by Caroline Leach | Jun 28, 2023 | Careers, Social Media
Get your Social Media Success Roadmap workbook, newly updated for 2023!
You’ll find 50 questions, actions, and ideas to build and 
boost your career through social media.
The workbook now includes a LinkedIn profile checklist, to make the most of your digital presence and help people find YOU.
It’s a companion piece of my book, What Successful People Do on Social Media: A Short Guide to Boosting Your Career (available on Amazon).
Here’s to your success![Download not found]
by Caroline Leach | Dec 31, 2020 | Change, Leadership, Learning
What do you share on social media when life is difficult? When life is even busier than normal because of pressures that come with living in the Covid era?
For me it’s meant I haven’t posted on social media as much in the last few months. In part it’s because my business is growing — consulting, coaching, speaking, and teaching — and I have more work to do. That’s a good thing. It’s a blessing in this environment.
Yet it also brings new pressures. How do I continue to deliver my best work? How do I scale my business to the next level? How do I automate certain processes and which ones?
The other part is just how difficult it’s been. The struggle. The juggle. The terror of wondering, day after day, will everything work out?
This part comes mostly from the steakhouse my husband opened in the summer of 2020, after two years in the making. The dream became reality, and Covid turned it into a nightmare. And we have lots of company in this strange space.
The good news is people love the restaurant. Tonight we’re delivering three times of the number of New Year’s Eve meals we estimated.
The bad news is takeout and delivery is not a sustainable business model. I understand why indoor and outdoor dining has been prohibited to help stop the spread of Covid. What’s harder is moving forward day after day when most of your ability to operate isn’t there, with 260 empty seats.
This has all run headlong into my guiding mantra to only share positive news and information on social media. My focus is providing insight and inspiration about personal branding, social media, and leadership that others may find valuable in their own professional lives.
Some words in a book I read this month crystallized the downside of this approach. “This is where we are now, endlessly cheerleading ourselves into positivity while erasing the dirty underside of real life,” says Katherine May. She’s the author of Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times.
The dirty underside of life right now, for many people, is it’s really hard. Life is difficult. It always has been, but the last year has brought it into sharp relief.
It’s okay to feel down. It’s okay to feel discouraged. It’s also good to connect with others and ourselves to be with the reality, at the same time as we strive to improve upon it. The dirty underside of real life is present. And that brings new challenges. Many of them are outside of our control. But our response remains within our control.
In my case, my operational, marketing, and human resources skills are increasing exponentially because things need to get done at the restaurant, and I’m doing them, working with a great team my husband has formed. Setting the uncertainty aside, this “dirty underside” is also a huge period of growth.
So I’m consciously shifting my mindset, as a strategy to get through this. The reality is present and unchangeable and a huge bummer. What is changing is me.
Also, a year goes by in a flash. Next year has the potential to be very different. Although Covid is sadly spiking now, a vaccine is on the way. There is light at the end of the tunnel. We will all have new skills, experiences, and perspectives from this time that we can apply to the future.
How about you? What parts of your real life are you struggling with? How are you growing and transforming as a result? What will be different and better a year from now?
by Caroline Leach | Oct 31, 2020 | Leadership, Social Media
Is there hope on the other side of despair?
Yes, there is, says internet trend observer and investor Mary Meeker.
Mary and her team at Bond Capital released a report called Our New World in April of this year. It was about a month into our stay-at-home world to “flatten the curve” of the coronavirus.
The team “compiled observable trends that help form our views of the present and should provide insights into the future.” They are optimists, and rays of light are so welcome right now as we slog through this seemingly never-ending pandemic.
I added this report to the reading and discussion for the class I’m teaching (remotely) this fall at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. It’s called Managing Technologies for Digital Media in the MS program in Digital Social Media.
Here’s the crux of the report: “None of what we are going through is comfortable, or fair. And while things will likely get worse before they get better, has America, perhaps, just gotten the wake-up call it needed to get to a better place? Let’s hope so, and let’s find the best ways to get to the other side as quickly and thoughtfully as possible.”
Getting to the other side is the game we’re all playing now. What do we need to do to get through today? And tomorrow? And the next day? Many people are struggling with loneliness from quarantines. Some friends tell me it’s hard to get motivated or excited about much of anything these days. And many jobs have evaporated and many businesses are prohibited from operating at full capacity.
Our family restaurant, for example, is only allowed to use 10% of its available seats — the ones outdoors. If there’s any good news, it’s that we’re in Southern California and we don’t have cold winters like much of the rest of the country and the world. My heart goes out to restaurateurs in colder climates who are installing igloos to serve diners.
The phone rang last night near closing time after a busy Friday night of outdoor dining. The hosts had already departed. I eyed the phone warily, not eager to answer it after a long day of various work projects that started in the early morning hours. But I picked it up with as much cheer as I could muster.
“Hello,” the caller said, “I ordered takeout tonight.” Silently, I prayed that all had gone well. “I don’t usually do this,” the caller continued. “But I wanted to tell you our meal was outstanding.”
At this point I exhaled. And smiled. “Usually we think of takeout as being less than,” he said. “This was anything but. We have a dinner reservation in a few weeks, and we can’t wait to come in.”
Well, wow. Just wow. That someone took the time to call and share their experience and their thanks was something to be truly grateful for. It re-energized me late in the evening. I couldn’t wait to share the feedback with the team who had worked so hard to make the experience memorable.
This made me wonder. Are we all viewing life as “less than” right now? Something to be endured? A time to live in suspended animation as we collectively wait for “the other side” to materialize?
If the game we’re playing is getting through each day as best we can to get to a “new normal” (or whatever we’ll call our post-Covid world), how can we up our game? In my last post, I wrote about a feeling of progress every day and making note of what was accomplished. Often it’s much more than we thought.
To that, here’s a new practice to consider adding. What can we each do or say every day to encourage someone else? What uplifting words or feedback can we share, whether in a text, on a video call, or on social media?
Because our words might be just the thing that helps someone who’s feeling discouraged to carry on. To keep trying. To keep striving. To ultimately get to the other side.
by Caroline Leach | Sep 29, 2020 | Social Media, Work/Life
Are you feeling out of sorts right now? I know I am.
Sometimes I wonder why. Then I remember there are five major reasons.
First, we are in the middle of global pandemic that has taken the lives of more than 200,000 people in the United States.
Second, we are experiencing the financial fallout of an economy closed down to fight Covid.
Third, we are in the midst of an important drive for social justice and equality.
Fourth, we are experiencing climate change more intensely with extreme heat and widespread fires.
And fifth, we are in the midst of a most unusual political environment, punctuated by a very odd presidential debate this week.
Our ‘Surge Capacity’ is Under Siege
Simply articulating those reasons brings relief. These are major issues to contend with. And it’s exhausting to do so, day after day after week after week after month after month.
In the words of Tara Haelle, writing on Medium, our “surge capacity” is depleted. Our ability to deal with an intense and ongoing crisis has reached a low point.
Ya think?
And yet …
And yet, hope lives on. As I often recount the many seemingly horrible things that happen on any given day while I can’t help but doomscroll through my news feed, I’ve found a positive practice.
A Powerful Daily Practice
Each day, I write down at least one good thing that happened. Often, there are many more than one. They often become obscured by the heaviness of everything else that’s going on in the world. But when I consciously call up the positive moments, I’m reminded of the importance of making progress every day, no matter how small the step seems.
It’s a concept articulated by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer in The Progress Principle. What motivates us most, they say, is the powerful feeling of making progress every day toward our most meaningful goals.
What I realized is there’s a great deal of progress happening every day. Those days add up to weeks and months and some really significant milestones.
For example, I’ve completed more than 100 coaching hours this year and a certification (next month) to go along with that. My husband Kevin opened a new restaurant last month, fulfilling a lifelong dream. Even though we’re limited to outdoor patio dining of about nine tables, people are loving the experience. My son is making progress toward his college degree through online courses. I’m fulfilling a dream of my own by teaching in an MS program for communications.
Good Things Take Time
Not only do these milestones indicate progress, but they also demonstrate the importance of patience. Often, good things take time. Here are just a few examples …
- My coaching certification process: 1 year
- Starting to teach at the graduate level: more than 1 year
- Beginning work with an exciting new client: more than 1 year
- Kevin’s restaurant: 2 years (really 23 if you count a snippet of a conversation from long ago).
Life goes on during a pandemic, during economic upheaval, during civil justice, during climate change, and during political campaigns. What are you doing to make progress in your life right now, every day?
Those are the actions to celebrate and to motivate you to carry on and make change. Those are exactly the sorts of things you can share on social media, to inform and inspire others.
What steps will you take today?
by Caroline Leach | Aug 6, 2020 | Careers, Change, Social Media, Work/Life
Three aspects of Covid-19 stand out in August 2020.
First, transmission of the coronavirus is largely airborne through respiratory droplets, when people talk and interact.
Second, wearing a face covering and physically distancing are our individual best defenses against the virus.
And third, we’ll probably need to spend a lot of time at home as the virus rages on for the better part of a year.
Wow. Let that sink in. A year of remote work (and life), for those of us lucky enough to be in a profession that can be done outside of a physical office.
In my case, writing, consulting, coaching, speaking, and teaching can all be done remotely. The first three were already remote work activities. But how about speaking and teaching? Thankfully, they’ve both moved online to Zoom.
Since the pandemic sent us home in March, I’ve spoken (remotely) in several graduate school courses on digital communications and marketing. A highlight this fall will speaking in an executive education program. And a few interesting developments are happening in the teaching space, which I’ll share more about soon.
One question seems to loom large. Simply because an activity can be done remotely and online, does that mean it’s of the same or higher quality? Many people might say no. However, I disagree. Why? It’s an opportunity to innovate, experiment, and iterate. As we do that, it will be on a scale none of us has ever experienced before.
From Surviving to Thriving
For those who love to play in ambiguous spaces, this is a dream come true. Yet the uncertainty and capriciousness of the pandemic has pushed even me to crave a bit more structure and concreteness.
And while this might seem to be a matter of survival, I’d like to do more than simply grit my teeth and get through it. How about you?
As the renowned internet commentator Mary Meeker says of this pandemic period, we’re in the process of, “getting to the other side.”
What is the other side? And how long will it take to get there?
There’s no way of knowing for sure. So rather than feeling like a rudderless ship being tossed about in a storm, I choose to captain my own ship. I choose to create my own environment, to the greatest extent possible. I choose to thrive, rather than simply survive.
This topic of thriving is one I’ll explore in my upcoming writing. For today, I’ll couple this with my focus on boosting your career through social media. How do the two interact? It’s a topic I’ve written about this year on a few levels — from How to Pivot Your Personal Brand on Social Media to How to Engage People with Your Social Media Content.
With an eye toward thriving in a stay-at-home world, here are three ideas for making the most of your social media time.
Create a Learning Environment
Now is the time to experiment with social media. Within the bounds of respect for all people, it’s an ideal moment to try new types of content. See what resonates with your network. Use new features you may not have engaged with much before. Rarely share an Instagram story? Give it a whirl, play with the features, and see how people respond. Or use the newly announced Instagram Reels video feature. This can be your own personal learning environment. In fact, I gave a TEDx talk on the subject. It’s called How Social Media Can Make You a #LifelongLearner. Check it out for more ideas.
Follow New Voices
The move toward social justice through the Black Lives Matter movement and others can present an opportunity to seek out new voices and perspectives. It’s an ideal time to actively listen. On Instagram and Twitter, a few accounts I’m now following are Black Lives Matter and PrivtoProg. LinkedIn has a great feature in “My Network” where it suggests Black voices to follow and amplify. Mellody Hobson of Ariel Investments, Carla Harris of Morgan Stanley, and Karamo Brown of Netflix’s Queer Eye stood out to me. Mellody’s TED talk called Color blind or color brave? is excellent. Carla has leadership motivation for the ages in a talk she gave about how to own your power.
Say No to Negativity
With all the polarization in America, it has sometimes felt to me that I shouldn’t retreat into my own echo chamber of similar voices. Often, I kept people in my feed in the name of listening to a variety of perspectives. However, that doesn’t extend to negative, disrespectful, or incorrect information. It has become increasingly important to consider the source of information, whether it’s scientifically based, and how healthy it is. It’s okay to unfollow people, or to simply mute their content. There’s so much negativity in the world. Why perpetuate it by tolerating people’s feeds who are insulting your deeply held values?
In Closing …
People are spending more time on social media during the pandemic. Increased usage has plenty of downsides. However, with a slight shift in how you view social media, it can become a force for good in your life. With a spirit of curiosity and innovation, you can get playful and have some fun with it. I shared a few ideas here. How are you using social media to help you thrive and transform during this time?
boost your career through social media.
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