by Caroline Leach | Mar 30, 2020 | Careers, Social Media
Life can change in an instant.
A month ago, who knew we’d be staying at home to help flatten the curve of coronavirus?
Yet as humans we’re wired for connection. Without it, we wither away. So how can we keep in touch in a responsible way when we need to practice social distancing?
It’s a question I’ve been wrestling with during the last few weeks. Why? I believe in sharing content on social media only when there’s something interesting, informative, and/or inspirational to say. It’s about being a bit of a social media contrarian, and doing something different from others. That’s why I’ve been quieter than usual on social media.
I’ve been observing, thinking, and questioning. What does coronavirus and its many implications mean for us? Where are we headed? How will our world change? What are ways we can get ahead of it? How can we help ourselves and others during turbulent times?
In the midst of taking it all in, I noticed something counter-intuitive on LinkedIn. Even though I’m posting less content, my profile views started to increase.
In “normal times,” the less often I posted, the fewer profile views I got. However, I started seeing the opposite. What was turning this social media “truth” on its head in the last few weeks?
To help find out, I decided to connect with some of the people who viewed my profile. As is my practice and recommendation, I sent personalized invitations. I thanked people for viewing my profile, commented on something I could find in common, and asked to connect with them.
The speed of people’s replies surprised me, especially on a Sunday evening. The more heartfelt and open nature of people’s replies were also surprising and touching.
This underscored what in retrospect should have been obvious — people are hungering. And not only that. Depending on their industry, they often have more time to establish professional relationships.
Technology in various forms, including social media, gives us multiple opportunities for connection. Here are a few ideas …
Reach out to one or two people each day
An email or a text to touch base with someone can be a real day brightener — for the recipient and for you. Ideally, that message is sent without any agenda other than to say hello and check on how they’re doing.
Of course, share a bit about what’s new with you and how you’re adjusting to our stay-at-home world. Include a photo or a short video if that makes sense.
You could also take it to another level and connect via Zoom, Skype, or other video-based medium. Every few weeks I’m doing this with a variety of colleagues and friends to share ideas and inspiration. In the personal realm, my sister and I are doing Zoom calls with our parents on Sunday mornings.
Connect with new people on LinkedIn
Consider everyone you come across on LinkedIn as someone you can potentially build a relationship with. People who viewed your profile are an option. Also look at the voices showing up in your LinkedIn feed.
If they’re second- or third-level connects who you find interesting, send them a personalized connection request. Tell them why your content attracted your attention as well as a bit about you. Keep it friendly and lighthearted.
This is not the time to ask for anything other than a connection. You can build a relationship over time from there. To make sure compelling people show up in your feed, follow hashtags of interest on LinkedIn by typing terms of interest into the search bar.
Identify aspirational relationships you’d like to build
In many industries, people have more time on their hands right now. That may make them more open to meeting new people. Who are the thought leaders in your industry? Who are the leaders in your company? Who are authors and influencers you admire?
Start making a list of who you’d like to build a relationship with over time. Okay, it may not ever be the moment to try to build a relationship with Oprah. But there are plenty of other incredible people who are more accessible on social media than ever.
Put your requests out there, keeping it light and friendly and not asking for anything. Once you do connect, make a point to follow the person’s content and comment on it as appropriate.
And if people don’t respond to your requests, don’t take it personally. It’s probably not you. Some people don’t check LinkedIn frequently and may not have even seen your request.
These are just a few ways you can network while working from home in your favorite athleisure. What are some of the ways you are building strong connections from home?
by Caroline Leach | Feb 26, 2020 | Careers, Change, Social Media
You have career dreams. Every day you work hard to make them come true. Yet maybe you’re not where you want to be yet. Maybe you feel stuck where you are. Perhaps you’re not enjoying the journey.
So what’s getting in your way? Where are you getting stuck ? How is that preventing you from making the impact you want?
The surface answer may be the outcome of relentlessly comparing ourselves to others. In everyone’s carefully curated social media feeds, we often forget we’re comparing our real lives, full of messiness and challenge, to everyone else’s near-perfect highlights reel. No wonder we can feel we fall short.
It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that achieving a big dream takes time. Dreams don’t happen overnight or in a month or even a year, as many success stories on social media would have you believe.
Everyone has a dream
A wonderful antidote is the opening words from Barbra Streisand and Jamie Foxx’s version of the song Climb Ev’ry Mountain. Thanks to Leslie Lupinsky, I discovered this inspirational song. Leslie along with Jeff Jacobson led of one of my life-changing coaching courses at the Co-Active Training Institute.
The song begins with dialogue:
Everyone has a dream, don’t you think?
Yes, but the question is how do you make it happen?
Well, first of all, if you can imagine it, then you can achieve it
But it might take a lot of time, and it might take a lot of hard work …
It’s the hard work part that so often gets glossed over. If it doesn’t appear that others have had to work hard for their success, we can start to wonder what’s wrong with us. What is making our path so difficult? Why is it taking so long to achieve our career dreams? How can there be so much rejection along the way?
Finding inspiration in others
Here’s where the long and winding paths of others inspire me.
One is Marie Forleo. She wanted to coach people and help them discover, as the title of her book says, that Everything is Figureoutable. It took her seven years (!) for her coaching business to become sustainable. In between she worked a variety of jobs as she relentlessly pursued her dream. Oprah now calls her “a thought leader of the next generation.”
Another is Susan Cain. She wrote a bestselling book called Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking. Based on that, she gave a top 25 TED talk on the power of introverts. How long did it take her to write her book that sparked a “quiet revolution”? Seven years!
Above all, they both persisted through many twists and turns in pursuit of their deeply held dreams. A long-held dream was to make other people’s lives better as a result. There are lessons for us in their stories.
As a result, here’s what I take away from their examples, my corporate years as a communications and marketing leader, and my entrepreneur experience (so far!).
Kick fear to the curb
First of all, why do we have fear in our lives? It protects us from extreme risks that could ultimately derail us. Fear comes to us through our inner critic. It’s the voice that whispers in our ears. You’re not good enough. You don’t have what it takes. You can never do it. If we listen long enough, we begin to believe it. Fear becomes a dream killer. What to think and do instead? Thank our fear for alerting us to dangers, take mitigating actions, and set fear aside.
Be a victor, not a victim
Also, when we believe the rantings of our inner critic, we can view life in victim mode. We start to believe we’re not active agents in our own lives. A negative running commentary can set in. I can’t do that. It will be a waste of my time to even try. The deck is stacked against me. A victim mentality can lead to paralysis, and and endless feeling of being stuck. What to think and do instead? Recall times you took control and overcome challenges. You’re a victor, so remind yourself you can do it again.
Take relentless action
Finally, thinking ourselves out of problems doesn’t work. We have to take action. Sometimes a challenge can feel so daunting that it’s hard to know where to start. Begin with the simplest step. Maybe it’s creating your career dream in the first place, in beautiful detail. Perhaps it’s having a development conversation with your supervisor, to start creating a path toward the future you envision and the contribution you want to make. Or it could be taking better care of yourself mentally, physically and spiritually so you have more energy and enthusiasm to pursue your dreams.
What does this all mean?
With all of this action, what are the implications for you how show up on social media? As a start, you can consider sharing your struggles as well as your successes. How are you overcoming obstacles? What are you doing to handle rejection? How are you persevering toward your dream?
Since the beginning of this year I’ve had plenty of personal experience with rejection. Two articles I wrote were rejected for publication by HBR.org, the online part of Harvard Business Review. People who indicated interest in working with me stopped responding to messages. Some of my speaking proposals resulted in rejections. And there’s more, but I won’t bore you.
All that said, there were also successes and new doors that opened. Consequently, those are the ones I choose to focus on.They are the ones I rejoice in and celebrate.
Above all, the rock-solid belief in our own ability and our own agency is what keeps us going. Ultimately it’s what makes the day-to-day journey so much fun. And that’s what life is all about.
by Caroline Leach | Jan 8, 2020 | Careers, Social Media
The “rules” of social media are clear-cut and straightforward, right?
There are rules for the time of day you should post, the frequency of your posts, and the formula for your content.
All you have to do is follow these rules, and you’ll win on social media, right?
Um, no.
Following the rules might make you boring, turn off people in your network, and even slow down your career progress.
Instead, look at what everyone else is doing, and do something different. Do something that is true to you. Share content that only you could create.
For example, how many LinkedIn posts did you see that simply said “Happy New Year,” along with an image?
Did that add anything to your professional life? Tell you anything new? Help you be better in your work?
If the answer to any of those questions is no, then don’t feel compelled to post content. Just don’t.
Better to skip sharing anything than to post something that doesn’t educate or entertain your network.
That’s why I didn’t share any new year’s day messages. There wasn’t anything new or different I felt I could add to the conversation.
But I didn’t stay away from social media entirely. To the contrary. It was the ideal time to engage with others. It was a perfect moment to comment on or share their content, spark a conversation, and strengthen our relationship.
So for those times when you don’t feel you have anything informative, interesting, or entertaining to share, ramp up the time you spend engaging with others’ content.
Beyond that, how can you make your content more interesting?
Create your own data
I keep a number of Excel spreadsheets to track everything from the performance of my social media minute videos to the messages I send to people on my email list. I’ve tracked data from experiments on what happens from posting daily on LinkedIn. I’ve conducted my own research on how people use social media to boost their careers.
In each of these cases, I have something completely unique to share with my network. And they’re topics that can help others with their social media presence. Not surprisingly, writing about what my own data tells me has led to some of my higher performing LinkedIn articles. These are the ones with the most engagement as measured by the quality and quantity of the comments.
What data could you track that would help you in your own work, as well as help your network?
Look at the world in new ways
Conventional wisdom gets turned on its head every second with how fast the world is changing. As the new year approached, my social media feeds were filling up with posts about how to slay the work world right out of the gate. It felt like everyone was queuing up for a big race that began bright and early on the first Monday of the new year. Who could get going faster and go longer and better than anyone else?
And I realized that’s a fool’s errand. All that will do is exhaust me and everyone around me. What might work better instead? Well, I planned a winter break in late December that was both relaxing and productive. There was special time with family and friends, and there was time to reflect on and plan my business for the coming year. The first weekend of the year, I started working on key projects.
The first Monday back, I chose a contrarian activity. I went to a relaxing spot about five minutes from my house. I enjoyed a great latte and some quiet, contemplative time to “officially” start my work year (that’s the picture above and on Instagram). It felt calm and peaceful and totally different from what everyone else might have been doing.
When everyone is zigging, how could you zag?
Be real and be vulnerable
The blog posts and LinkedIn articles that got the most engagement tended to be those where I shared my struggles. Being Active on Social Media When Your Life Explodes was my most viewed article in 2019. Why? Probably because I shared my challenges in getting my first book published. Sure, I had goals, plans, and self-imposed deadlines. But what do you do when life intervenes? Based on the comments people shared, that realness resonated.
Launching a business, as I’ve done over the last year, is exhilarating and terrifying, all at the same time. Sometimes on social media we can get so focused on sharing the high points that we neglect to talk about what it really takes. What happens behind the scenes. How much grunt work is truly involved.
In the coming year, I’ll share more of that. So I can paint a balanced picture of this entrepreneurial life. The highs. The lows. The progress. The setbacks. Because I’ve learned that realness is what we all crave. And that’s contrary to the images of perfection we’ve been conditioned to share on social media.
The best example is when I sent personalized LinkedIn invitations to a few hundred people at a leadership conference I attended. It took several hours over a period of a few days to send all the invites. Why did I do this? I wanted to grow my connections and relationships with people who have common interests.
One person looked at my profile and invited me to lunch. When we met, she invited me to speak at an association where she was the board president. Several months later, I spoke about how to boost your career and organization through social media. My talk generated a large volume of social media content.
Someone across the country saw the content. As a result, he invited me to do a paid speaking engagement at his organization. He also purchased a few hundred copies of my book, What Successful People Do in Social Media.
Both speaking engagements were highly enjoyable events, where I met fascinating people that I keep in touch with to this day.
More than a year went by between the leadership conference and the second speaking engagement. And it was such a thrill the way it played out. It’s important for me to share the story behind the story. There was a lot of work involved. It wasn’t clear where it would lead. Yet it illustrates that doing the work and trying to be helpful to others can lead to exciting outcomes.
How do you share the real deal on social media?
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