by Caroline Leach | Nov 27, 2018 | Social Media
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When you’re trying to write a blog post that people will love, sometimes you can’t fit everything into the ideal length of 600 to 800 words. What can you do? Break it into a series of shorter posts.
Part 1 of this topic covered themes, points of view, headlines, opening words, and the ideal length. Here’s part 2 covering creating visual interest, engaging others, weaving in data and research, ending strong, editing your post, and reading other blogs for ideas and inspiration.
Make it visually interesting
Include photos, videos and/or infographics to make your post eye catching. You can also spice up your text by using subheads, bullets, numbered lists and white space. My rule is to keep paragraphs at four lines or less to make them reader friendly.
Use formatting options in platforms like LinkedIn to draw attention to call-out quotes by way of bold italics. You can also sprinkle images and/or videos throughout your post for visual interest.
Engage others
Consider how you can weave others into your post. If you can quote someone or highlight a best practice that they do, this rounds out your post with a variety of perspectives. This provides supporting points for your overall message.
It also potentially increases interest in and engagement with your post. The people you’ve included may be inclined to comment on and share your post. You can also mention them as you promote your post in various social networks, so they’re sure to know you’ve included them.
Bring in the data
Cite interesting facts and research in your post, and link to them. This anchors your post in data and supports your key points.
Influencer Neil Patel, for example, cited research that “marketers who blog consistently will acquire 126% more leads than those who do not.” If that data point doesn’t convince you of the value of blogging, I don’t know what will.
Be sure you’ve read the full link and are comfortable with its contents before linking to it. Why? Because every bit of content you create, like, or link to reflects on you and your professional image.
End strong
Your ending is almost as important as your lead. Here you want to spur your reader into action. What will they do differently as a result of reading your post? How have they accomplished what you talk about in your post? What questions do they have and will they leave a comment?
Career blogger Penelope Trunk had great advice in her online course, Reach Your Goals through Blogging. She advises to “write and write until you find the thing that surprises you.”
Edit, edit, edit
Set your draft aside and come back to it later, whether it’s the next day or the next hour. Read it with fresh eyes. Ask yourself if the piece flows appropriately from one idea to the next.
Look for areas that might need more explanation for your readers. Edit out repeated words (always a challenge for me) and unnecessary phrases. Make sure all the links work properly.
Read blogs
Study what types of blog posts and articles appeal to you. Ask yourself what specifically engages you. I love reading posts from many of my former colleagues in the corporate world – Anne Chow, Mo Katibeh, L. Michelle Smith, John Stancliffe and Jason Dunn, to name a few.
Sometimes it’s the things you don’t want to write, or that seem too personal, are what people love the most. A few recent examples on the more personal side are A Love Letter to the Amazing People I’ve Worked With and my corporate farewell remarks in Are You Doing What You Really Want to Do?
I almost didn’t write my post about 7 Things Not to Do in LinkedIn. At the time, I didn’t think I’d be adding anything new to the existing body of knowledge. But I wrote it because someone left a comment asking for it. And it became one of my most-read pieces.
That’s my moment of surprise. Sometimes the topic that doesn’t seem exciting to you will be of great interest to your network. If you look at the analytics of all your posts, you may find your own surprises to inform your upcoming posts.
What other ways do you write posts that people will love?
by Caroline Leach | Nov 26, 2018 | Social Media
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Blogging is a powerful way to share your expertise and establish yourself as a thought leader. My blog, as an example, has led to speaking invitations, consulting projects, publication opportunities and more.
What does it take to write a great blog post?
Here are tips to write a post that people will love. Sometimes the hardest part is getting over the fear. But what makes your post stand out comes in the editing process. During the writing process, the most important thing is to simply get the words down.
You may need to silence your inner critic until you do that. Just suspend that self-critical voice until you have a first draft completed. Write continuously for a set period of time, such as 60 minutes.
Set your draft aside and come back to it, ideally a day later and at least an hour later. You may find yourself pleasantly surprised that your first draft is much better than you expected.
This is all worth it in light of the benefits of blogging. Bestselling author Dorie Clark cites content creation as one of the three pillars of “standing out in a noisy world.”
It enables you to share your hard-won expertise, establishing you as a person with a valuable point of view. As a result, interesting career opportunities may come your way.
Here’s how to get started.
Have a theme
This is about having a strategy for what you blog about. By focusing in one area, you will be better able to build up a devoted readership over time. Be clear on why you’re writing and who you want to reach. Once you have your topic identified, you can relate almost anything to that subject.
It’s okay for your focus to evolve as your career does. My blog began as an exploration of the future of corporate communications. When my job changed after a corporate acquisition, I wrote about marketing analytics for a short time. Ultimately that wasn’t something I wanted to spend hours of my weekend and evening time on, so then I explored how people learn.
After that I had a serendipitous moment at a leadership conference. Reese Witherspoon, the entrepreneur, producer and actor, talked about the white space in social media to work with people on building their reputations.
It was my “a-ha” moment. I knew what I wanted to focus on – writing, consulting and speaking about what successful people do in social media to boost their careers.
Share your point of view
People read blogs to learn, to be entertained and to be surprised by a new twist. Think about the point of view you can bring to your topic. You don’t have to be an expert to start blogging about it. If you’re fascinated by it and dedicated to learning in the process, you can bring value to your audience.
Your point of view is why people will read your posts. No one else except for you has had your unique experience in the work world. What you’ve learned and experienced along the way can be helpful to others.
Come up with a compelling headline
You could write the best blog post in the world, but if no one reads it, your light and your ideas haven’t truly reached the world. As I learned by experimenting, it’s important to devote almost as much time to creating a compelling headline as you do to writing the overall post.
There are headline analyzers such as CoSchedule that can help you improve your headlines to attract more readers. It’s almost a gamified approach, if you keep entering headlines to increase your score. Try to write 25 headlines for every blog post. Then pick the best one.
Of course, your headline has to be true to your subject. No clickbait for you. Deliver to your readers what your headline promises.
Focus on the first few words
The first first words and sentences have to pique your readers’ interest from the start. There’s no time to warm up and get to the point. Spend as much time on your lead as you do on your headline. What are the opening words and sentences that will grab a reader’s interest?
Those first few lines show up now for LinkedIn articles in your profile. Carefully consider what you want your first 30 words to say.
Get the length right
About 600 to 800 words is ideal. This is approximately the length of a newspaper op-ed article. It’s okay, though, to go shorter or longer if your topic warrants it. For something really long, you can break it into a series, as I did for my bio posts and my research on social media.
Since this post has hit that limit, watch for the remaining tips in a part 2 post coming soon.
by Caroline Leach | 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?
- Build a network (86%)
- Access news about your industry and profession (81%)
- 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:
- Join LinkedIn groups of interest and be an active participant
- View Twitter trending topics
- Tap into YouTube for how-to videos
- Follow influencers, brands and trade publications
- Check out competitor company social media activity
- 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?
by Caroline Leach | Nov 12, 2017 | Careers, Social Media
Why doesn’t everyone have a social media strategy for their career?
There are two main reasons: not seeing the value and not having the time.
The value proposition has a simple answer. Our professional reputation increasingly influences how we get jobs, advance in our careers and navigate transitions.
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.”
To look into the future of this documenting trend, check out the New York Times article Keeping Up, on Camera, Is No Longer Just for the Kardashians.
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?
Some of my colleagues do this really well. (This is where I remind readers that opinions expressed in this blog are my own.)
Here are just a few.
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.
Participated in events at USC as a member of the USC Alumni Association Board of Governors and USC Annenberg Alumni Advisory Board, thanks to Leticia Lozoya and Ashley Cooper.
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.
Employees are a trusted and credible source of information about their companies, according to Shel Holtz. Take that responsibility seriously and be sure you’re communicating in alignment with your company’s values, brand and social media policy.
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?
by Caroline Leach | Sep 10, 2017 | Marketing & Analytics, Social Media
Headlines hold special power.
They determine whether people tap on a blog post or a LinkedIn article to read more, or whether they swipe past it.
“One of the best ways to make your content shareable, get found on search engines and grow your traffic is to write great headlines,” says Nathan Ellering of the marketing calendar company called Co-Schedule.
How do you create irresistible headlines?
“Write 25 different headlines for every post,” advises Garrett Moon, the co-founder of CoSchedule.
This echoes career blogger Penelope Trunk‘s mantra in her course on reaching your goals through blogging.
“Your title [or headline] is extremely important,” she says. “It should tell people what’s there beyond the click, and how it relates to your reader and how their life will change.”
Realizing that I devote hours to each blog post, but only spend a few minutes on a headline when I’m getting ready to publish, I knew it was time to switch the focus.
Quick Hacks to Help You Come Up with Attractive Blog Post Headlines by Marko Saric led me to CoSchedule’s headline analyzer.
Type in any headline. You’ll get instant data on word balance, headline type, length analysis, first 3 and last 3 words, keywords, and sentiment (positive, neutral or negative).
Plus, you’ll see how your headline will appear in a Google search or as an email subject line. Those first few words really matter.
Headlines are scored on a scale from 0 to 100. The best headlines (green) score at 70 and above. Average headlines (yellow) are 55 to 69, and bad headlines (red) are 54 and below.
This made me wonder how all of my blog headlines would stack up. So I did a little experiment. I entered all 152 of them into the headline analyzer.
And what a humbling experience it was. Only 36 headlines were green, 55 were yellow and 61 were red. Ouch!
What went wrong?
Two things stand out.
First, I was writing short headlines that would fit better into my current WordPress theme. I tried to be too clever and too brief so the headline would fit on a single line. As a result, the headlines weren’t fully describing what the post was about.
Second, I suffered from “the curse of knowledge.” This is a trick our brains play on us. When we’re highly familiar with certain information, we tend to assume that others are similarly informed, even though that logically makes no sense.
Because of this, I wasn’t assessing my headlines from the point of view of someone who didn’t know as much about the subject as I did. My brain filled in details, but since they weren’t in the headline, not enough information was there to interest a reader.
Yet there was a silver lining. In the last 9 months my headlines have been all green and yellow, with 50% in each category. Why? I wrote longer, more descriptive headlines. And this showed up in the analyzer scores.
Looking beyond the scores, I could see what headline types I was using. According to Ellering, the most effective types of headlines are list posts, how to’s, and questions.
The sentiment scores also attracted my attention. Headlines with neutral sentiment get the least engagement. Positive headlines attract the most attention. This is consistent with other data I’ve found on people being more inclined to share positive stores.
Then there’s the emotional angle to consider. The Advanced Marketing Institute developed an Emotional Marketing Value (EMV) score. This tells you how much of an emotional chord you’re striking with your readers.
As I wrote 25 headlines for this post, I tried the top-scoring ones in the Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer.
Disappointingly, the top-scoring headline with a 76 – “Will the 25th Headline You Write be the Best?” – only rated a 22.22% EMV. That’s not great when a target of 30-40% EMV words is desirable, and higher is even better.
I chose this particular headline because I wanted to prove a point in this post. Writing 25 headlines helps get your creativity flowing, and you start writing better headlines once you get to 10 or 12. However, diminishing returns can set in. Rarely will the 25th headline be the best one.
But in the process you’ll come up with an optimal headline. While your 25th headline won’t likely be your best, there’s tremendous value in training your brain to write that many headlines.
Unfortunately my top headline didn’t hit enough emotional notes. So I went to the next-highest-scoring headline and made a few tweaks. I came up with “Do You Really Have to Write 25 Headlines to Get an Awesome One?”
This got an EMV score of 46.15%. That euphoric feeling only lasted until I entered it in the headline analyzer. Too many words, it said.
Is there a happy medium between the scientifically optimal headline and the emotionally appealing headline?
For this post, it turned out to be “Do You Have to Write 25 Headlines to Get an Awesome One?” Taking the “too wordy” feedback to heart, I eliminated the word “really.”
It was a balance between a 73 green score in the headline analyzer . . .
. . . and a 41.67% EMV score.
So what if the headline analyzer still said it was too wordy? Those words may just elicit more emotion – and more engagement with this post.
For now I’ll live with the cognitive dissonance of a headline analyzer that identifies 0% emotional words and an emotional marketing value analysis above 40%. Clearly the algorithms differ, so it’s something to explore in future posts.
And the most fun of all? The science of words is starting to turn me into a data geek after all.
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