Boost Your Career through Social Media, Part 3

by | 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:

  1. What types of LinkedIn content get the most engagement
  2. What topics on LinkedIn get the most engagement, and
  3. 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:

  1. Industry trends (48%)
  2. Leadership (34%)
  3. 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:

  1. Tag people in the post, if they’re in an accompanying photo or video (75%)
  2. 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?

Boost Your Career through Social Media, Part 2

by | 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?

  1. Build a network (86%)
  2. Access news about your industry and profession (81%)
  3. 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:

  1. Join LinkedIn groups of interest and be an active participant
  2. View Twitter trending topics
  3. Tap into YouTube for how-to videos
  4. Follow influencers, brands and trade publications
  5. Check out competitor company social media activity
  6. 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?

Boost Your Career through Social Media, Part 1

by | 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:

  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?