by Caroline Leach | Jul 6, 2018 | Social Media
Do you have a high school senior applying to college this fall? Or a sophomore or junior starting to gear up for college apps?
In any event, you and your student are busy. Academics. Athletics. Activities. Test prep. Community service. College apps. Family. Friends. And so on.
The Common Application for the 2018-19 college application cycle opens on August 1. It’s the same date for the University of California and many others.
As a high school parent, just thinking about it all makes me want to stop and take a break.
As a corporate VP with a side gig writing, researching and speaking about career building through social media, it gets my wheels turning.
There may be an aspect of college prep we’re missing. What is it? Social media.
No, this isn’t the post warning you about all the bad things that could happen on social media. You know about those. And your student isn’t the type of person anyway to disparage others or do things in poor taste, whether it’s on social media or IRL (in real life).
No, this post is all about the good things that can come from being active on social media, and LinkedIn in particular. (Note: opinions expressed in this blog are my own).
There are more than 560 million people on LinkedIn. That includes college admissions officers, college application readers, internship recruiters, corporate recruiters and many more.
That makes LinkedIn the perfect place for a high school student to tell their unique story … the one only they can tell.
Here are the benefits for a high student of creating a LinkedIn profile …
An unlimited opportunity to share interests, passions and accomplishments … in words, images, videos and links. That’s much more than the 650-word limit in the Common App essay prompts. A LinkedIn profile can become a supplemental portfolio of accomplishments, awards and interests.
The ability to explore colleges and demonstrate interest through University Pages. Beyond visiting a college campus, being active on a University Page shows interest. Students can engage in content by engaging in content on a university page by liking and commenting on content, as well as asking questions.
The chance to begin building a professional network. This can include friends, friends’ parents, community leaders from activities like scouting and athletics, and many more. Be aware that sometimes teachers must wait until a student is 18 before they can connect with them on social media.
What does this all add up to? A powerful ability for a high-school student to shape and control their narrative in our highly social world.
Why does it matter? Because “more than two-thirds (68%) of colleges say it’s ‘fair game’ for them to visit applicants’ social media profiles to help them decide who gets in.”
That’s according to a 2018 Kaplan Test Prep Survey of 388 admissions officers from top schools. CNN reported on the prior year’s survey, saying that social media can help a student’s college prospects.
Another study by AACRAO, the American Association of Collegiate Registrars Admissions Officers, says more than 75% of colleges are looking at social media, according to Social Assurity, a firm advising students on social media.
Of course, you never know for sure if an admissions officer or application reader will look at a student’s LinkedIn profile or other social media activity.
But students can certainly include a link to their profile in their application (tip: create a customized LinkedIn URL with the student’s name). They can be active on the University Pages of colleges of interest. They can share compelling content that establishes their personal narrative and a digital presence.
Anyone who’s 16 or older can start a LinkedIn profile. Several of my previous posts can help you and your student take the first steps:
And this post may turn into a series of posts specifically for high school students and their parents. What could be ahead? How-to info on:
- Starting a LinkedIn profile
- Building a professional network
- Telling a story through content
- Engaging with University Pages
- Bringing other social media into the mix
What else do you or your student want to know?
Let’s get started!
by Caroline Leach | Jul 5, 2018 | Social Media
What does organizing guru Marie Kondo have to do with LinkedIn profiles?
Starting with The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, Marie is the author of four best-selling books. She “helps people transform their cluttered homes into spaces of serenity and inspiration.”
Many of her clients say she changed their lives for the better … gaining clarity about their life’s mission, improving relationships and accomplishing long-languishing goals.
If decluttering your surroundings can change your life, think what decluttering your LinkedIn profile can do for your career.
By focusing on the essential and eliminating the non-essential on your profile, your best attributes will stand out. People don’t have to spend precious time figuring out who you are, what you do and where you’re heading in your career.
As you establish an all-star profile, fixing these three mistakes can clean up and bring clarity to your LinkedIn profile.
- Keeping content more than 10 to 15 years old
Most content that’s not from 2000 or later is likely irrelevant. It can safely be removed from your profile. This makes more room for your recent accomplishments to stand out and point the way toward your future.
There’s no need to keep positions more than 15 years old. If the experience was formative to your worldview today, you can mention it (briefly) in your summary.
There’s no need to keep graduation years from college. If it’s been more than a decade or so since you graduated, you can take off the dates.
As the world continues to changes more and more quickly, removing dated information will become even more important. This keeps the focus on what you’re learning and doing now.
- Including content not relevant to your future
What do you want your next job to be?
You can use that question as a lens to decide what content is relevant to your future and what can be deleted. Look at all the sections of your profile and remove the extraneous.
Here’s an example. Recently I deleted that I’m a senior professional in human resources, or SPHR. At one time I reported to a Chief Human Resources Officer (one of many awesome bosses, BTW) and the credential was valuable to my work.
It wasn’t an easy test to pass. There were prep books and flash cards and practice exams. That’s why it was slightly painful to take it off my LinkedIn profile.
But my current work in marketing and communications is my future. The SPHR designation is now extraneous. I comfort myself knowing I’m well schooled in HR, which is ever valuable in leading teams and coaching people. But it’s no longer a credential that needs to be highlighted.
Another place to pare down is your endorsements. Choose the skills that most strongly support your current and future professional direction. Delete the ones that don’t.
Although I appreciate the people who endorsed me for “project management” and I like to believe my skills are strong in that area, it’s not something I want to be known for.
By removing the endorsements for non-essential skills, you’re making your most relevant skills stand out.
- Sharing anything too personal
LinkedIn isn’t Facebook. There’s no need to share your birthday in your contact information. Do you really want to get happy birthday messages in your LinkedIn feed?
While some could make the case that wishing people a happy birthday in LinkedIn is a good way to touch base with your connections on an annual basis, there are better ways to do that.
The best ways are to comment on people’s LinkedIn content, share information that will be of interest to individuals in your network, and offer to introduce people in your network who could benefit from knowing each other. On introductions, be sure to ask first if both people are open to it.
What other mistakes do you see in LinkedIn profiles?
by Caroline Leach | Jun 25, 2018 | Social Media
Jessica Sterling at Dodger Stadium
What do you want more of in your professional life?
Let that guide what you share in social media. It works as its own magnet and its own law of attraction, bringing into your life what you’re focusing on.
That was one of several gems I heard from Los Angeles-based photographer Jessica Sterling. We chatted recently about her social media strategy for her business.
Jessica shoots extraordinary portraits, epic events and awe-inspiring architecture – helping people and businesses share their stories. Here are a few samples of how she draws out the essence of people in her portraits …
She’s photographed many notable people, including Serena Williams, Justin Timberlake and Michelle Branch, to name just a few.
Jessica and I met through work in my DIRECTV days, when she photographed several events for us. (Note: opinions expressed in this blog are my own).
Later, I booked her services personally when it was time for a new headshot. That experience turned into one of my top 10 articles in 12 Ways to a Great LinkedIn Profile Photo.
When I did a study about how people are using social media to build their careers, it surfaced several people who are doing it well. Some of them will be profiled in future posts.
Jessica was a natural to be the first profile. She makes me smile every time her images and videos pop up in my Instagram feed. Here’s what she told me about how social media helps build her business …
Why are you active in social media?
Social media keeps me in touch with my clients – past, present and future. It keeps me connected to people and top of mind. It gives me a fresh presence and a reason why people should care about me and my work.
What platforms are you on?
Instagram is perfect for photographers, so I’m there. Facebook too. And LinkedIn. Once in a while I’ll do a blog post on my website.
What type of content do you share?
Shoots I’ve booked lately, and what I’d like to book more of in the future. Portraits are big. People are passionate about what they do. I love capturing that in images. Events are fantastic. A recent one was at the Mayor’s office – for Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti.
What content gets the most engagement?
Selfies! People love them. They want to connect with your story. You can tell your continuing story through selfies.
How has social media changed photography?
It’s been huge. People are used to seeing beautiful images. People want and demand them. They don’t always know what it takes to create them. That’s what I’m passionate about doing in my work.
What’s your personal brand?
It’s seamless and fun to shoot with me. I strive to make it as pleasant and as comfortable as possible. People tell me I’m quiet when I shoot. I can be inconspicuous at a big event, but I’m there when you need me. The best validation is when someone hires me and loves the experience.
What do’s and don’ts do you observe?
Two don’ts: No political stuff. No social causes. People want to have fun, and that’s where I meet them in social.
Why isn’t your young son on social media very much?
Social media is so powerful. We don’t fully understand its ultimate impact. I want my son to have control of it when he’s old enough to do so.
What’s the next big thing in social media for career building?
Instagram Stories are interesting. There’s a lot to explore here!
–
Inspired by Jessica? Here’s how you can connect with her:
IG: @jessicasterlingphoto
FB: facebook.com/jessica.sterling
LI: linkedin.com/in/jessicasterlingphotography
Web: jessicasterling.com
Blog: http://jessicasterlingphoto.tumblr.com
Watch for more profiles coming soon. And if you’d like to be profiled, leave me a comment. I’d love to hear from you!
by Caroline Leach | Jun 17, 2018 | Learning, Social Media
There’s only one you in the world. No one else has traveled your exact professional path, experienced identical situations or learned the same lessons.
Of the more than 560 million LinkedIn users and counting, only you can tell your unique professional story.
That’s the big takeaway from analyzing 49 articles I posted to LinkedIn starting in May 2017. The top articles were largely inspired by my personal experience:
If you aren’t already posting LinkedIn articles, here are some reasons to consider it. And if you’re already writing articles, this may help you up your game.
Just over a year ago, I started an experiment on LinkedIn. I posted to LinkedIn every weekday for a month. Why? To test the data point that it takes 20 LinkedIn posts each month to reach 60% of your audience.
In developing an editorial calendar, one of the easy ways to share content was to repurpose my blog posts at carolineleach.com. This solved another problem – promoting my posts. Repurposing posts as LinkedIn articles reached a broader audience among my LinkedIn network.
In analyzing the data over the past year and reflecting on my experience, here’s what I learned in the form of benefits from regular article writing. By writing an article weekly, as I did, or probably even monthly, you’re likely to:
Create a sustainable writing schedule. When I began writing articles a year ago, there was a healthy backlog of blog posts. It was simply a matter of organizing the topics in a logical flow, making minor content updates to ensure timeliness, posting the articles and sharing them with my network.
Once the backlog was done, though, a weekly article needed to be written. With a busy professional position and an active family with two teens, where was the time going to come from?
Here’s one of the ways having teens can be a blessing. They generally sleep in on the weekends. That’s why early mornings on the weekends became my writing time. And the weekly article was ready to repurpose on LinkedIn during the week when more people visit it.
Committing to a weekly article pushed me to create a sustainable writing schedule every week. If you’re a lark like me, or a night owl like my teens, you can take advantage of early mornings or late nights. Or you could turn part of your lunchtime or your public transport commute into writing times.
There’s an ideal intersection. It’s between areas when you can carve out time and when your brain is operating a high level of efficiency. Look for those times.
Grow your network. My articles that attracted the most engagement have been those where I’ve done experiments and collected and analyzed related data. That made me wonder how my network grew between May 2017 and June 2018.
LinkedIn has a handy feature where you can download all of your connections into an Excel spreadsheet. BTW, this is a good practice to do every 3 to 6 months, so you always have an up-to-date record of your contacts. You never know when you might need it!
While I thought my network had grown over the last year, it was surprising to see connections were up more than 60%! There are many reasons for this, and I believe my weekly articles are a big one. Why? Because people mention them in their connection requests.
While connections went from about 1,900 to 3,160, followers also grew from zero to 440 in the same time period. The combined group is just over 3,600. That data helped me set a stretch goal for this year of 5,000.
Establish yourself as an expert and increase your influence. By sharing your professional expertise and your unique perspective, you can establish yourself as a thought leader in your area of focus.
How can you measure this? The growth in your network connections and followers gives you one indication.
You can also look at the trend of your profile views. How are they increasing over time? What’s the makeup of people looking at your profile? Is it the group you want to reach, whether it’s industry leaders, peers or recruiters?
You can also look at speaking requests. Because of my LinkedIn articles, I’ve been invited to speak to …
A highlight was joining the team of social influencers at the inaugural AT&T Business Summit in 2017. John Starkweather, Michelle Smith and I along with several others shared our experiences in LinkedIn articles. (Note: opinions expressed in this blog are my own.)
What’s next? This spring I did research on how people are using social media to boost their careers. That identified several people who are doing it well. I’ve begun interviewing people who are crushing it in social media and will start sharing profiles of them soon.
The ascendence of AI, artificial intelligence, and AR, augmented reality, are fascinating in how they are influencing social media. These are areas I look forward to researching and conducting experiments.
The best part about reflecting on that last year? Seeing a holistic view that added up to significant progress. Without pausing to reflect, the feeling of moving forward wouldn’t be as strong.
And having a sense of forward momentum is what creates “the best inner work lives,” according to authors Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer. They studied and wrote about the importance of daily action toward meaningful goals in The Progress Principle.
How are you making regular progress in sharing your expertise with the world?
by Caroline Leach | Jun 3, 2018 | Social Media
Data is the new oil, says The Economist. Data scientist is the best job in America, says Glassdoor. Social data can solve business challenges, says Adweek.
Data is everywhere. It’s touted as the panacea to fix every problem. And it certainly has that potential.
Except … when it doesn’t fully solve a problem, as I discovered this spring.
To understand why and how how professionals are using social media to build their careers, I conducted a study.
I went into it incredibly excited about what it could reveal. I vetted and chose a survey platform. I designed the survey questionnaire. I tweaked it until Survey Monkey gave it a “perfect score.” I sent the survey to any and every group and individual in my network. I shared it in all of my social networks. Multiple times.
I was convinced this would result in upwards of 1,000 responses, although I set a more “realistic” goal of 500. I was sure it would uncover new and fascinating insights about why and how people are using social media to boost their careers. I believed it would identify a myriad of new topics and areas to explore in social media in this blog.
Did it do all of those things?
Well, I humbly report that it ranged broadly from “yes” on some to “no” on others. I shared the survey results in a series of posts called Boost Your Career through Social Media, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5. (Note: opinions expressed in this blog are my own).
The main goal of the survey was to learn how fellow professionals are using social media to build their careers. Specifically, it addressed:
- What social media people use professionally and personally
- Why they are active on social media professionally
- How their social media activity has helped their career, others’ careers and their employer.
As I reflected on the experience, here’s are 5 things I learned.
It’s hard to get people to respond to surveys. Intellectually, I know this. But of course, I believed my survey would defy this rule. Why? Because (1) I thought the topic was interesting, (2) I cast a wide net in reaching out to diverse groups of people, and (3) I repeated the call to respond to the survey through multiple channels.
Yet at the end of the fielding in March 2018, I was happy to have 100 responses, a tenth of my original goal.
This may point to the need to up my promotional game. Maybe a play on a BuzzFeed-like headline is in order, such as “What’s your social media type? Take this quiz to see which ‘Game of Thrones’ character are you in social … ”
What I’ll do differently in the future is make my surveys shorter — under 10 minutes to complete, rather than 15. Maybe there will be an annual survey each spring to view trends over time. It could attempt to relate social media behavior with career outcomes such as finding a mentor, landing a new job or scoring a promotion.
On a quarterly basis maybe there will be a shorter, topical survey. Or perhaps a simple question in an LinkedIn post. Because experimentation applies to social media (see below), it makes sense to experiment with survey design, length and frequency.
Social media for career building is in its early days, which creates opportunity. Although 98% of respondents are on LinkedIn and 47% are on Twitter for professional use, some of the comments told a different story:
- “I use social medial personally, not professionally”
- “I don’t really use social media to build my career. I see social media as just that, social.”
- “I rarely use social media”
- “I don’t post on LinkedIn”
My conclusion? These are the nascent days for social media and careers. At first, this disappointed me. But the flip side is the big opportunity for all of us. This is especially true for people navigating transitions to new jobs. According to a 2017 CareerBuilder study:
- 70% of employers use social media to screen candidates
- 57% of employers are less likely to interview a candidate they can’t find online
- 44% have found social media content that caused them to hire a candidate.
People follow thought leaders in social media to learn, which creates opportunity. Among the top reasons for being active in social media professionally, learning continually was cited by 77% of respondents. In comments, people said they followed thought leaders as part of their learning agenda.
Why not parlay your expertise and experience into becoming a thought leader in social media? Whether you realize it or not, you have a unique and valuable perspective on your profession and your industry. By sharing that in social media, one post at a time, you can establish yourself as a thought leader.
Dorie Clark talks about the importance of content creation in her Harvard Business Review article, What You Need to Stand Out in a Noisy World. “The fact that you’re the one creating content, rather than simply quoting others,” she says,”makes you an expert in many people’s eyes.”
Of course, the caveat is that you should never share confidential or proprietary information about your employer. When in doubt, ask the advice of your supervisor and/or err on the side of caution and don’t share.
Actor and former NFL player Terry Crews reminds us about the power of your unique voice. In his interview with author Tim Ferriss for the book Tribe of Mentors, Terry says, “When you’re creative, you render the competition obsolete, because there is only one you, and no one can do things exactly the way you do.”
No one has had your unique experience, and no one can write about it the way you can. If that sounds daunting, you can start with small steps. I call them experiments. Try sharing your perspective in a LinkedIn post or in an article. See what resonates with your audience, and tweak your approach as appropriate.
Keep at it long enough to gain some traction. Here I’m inspired by Tim Ferriss and the dozens of book rejections he’s received as an author. Thank goodness he persisted. We get the benefit of his learning as a result.
Observing others and experimenting are the ways to learn and improve. This survey was a form of observing others and seeing what works for them. Same thing with engaging with my social feeds in LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
Keeping an eye on what content is getting high engagement and what people are sharing are sources of inspiration. Sometimes my observations become blog posts, as in the case of How to Seize the Moment in Social Media.
Experiments are also big for me. This survey is one example. Asking “what would happen if … ?” helps me identify what to do next. One time I blogged every day for a month to see what I’d learn. Another time I posted to LinkedIn every weekday for a month, to test the data point that doing so was necessary in order to reach 60% of your network.
It’s hard to reliably predict what will resonate with people. In our data-driven world, I was sure this series of posts of my research would be highly engaging. Perhaps I didn’t promote it well enough. In looking at which articles over the last year have gotten the most engagement, this series didn’t crack the top 10.
What were the top articles? The ones that shared the results from my experiments, like posting to LinkedIn every weekday for a month. Or they covered lists and how-to’s, like 7 Things Not to Do in LinkedIn, How to Kill It in Social Media and 12 Ways to Get a Great LinkedIn Profile Photo.
This post is the 49th article I will have posted to LinkedIn since May 2017. In contemplating my 50th article, I’ll share what I learned from posting an article to LinkedIn nearly every week for a year.
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