by Caroline Leach | Feb 27, 2018 | Social Media
How are you using social media to build your career?
- What social media are you on for professional and personal use?
- Why are you active in social media professionally?
- How has your social media activity helped your career, others’ careers and your employer?
I’d love your responses on these questions and more in a 15-minute survey. Responses are anonymous and will only be shared in aggregate.
Together, they’ll give a current snapshot of how professionals are using social media in their careers.
And they’ll inform future content on this blog, to help you continue boosting your career through social media.
Click on this link or copy and paste it into you browser:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/socialmedia4careerbuilding
Feel free to share it with friends and colleagues.
Thank you!
by Caroline Leach | Feb 25, 2018 | Social Media
How often do you make a desirable discovery by accident?
If you’re me, not as often as I’d like.
It’s like finding $20 in your pocket. It doesn’t happen frequently, but it’s always a happy discovery to meet up with serendipity.
Three times in the last 6 months I’ve posted a conversation in the The Official USC Alumni Association Group, and it’s shown up the next day as the lead item in the monthly digest email for the group.
There are more than 46,000 members in the group. And some portion of them probably opt in to get the group’s email digest. So my posts are landing front and center in the inboxes of many fellow alums.
It wasn’t something I planned. It’s part of my volunteer role on the USC Alumni Association Board of Governors. I’m proud to represent the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, where I got my master’s degree.
Each of us on the Communications & Marketing Committee led by Tom Henkenius and Mary Ann Brennan regularly post content in the group and engage in conversations with fellow alums in the group. Madeline Lindsay from the Alumni Association also keeps us on track.
It just so happened, a few of my posts were on Sunday nights as I was wrapping up my weekend to-do lists.
And on Monday morning when I saw my post featured in an email, I paused for a moment.
Wait.
What?
Why was my post being featured?
Then I realized I must have been the last person to post before the monthly digest email went out.
The learning?
If you want your posts in a group to get pushed to a larger audience, identify the timing of the monthly or weekly digest emails, and do your post shortly before then.
Now, I don’t want to take the limelight from my fellow alums. I don’t want to be the featured post every time. But once in a while is kind of fun.
The other learning?
It’s imperative to customize your headline in your LinkedIn profile. Don’t use the default of your current title. Personalize it to tell your story. Why? Because it displays when you comment on content … and appear in search results … and when your group post is featured in the digest email.
The recommendations?
Join groups that are relevant your interests. Be an active participant. Post content that the group can benefit from. Engage with the posts of others, by liking and commenting on the content.
Social media is all about reciprocity.
And maybe every once in while, you’ll have the featured post. That’s what serendipity taught me.
What have you learned in social media about serendipity?
by Caroline Leach | Feb 24, 2018 | Social Media
Are you making the most of your LinkedIn presence?
Don’t overlook these seven often-missed opportunities to increase your effectiveness on LinkedIn.
1. Not completing your profile
The first thing to do in LinkedIn is create a complete profile. Here are great tips on being bold in your LinkedIn profile from the MAKERS Conference.
Be sure to complete every field, until LinkedIn identifies your profile as “all-star.” You don’t have do it 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:
2. Not keeping your profile up to date
Each month, add something new to your profile. Did you start a new job? Take on a new project? Complete a course or a certification? Publish a paper?
If you finished a work project that can be shared publicly, add it to your profile. Maybe it’s a multimedia presentation or a video or a podcast. Just make sure it doesn’t include any company confidential information and that it can be made public.
It was a thrill to see my employer, AT&T, included again on Fortune’s 2018 list of 100 Best Companies to Work For. As a proud member of our Employee Engagement Advisory Board to make the company a great place to work for all, I added the company news release to my LinkedIn profile. (Note: opinions expressed in this blog are my own.)
3. Not customizing your public profile URL
Not personalizing your URL is like using an aol.com email address. It marks you as out of touch and not current.
Customizing your URL gives you a personally branded link to include in event apps where participants share their social media handles, your email signature, your bio if you’re giving a speech, and your resume if you still maintain a separate document from LinkedIn.
This feature uses your name in your LinkedIn URL, rather than a random string of numbers. It will appear like this: linkedin.com/in/yourname or in my case as linkedin.com/in/leachcaroline.
If someone else already has your name, try putting your last name first or adding your middle initial. Make your URL as similar to your other social media handles as you can.
In my case, based on what was available, I use leachcaroline for LinkedIn and Facebook and @caroline_leach for Instagram and Twitter.
4. Not personalizing your professional headline
Right under your name in your LinkedIn profile is your professional headline. It defaults to your current job title. But you can and should change it. Here’s why.
Your headline appears frequently throughout LinkedIn. It’s displayed in search results and when you comment on others’ content.
If you don’t personalize your headline, you’re missing a big opportunity to personally brand yourself.
Here are tips to make the most of your headline by using keywords and benefits statements about you and what you do.
Headlines have been limited to 120 characters. But Wayne Breitbarth shared a new tip about how recent LinkedIn changes benefit you.
If you update your headline in your mobile app (not your desktop), he says, you get 220 characters. As he notes, that 83% more space to tell your story.
5. Not using a background photo
Just as customizing your professional headline helps you better tell your story, so does adding a background photo. This is the photo that appears right above your profile photo.
If you don’t include a customized photo, your profile looks similar to everyone else’s with the standard blue background of connecting points and lines. It doesn’t stand out or attract attention.
Ideally, use a photo you’ve taken yourself that shows the essence of your professional self in an image. Here are other tips on telling your story through your background photo.
6. Not experimenting with content
If you’re not currently sharing updates and articles in LinkedIn, get started by observing what you gravitate toward in your LinkedIn “home” feed. What catches your eye? What makes you want to watch the featured video or click on an article link?
Start to “like” content that reflects your professional interests. Engage further by adding a comment that adds another perspective or asks a follow-up question. When you @mention the author, they’ll be notified of your comment and are more likely to see it and respond it.
Once you’ve done that, you can start experimenting with content of your own. Here are some ideas for sharing an idea, a photo or a video.
I did a month-long experiment to see what would happen when I posted to LinkedIn every weekday for a month. You could experiment by using video, varying types of posts, using different lengths of posts, trying out different hashtags, and so on.
You might be surprised by what you learn, as I was when I dug into my analytics. I learned that posting an inspirational leadership quote along with a striking photo on major holidays rose to the top of my content with the most engagement.
7. Not joining groups
LinkedIn expert Donna Serdoula advises joining the maximum allowed 100 groups, to enhance your visibility. You can follow groups that align with your areas of focus in your career and on LinkedIn.
Beyond that, she takes an interesting contrarian view. Don’t limit your groups to those comprised of colleagues in the same field as you, she advises.
Instead, “think in terms your target audience,” she says in her book on LinkedIn profile optimization. Who do you want to be found by? Recruiters? Colleagues? Potential customers?
Groups are an area I’ll explore in future posts. Why? Recently I posted content in a group and discovered serendipitously a great way to get that content amplified. This will be the topic of my next post, followed by a more detailed exploration of how to make the most of groups.
What other missed opportunities do you see?
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