‘Tis the season for social media trends for the coming year.
For what’s ahead in 2019, I read several articles. Expecting to see a preponderance of tech-related trends – such as artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and new platforms – I was surprised to conclude that the biggest trend is decidedly non-technical.
But let’s start at the beginning, with some of what I read and the three key trends I took away from it. My perspective on trends has to do with how they will help you grow your career and/or your company in the year ahead.
Worth a read or a listen on your own are the following:
From those sources and more, here are my three big takeaways for 2019 trends.
First, video continues its explosive growth. By 2021, video traffic is forecasted to be 81% of all traffic on the Internet. This is according to Cisco, in the 7 Marketing Trends for 2019.
The article has great stats on how Google searches more and more are including video. So not only is video a great way to make your content more discoverable, it’s increasingly the way people prefer to consume information.
Keep it short, under 30 seconds or so. Shoot vertical video. Experiment with documenting the non-proprietary parts of your work days to see what resonates the most with your networks.
Second, Instagram Stories are a must. Related to the ongoing video trend, Stories are “now growing 15 times faster than feed-based sharing” in Instagram, according to Hootsuite’s Top 5 Social Media Trends. In the next year, Stories will “surpass feeds as the primary way people share things.”
If you’re not yet using Stories to showcase what you’re doing in your work life, this is the year to experiment. Going to a conference? Giving a talk? Delivering on a big (non-proprietary) project? Volunteering in the community? These and many more are perfect for sharing in Stories.
To get started, begin viewing stories from others to see what resonates with you. Approach Stories with a learning mindset and have some fun by experimenting with the various features. Here’s a great guide from Hubspot to getting started with Stories and making them like a pro.
Third, social media success is all about quality content. Whether the form is videos, images or words, nearly every trend piece I read emphasized the importance of quality content. That gives you a multitude of opportunities to grow your career through social media this year.
Everything you do could lend itself to creating great content through short posts, articles, links, photos or videos. At the start of the year, look at what’s ahead month by month and start creating a high-level content calendar. Of course, as always, don’t post proprietary or competitively sensitive information.
Content planning is the key advice from Sunny Lenarduzzi, one of the experts featured in The Science of Social Media podcast. She says, “if you wait to the last minute or ignore creating a content calendar for the month, your content will suffer because you’re rushing everything.”
It’s also important to take time to get to know your audience and what’s important to them. In the same podcast, Donna Moritz from Socially Sorted was featured as advising to, “focus on creating quality, core content on a platform that you own (your blog/website, podcast or video) that helps solve your audience’s biggest challenges.”
Also highlighted, as Gary Vaynerchuk said in a recent interview, “My show and my social accounts are not a platform from which I talk about what’s important to me. It’s a platform from which I talk about what’s important to you.”
Ultimately, high-quality content is critical to your success because “it will help you show up on Google and it will help your posts show up and get more engagement on social media sites,” according to Bill Widmer in the Sumo marketing trends article.
The most important element of this content focus is that it’s something you can control. Your discipline in sharing content on a consistent basis with a point of view that adds value to your connections is what it’s all about.
No one else has experienced the work world in quite the same way as you have. No one else has the unique perspective that you do. Sharing your original content that adds values to the people in your network is the most important thing you can do in social media.
What trends are you focused on in the coming year?
How does a two-minute chance meeting at Starbucks turn into 100+ likes and positive interactions in social media?
When your colleague asks another colleague to take a quick picture and shares it on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook with a fun caption promoting #LifeatATT.
That person is TeNita Ballard, a passionate champion for diversity and inclusion at AT&T. We both work in Southern California, and we ran into each other at the company’s headquarters in Dallas this week. (Note: opinions expressed in this blog are my own.)
What are you working on that you can share publicly?
What actions are you especially excited about?
What information would benefit your network, promote your colleagues, and/or amplify your employer’s brand?
Many good examples of this appeared in my social media feed this month.
Fiona Carter, Chief Brand Officer at AT&T, shared a gathering of high-powered marketers convening to discuss big topics around gender equality. It highlights the company’s leadership in improving the representation of women and girls in advertising in the #SeeHer industry initiative.
Mo Katibeh, Chief Marketing Officer for AT&T Business, sparked advance interest in his presentation at the 2018 AT&T Business Leadership Kickoff meeting with a picture of his rehearsal, the group’s theme for the year and @mentions of key colleagues.
Karyn Spencer, VP of Hello Lab at AT&T, shared an interview clip at the Sundance Film Festival of the work she and colleagues have been doing, especially in the areas of inclusion and diversity.
It was one of several interviews Carrie Keagan conducted during the event, with Nicholas Bianchi posting the great news that “AT&T was the #1 mentioned brand on Twitter at Sundance.”
While I wasn’t at Sundance or the power marketers’ dinner, I felt like I was part of the experiences, thanks to my colleagues. I did get to see Mo Katibeh’s presentation, and it was well done. After coming across his post, I looked forward to seeing his talk.
The time equation is more difficult. We each have 24 hours in days that seem to get busier by the second. How can we make the most of our limited time to build our careers through social media?
Start by thinking about what you’ve done professionally over the last month.
Have you –
Spoken at an event
Attended a conference
Taken a course, online or in person
Traveled for a work meeting or event
Joined a professional or trade group and attended a meeting
Received an award for your work
Completed a key project that can be shared in public
Participated in a company-sponsored charitable event
Seen an engaging video about your company or industry
Found a valuable article about your company or industry
Read a thought-provoking book about business or your industry
Come across an interesting post by a colleague or your company
Why consider these activities?
VaynerMedia CEO Gary Vaynerchuk identified a simple and powerful strategy in his post, “Document, don’t create: creating content that builds your personal brand.”
Documenting is creating content, he says. It’s simply sharing your career journey and what you’re doing every day. And it’s easy to do because you’re “just being yourself.”
In everything you do professionally today, start by asking yourself if it can be shared publicly in social media. Make sure to never, ever share non-public and/or competitively sensitive information in social media.
When in doubt, err on the side of caution and don’t share. Even if you think something is okay to share in public, check that official company sources have shared the information publicly, or ask your supervisor for confirmation.
Career blogger Penelope Trunk said it well in her online course Reach Your Goals by Blogging. “Just don’t write anything near where your ‘security clearance’ goes,” she advised. While most people don’t have security clearances, this is an apt analogy to keep confidential information confidential. Don’t share it.
Once you’ve cleared that hurdle, then focus on what you’re doing, what’s interesting about it and why it could be valuable to your network.
What specifically in the course of your day, your week and your month could you share that builds the career brand you want to be known for?
TeNita Ballard. TeNita is an enthusiastic champion of diversity and inclusion. She shares the events she attends, the people she meets and what she learns through posts in Instagram, Facebook and more.
John Starkweather. John is a big advocate for business customers. He shared his experience at the company’s recent tech conference The Summit in LinkedIn and Twitter. His posts make you feel like you were there.
Jennifer Van Buskirk. Jennifer leads the east region of the company. She shares leadership lessons she’s learned in her career in LinkedIn, along with the events she attends and speaks at in the course of her work.
Sarah Stoesser Groves. Sarah is a digital marketer who shares news and information her network can use. At The Summit she posted insightful video clips and sound bites from many of the speakers in LinkedIn and Twitter.
L. Michelle Smith. Michelle is a multi-cultural marketer. She’s a great source for the latest research and thought leadership on inclusion marketing through her posts in LinkedIn and Twitter.
Reflecting on the last month, here are some of the professional activities I’ve shared in LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. It only required taking a few photos and videos of the events and sharing key messages in my social networks.
They tended to be squeezed into the nooks and crannies of busy days as well as evenings and sometimes weekends, forming the public side of work-related activities that can be shared in social media.
Attended The Summit in Dallas as a marketing leader and participated on a team of social influencers to amplify the event’s messaging and reach, thanks to Sarah Groves.
Joined the Women’s Sports Foundation‘s annual salute gala in New York, thanks to Fiona Carter who is a member of the group’s board. It was inspiring to see so many strong female role models and spend time with colleagues.
Spoke at #WeGatherLA, the second-annual women’s leadership experience spearheaded by Otter Media President Sarah Harden, thanks to an invitation from Jennifer Cho and Katelynn Duffel. It was an amazing experience interviewing Helie Lee about her project Macho Like Me, when she lived life as a man for six months. Truly incredible!
Talked with visiting students from Howard University and North Carolina A&T University about how to build a career through social media, thanks to Grant Reid, along with John Willis and Kaleb Pask.
Beyond building your career through social media, there are other benefits to documenting your professional life in social. You’re helping to build the brands of your company and your colleagues.
And as we approach the end of the year and you summarize your key accomplishments, your social media feeds are a powerful input. They document many of your key accomplishments. You can add to quantifying their impact by the reach and the engagement of your posts.
As you head into a new week, what are you doing, experiencing and learning this week that you can share in social media?
Someone mentioned me in a tweet about a business-related dispute.
I read the tweeter’s bio. I researched the issue. I realized there was nothing meaningful I could do in response.
Then the tweets came more frequently. Three, four and more times a day.
It became harder to ignore the notifications button on my Twitter app. I started to wonder if my non-response strategy was a good idea. In talking with some colleagues in the social space, we concluded that it was.
Still, it was painful being the subject of increasingly negative tweet after tweet. Generally I believe in responding.
This is especially true if it’s a customer, and it’s gratifying to help people solve issues. However, this particular case did not involve a customer.
The same as the schoolyard bully, the best response is often no response. Act indifferently for long enough, and the hater will eventually go away.
But the escalation of hate concerns me. With all of the positive energy surrounding this month’s Women’s Marches around the globe, I was disappointed by the level of vitriol in my Twitter feed.
It reminded me of Ashley Judd’s talk at the TEDWomen talk last fall. One of her tweets at a basketball game a few years ago incited a cyber mob of hate. Yet rather than responding to the haters themselves, she became an activist for a safe and free internet for everyone.
She had, from time to time, tried engaging people. She met with varying degrees of success. One person in particular had a refreshing response and actually apologized.
That made me think beyond the awful posts and comments themselves. What kind of pain must someone be in to post hateful and threatening material? What has happened to them to make them act that way? What are they most afraid of?
A Facebook friend posted recently that she was leaving the platform for a while. She was tired of the negativity and felt the best solution was to step back.
The outpouring of encouraging comments was heartening, including the advice to ignore the haters and focus on the connections with friends and family.
She still chose to take a break. But I hope she’ll be back.
Because we need positive voices. We need realistic optimism. We need civil dialogue.
And we need empathy. That was my takeaway from a bestselling book called Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance. It’s an up close and personal look at rural America – the challenges, the issues, the highs and the lows.
Everyone is dealing with some kind of challenge, whether it’s visible on the outside or not. So be kind. Be caring. Be curious.
This is a strategy that has worked for Gary Vaynerchuk, CEO of VaynerMedia. Like Ashley Judd, he’s engaged haters with respect for their views. He asks questions to better understand the underlying issue.
That’s where your judgment comes in. Should you ignore or engage? Every situation is different, so what might work in one instance may not work in another.
Try seeing things from another point of view. And see where that takes you.
This is also about exercising control where you can. You can’t control the behavior of others, but you can control yourself. This includes your thoughts, your attitudes and your actions.
This concept of empowerment was beautifully expressed in the Academy Award nominated film Hidden Figures. It tells the story of three brilliant African-American women who worked as mathematicians and scientists at NASA in the early 1960s.
These inspiring and accomplished women continually had to decide whether to ignore the slights and snubs of daily life or to speak out and engage others in their struggles.
And thank goodness they did, time and time again, because they changed the course of history in the Space Race.
Then ask yourself these 4 questions to make your own social media game plan.
What are your company’s big goals? Is your CEO sharing the company strategy with employees this month or quarter? How about other C-suite leaders? Access any and all public information about your company’s strategic plans for the year. Be clear on the top goals and the order of priority. And be sure what you share in social media is public information only.
What are your team’s goals? How do the company goals translate into your department’s goals and ultimately your team’s goals? Where does your team help drive the strategy toward execution? What new and different approaches can you and your team try this year?
What are your professional goals? How do your team goals translate into your own professional goals? What do you need to accomplish this year? What stretch assignments do you want to tackle? On the development side, what do you want or need to learn? How will you accomplish that?
How will use use social media to achieve your goals and tell your story? Does social media play a role in achieving your goals? If it hasn’t before, could you incorporate it this year? When you achieve goals, how will you use social media to tell your story? What conferences are you attending? Where are you speaking? What are you blogging?
At this point, focus on “what” your goals will be. Don’t worry about the “how” at this point.
Why?
If you’re not sure about how to execute a goal, that can stand in the way of setting it in the first place. And just because you don’t exactly know how to do it, that doesn’t mean it can’t be done.
You’ve probably had many “first times” in your career. What did you do when your boss asked you to take on a new project, something you’d never done before? You can reflect on and use those experiences in the same way when you get to the “how” part of actually accomplishing your goals.
A former boss came to me some years ago and said the CEO wanted to do an employee engagement survey. My boss asked me to lead it.
That was beyond my role at the time as a corporate communications leader. There was a moment of terror, but after a few minutes it sounded like a fascinating project.
In thinking through the “how,” I realized I could build on the communications-related surveying I’d done, engage with experts and partners, create a team, map out a plan, execute it, learn and adjust as we went.
With so much information available online, you can research any topic and come up with ideas. Being able to figure it out is a skill that becomes more important every day.
Most striking were his words about client meetings and commitments. A client would ask for something, and the group would agree it would be delivered the next day.
Later, Mark and his colleagues would look at each other and say they had no idea how to do what they’d just committed to. But they had all night to figure it out. And figure it out, they did. Time and time again.
If they could do it, so could I. And so can you.
For now, take some time to set your social media goals for the year.
Here are mine:
Amplify my employer’s social media strategy through its Social Circle, by sharing 3 posts each week.
Give corporate professionals a roadmap to social savvy through this blog, by posting 2 times a week (note: opinions are my own in this blog).
Share appropriate highlights of my work in social media, by posting something at least 2 times a month.
Learn about how social media is changing and evolving, by listening to 5 podcasts each week during drive time.
Help others by sharing and commenting on their valuable content, at least 3 times a week.
Each goal is measurable, with a number attached to it. As the year goes on, I’ll assess if this is the right frequency or if tweaks need to be made.
None of my goals have anything to do with followers. In part that’s because I can’t completely control those numbers. Sure, the goals I’m pursuing are likely to attract followers. But I’m focused on actions I can 100% control on my own.
Here I’m influenced by Gary V‘s ideas on Building a Personal Brand, a Udemy course I finished today. One of the biggest takeaways? “Consistency almost trumps everything,” Gary says.
Another pearl from Gary? This one is for combating fear of failure: “Spend all your time in the in-between space, the time between starting and stopping.”
What’s your social media game plan for the year?
Don’t worry yet about the “how” of making it happen. “How” will be the subject of many future posts.
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