by Caroline Leach | Oct 16, 2016 | Careers, Leadership, Learning, Social Media, Work/Life
Yes, everyone is making it up as they go along.
And that means you can, too, as you work toward your biggest goals.
I’ll tell you why in my post on the USC Annenberg Alumni website.
I’m a proud Annenberg Alumni Ambassador this year, sharing all the best of this distinguished school for communication and journalism.
Some of my fellow ambassadors, pictured below, were featured alums at the Annenberg NETworks event this fall with students and recent grads.
What a fun evening it was, full of interesting people and fascinating conversations.
#FightOn!
by Caroline Leach | Oct 9, 2016 | Corporate Communications, Social Media
Our incoming messages are exploding.
LinkedIn messages. Facebook and Twitter notifications. Emails. Texts. Snaps.
Just reading and responding to everything could be more than a full-time job.
You need a strategy for when you do and don’t respond.
And I don’t subscribe to the philosophy that no response is the right way to say no.
In our hyperconnected world, our humanity and good manners can too easily go by the wayside.
Sometimes it’s because we can’t help the person and we need to say no. In those cases, have a standard professional response you can copy, paste, edit and send to say you’re not interested at this time, but you’ll keep the info for future reference.
Some messages are easy not to respond to:
- Automated sales pitches, usually via LinkedIn and Twitter
- Connection requests immediately followed by a sales pitch, again, usually via LinkedIn and Twitter
- Connection requests in LinkedIn from people you don’t know and that aren’t personalized to explain why they’d like to connect with you
- Tweets that mention you as a way to draw you into an issue for which you can offer no meaningful response
Some messages deserve a response. And while it would be easy enough to ignore them, giving a response can set you apart and enhance your company’s reputation:
- Customers of your company who need help getting an issue resolved. Respond to that customer right away. Be a friendly, helpful, human face and voice. Connect them with your company’s customer care team for a rapid response.
Interesting stat: 78% of people who complain to a brand in Twitter expect a response within an hour. Another one: 77% of people feel more positive about a brand when their tweet has been replied to.
(This is where I remind readers that opinions expressed are my own.)
- People from your alma maters, past and present employers and other professional groups who ask for your advice or an introduction to a colleague for networking purposes.
- Connections, colleagues and friends who post valuable content. Read their link, give them a “like” if the content is something you want to be associated with, and leave a short and upbeat comment that adds a constructive observation to the dialogue. Social media is all about reciprocity.
And some messages fall in between.
An example? A request to connect to one of your connections, without a clearly stated reason.
Recently a LinkedIn connection asked to connect to a colleague, to invite her to an event. I suspected it was a sales pitch and didn’t want to spam my colleague. I asked the requester for more info. Never heard back. End of story.
Suppose you do decide to respond to a message to decline a request and you get a response asking for something else.
What then?
Here I take my cue from a wise colleague, Tina Morefield. She’ll send a response. One response. And after that, no more.
Unless, of course, it’s from a customer who needs your help. In that case, keep responding until the issue is resolved to the customer’s satisfaction. Because our customers are the lifeblood of our organizations.
When do you respond? When do you not respond?
by Caroline Leach | Oct 6, 2016 | Social Media
What do all of your “likes” in social media say about you?
More importantly, what do you want them to say about you?
Do you think before you “like” in Facebook . . . or “heart” in Instagram and Twitter?
Do you consider how that piece of data will be aggregated with thousands of other data points about you?
Do you decide if it will reflect well on you or not?
Just as you should look before you link, you should look before you “like.”
Why? Because of something called The Reputation Economy.
Say what?
In this 2015 book, Reputation.com founder Michael Fertik tells you “how to optimize your digital footprint in a world where your reputation is your most valuable asset.”
Ultimately, Fertik sets forth a compelling case that your digital reputation may shape how you experience the world – for better or for worse.
Over the last year, for example, you may think you’ve been circumspect about your political views. But your political leanings may have been identified, based on your social media activity.
Even more interesting is seeing how your digital footprint may reveal your personality.
By analyzing just a few of your Facebook likes, the University of Cambridge’s psychometric centre will predict several dimensions of your personality. (Updated: actually, DON’T do this. Instead, watch the 2019 Netflix original documentary The Great Hack. It’s about how a data company called Cambridge Analytica came to symbolize the dark side of social media.)
“You are what you like,” the site says.
You may think twice about what you “like” in the future.
Here are my non-algorithmic rules for liking content in social media:
- Always consider how liking something will reflect on you. Will it contribute to – or detract from – what you want to be known for?
- If you’re not sure what certain content could imply, don’t like it. And if you have “friends” who repeatedly post strange content, it might time to unfriend them.
What do you like?
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