, a diversity and inclusion champion
Chris Adlam, a top-producing realtor
Jessica Sterling, an LA event and portrait photographer
Young Guru, a hip-hop sound engineer and renaissance thinker
Willow Bay, dean of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism
Jaime Lee, president of the USC Alumni Association Board of Governors
This brings up several more questions for me …
- How are people coming up with compelling content?
- How are they curating content from others?
- How are they using video?
- How are they thinking about the personal and professional blend?
These and many more will be the subjects of future posts.
In the meantime, whose professional stories are you following on Instagram?
by Caroline Leach | Mar 21, 2018 | Learning, Social Media
When it comes to social media innovation, I’m inspired by many colleagues at my employer.
One of those groups is Marketing Communications in Business Marketing. The team’s VP, Sarita Rao (pictured above), gets her far-flung team together on a regular basis for “open mic” meetings.
Last fall I got to work with John Starkweather, Sarah Groves, John Stancliffe, Knox Keith and others as influencers during The Summit, a ground-breaking inaugural event for the company’s business customers. Every day, I learn more about how to kill it in social media from this group.
So it was an honor when Sarah Groves invited me to do an open mic session at Sarita’s team meeting this month in Dallas at the company’s headquarters.
Here’s what Sarah asked and how the dialogue took shape.
How did you get started using social?
A few years ago, my colleagues and I launched a social business platform, to enable people to collaborate and work in new ways.
Just a few of the key contributors were Michael Ambrozewicz, Thyda Nhek Vanhook, Frank Palase, Brian Ulm, Miriam Smith, John Cloyd and Alan Lewis.
We did a pilot program before launch. Not surprisingly, there was the to-be-expected resistance to chance.
I launched a blog, for two reasons. One was to role model behaviors that fellow leaders and employees could follow. Another was to learn how to do it so I could advise our CEO and others on how to reach a broad audience through blogging.
Over time I discovered I enjoyed the process of learning through blogging, sharing that journey, and connecting with people throughout the company.
Three years later, I started my external blog at carolineleach.com. A few years after that, I began repurposing my blog content as weekly LinkedIn articles, in order to reach a broader audience.
One thing that’s important about blogging and any social media activity is to know and follow your company’s social media policies.
Generally, that will mean not sharing any information that is confidential or private, and making it clear that the opinions you express are your own and not the company’s. (Note: opinions expressed in this blog are my own).
When in doubt about the wisdom of sharing specific content, err on the conservative side and leave it out.
How do you fit social into your life? How much time do you spend on it?
It’s ideal to have a social media plan, and make social part of every day. Gary Vaynerchuk advocates simply documenting what you’re doing, rather than attempting to create all kinds of content.
Depending what goals you want to accomplish in social media, you can spent as little or as much time as your calendar and your lifestyle can accommodate.
My week in social looks like this:
Weekend blog post on carolineleach.com (this is easy to do when you have teens at home who sleep in, as I do, which gives me quiet mornings to write)
Wednesday LinkedIn article, repurposed from my blog and set up on Tuesday evening to post the following day
Daily scroll through LinkedIn home feed, liking, commenting on and sharing relevant content by people in my network and for people in my network
One tweet a day, plus looking at trending news in the morning and afternoon
A daily look at my employer’s Social Circle employee advocacy app to check for content I might want to share in my social networks
A few posts during the week on LinkedIn, as well as on Instagram, which is generally more personal in nature. Now I’m intrigued by and researching how people are using Instagram in their professional lives.
Some of this activity can be combined with other activities. For example …
If I’m waiting in line at the company cafeteria, I’ll scroll through my LinkedIn feed and maybe I’ll retweet something I see in Twitter
When I attend an event, I share pictures of speakers along with their best soundbites, or I share pictures or videos of other attendees
When I’m catching up with reading over the weekend, I share relevant articles in Twitter and LinkedIn.
What’s your recommendation for getting started?
Begin with your LinkedIn profile. Complete every field, until LinkedIn identifies your profile as “All-Star.” You’ll see “All-Star” noted in the upper right of the dashboard section of your profile, which only you can see.
You don’t have to complete your profile all at once. You can set aside time each week to work on one section at a time. Start from the top and work down, addressing these areas:
Your LinkedIn profile is ever evolving, as you and your career grow and change. Target adding something new to your profile every month, whether it’s a link to a company news release that relates to a project you worked on or an article sharing your expertise and thought leadership.
How do you see social playing a role for all employees driving engagement and advocacy for the company going forward?
Everyone can be a brand ambassador in social media. In addition to building your own career and championing the achievements of your colleagues, you can share the great news about your employer.
In the process, you can also get to know people in your company and beyond that it might otherwise be hard to meet.
If you have an employee advocacy program at your company, that’s an easy way to get started with on-target content. You can always customize it a bit with your personal take on the news and information, tailoring it for your networks.
Don’t forget to include the relevant hashtags for you and/or your employer, to maximize the reach of your content.
How do you know what you want to be known for?
You can ask yourself a few questions, to identify one or two subject areas you want to be known for in social media and in real life.
- What topics are important for success in your current role?
- What topics will be important for success in your likely future role?
- What topics are you naturally drawn to and interested in?
Here’s an example from my own career journey. This blog began in 2015 as an exploration of the future of corporate communications as a corporate vice president of that function.
When my employer was acquired later that year, I had the opportunity to move into marketing analytics. My blog then pivoted to learning more about that field. What then became paramount for me was learning how to learn quickly, which I explored in this blog.
As I searched for the topic I most wanted to explore, I was inspired by hearing Reese Witherspoon talk at a Fullscreen Media event in 2016.
She was asked about how she’s been super successful in social media. And she talked about social media content creation for people as being a big white space that’s not fully being filled right now.
That prompted a lightbulb moment for me. My blog then evolved into exploring how people are using social media to build their careers. And here we are today.
What blogs do you read?
This question made me realize I’ve migrated from reading blogs over to listening to podcasts. So I reacquainted myself with the folder of favorite blogs on my iPhone …
My favorite podcasts are an eclectic mix …
The Daily from The New York Times and Michael Barbaro every weekday morning to dip into a timely topic in the news.
The Science of Social Media, every Monday from Brian Peters and Hailley Griffis from Buffer. It’s “a weekly sandbox for social media stories, insights, experimentation and inspiration.”
Disrupt Yourself by Whitney Johnson.
Hidden Brain by Shankar Vedantum.
The Tim Ferris Show
If you have other podcasts to recommend, please leave me a comment. I’m always looking for new ideas to explore through podcasts.
And on that note, how are you killing it in social media?
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