by Caroline Leach | Jul 20, 2020 | Leadership, Learning, Social Media
What are the best content types to share in our stay-at-home, pandemic world? What do people most need right now? What are they seeking?
A place to start is with content that resonates with you. What are you looking for when you scroll through LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter?
Another consideration is experiences you’ve had or observations you’ve made about leading and navigating through work during a global pandemic.
Two hypotheses emerged for me.
First, people are looking for helpful content that informs them on topics of interest that solve a problem for them.
Second, people are attracted by inspiring content that motivates them to take action amidst difficult circumstances.
To test these hypotheses, I analyzed the last 60 days of my LinkedIn posts. I’ve been known to gather my own data on a spreadsheet and analyze it for unique learning.
If you post content regularly, I encourage you to do the same. It creates clarity about what’s resonating with people. In addition, it gives clues about what will be engaging in the near future.
Before getting into the data, it’s worth noting that views, likes, and comments are considered by some to be vanity metrics. Why? It can be difficult to link social media content to specific business outcomes. As I reviewed the last 60 days, though, it was clear that one-third of my new clients were people who saw my content on LinkedIn and reached out to me as a result. That’s why these metrics are valuable to me as a solopreneur. They may be helpful to you as well, depending your goals for social media in boosting your career.
My average was one post a week. Views ranged from 4,692 on the high side to 86 on the low side. Likes/reactions went from 113 to 3. Comments went from 34 to 0 (yes, zero; ouch!). In addition, by clicking on the number of post views, more data is available. This includes organizations, titles, and geographic areas of people who engaged with a post.
What did the two lowest-scoring posts have in common? They were both shares of someone else’s content. That was a valuable learning. From now on, I’ll make a substantive comment on content I find share-worthy. However, I won’t share it. Instead, I’ll create an original post on the topic, crediting and tagging the creator.
Looking at the top half of my posts, five themes emerged.
Big Brands
The post with the most reach was a farewell meeting as my my three-year term concluded on the USC Alumni Association Board of Governors, representing the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. With 60+ people on the board and more than 400,000 living alumni (Patrick Auerbach can always quote the exact number), potentially a large number of people might be interested. This post got more than 4,700 views and 113 likes. Thanking various people and tagging them, as well as including relevant hashtags, probably helped this post gain more exposure.
Giveaways
Thinking about what could help people right now, I remembered I had several copies of my book, What Successful People Do on Social Media: A Short Guide to Boosting Your Career. Why not offer some free copies? In a book giveaway post, I tagged the book’s editor and cover designer, along with people who gave the book 5-star ratings on Amazon. In under an hour, five people claimed their books, which were mailed out the next day. Others could still get a free workbook, Your Social Media Success Roadmap, with 50 questions, actions, and ideas about career building on social media. This post got more than 1,700 views. It had the most comments at 34. A few second-degree connections commented, and we’ve since connected with each other.
Media Quotes
As a result of commenting on U.S. Chamber of Commerce posts about marketing ideas for small businesses, I was interviewed for a few articles. Of the three I posted, the most engaging one was customer communication tips during Covid. Here I tagged the article author and the other contributors, in addition to connecting on LinkedIn with everyone involved. This post got more than 1,460 views, 22 likes, and 8 comments. My theory is this one performed the best because it had the most people tagged. And it was for an appropriate reason, because they were all quoted in the article as well.
Podcasts
A fellow grad-school alum, Randa Hinton, contacted me this spring for an informational interview. She introduced me to another alum, Anika Fisch, and we had chatted as well. A few weeks later, Randa and Anika invited me to a be a guest on their new podcast, Opportunity Unknown. They teamed up to share the journey of their job search in the middle of a global pandemic. It’s an excellent podcast, BTW, for anyone who’s looking for work right now … full of actionable advice and inspiration. This post got 1,379 views, 34 likes, and 4 comments.
Black Lives Matter
As a white person who wants to contribute to social equality and justice, reflect on and adjust my own behavior, and amplify Black voices, I struggled with how to engage on social with Black Lives Matter. Then I read a poignant op-ed in the LA Times by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. I shared his article, along with my thoughts. This post got more than 1,240 views and 26 likes. Of my recent posts, however, this was the only one that got zero comments. Hmmm. I’m not sure what that means. Perhaps people didn’t know what to say? Why do you think no one commented?
What’s Unique to You?
For the most part, these posts focused on what I’ve been doing in my consulting and coaching business. No doubt you are working on important projects, learning hard-won lessons, and achieving celebration-worthy victories with your colleagues. Your experiences might help someone else solve a problem or feel inspired to keep going on their own professional journey. What will you be sharing in the coming days? Please tag me so I can check it out!
by Caroline Leach | Nov 26, 2019 | Careers, Leadership, Learning, Social Media
The end of the year can bring a lot of “shoulds” into our professional and personal lives.
We should do whatever it takes to hit those fourth-quarter operating goals. We should get every last item on our endless lists completed. We should count our abundant blessings on Thanksgiving and on every day of the year. We should enjoy the many holiday celebrations with our colleagues, friends and family.
Except, what if you’re not feeling it?
What if you’re not enjoying — or at least making it through, with a smile on your face — everything on your calendar? What if you feel overwhelmed? What if you feel tired, or lonely, or longing for some quiet time where you can just be? What if you feel angry, or afraid, or just plain sad about something (or many somethings)?
For my Thanksgiving week blog post, I was eager to share something inspiring and uplifting. A few drafts are still languishing in my files, unfinished. They felt forced. Inauthentic. And unlikely to inspire anyone.
So I eased up on my self-imposed deadline. I let myself play around with ideas. I let my mind simply be for a while.
And it came to me while I was driving today.
What do you do when you’re not feeling it?
At lunch with a group of people I met recently, one person said with a sigh that she just wasn’t feeling it that day.
Support immediately came from the people around the table, in the form of questions. “What are you experiencing?” one person asked. “What seems to be the trouble?” another asked. “What do you want?” yet another asked.
Bit by bit, the story flowed. Speaking it aloud began to neutralize its grip. The space opened up to just be with it.
You may find yourself in spots where you’re not feeling it. Yet you may not feel it’s acceptable to share those feelings with others. You may not even to acknowledge them to yourself. If you’re in a leadership role, you may feel pressure to maintain a positive demeanor, even if you feel miserable inside.
Being positive and uplifting others has been my north star as a leader. Emotions are contagious. It’s important for leaders to bring a realistic optimism, a can-do mindset, and an energetic environment to a team. That’s how I believe people do great work, enjoy the experience, and fulfill their deepest longings for purpose and meaning in their lives.
Yet, the leader has to feel it too. Authenticity has an important place in the mix. That can mean many things. It could be a willingness to experience discomfort and be okay with it. It might be a curiosity about what’s causing it. Or it could be reflecting on what’s important.
These are just a few things I learned from two intense November weekends with the Co-Active Training Institute. The co-active model focuses on “being in action … together.” With this series of coaching courses, I’m adding a fresh foundation to my business and leadership coaching business.
In addition to (hopefully) making me a more effective coach, there are some welcome side effects. It’s brought new perspectives to my social media consulting, my community involvement, and my family.
It also helped me identify three important questions for when you’re not feeling it.
What are you experiencing?
What’s happening with you right now? What else is going on? This is about creating space to simply be with the experience and acknowledge its presence in your life.
What’s important to you?
Not feeling it is an opportunity to step back and reflect on what’s important to you. What do you want? If you could do anything you wanted, what would you do?
What do you want to be doing instead?
Maybe there’s a hunger in your soul to be doing something completely different. Perhaps you miss doing something you enjoyed earlier in your life, or there’s something new you want to try. What are they?
The same goes for your social media
Much of my writing focuses on how to build your career through social media. One of my first consulting clients said how excited he was to be getting consulting and coaching all in one from me. Consulting was expressly part of our work, but coaching was not explicitly in the mix. That experience was one of several catalysts for becoming a coach in an “official” sense. Thank you, and you know who you are. 😉
The co-active coaching model also helped me tap into some new wisdom about social media. If you’re not feeling it about a specific event or a certain post, don’t feel obligated to share it. It’s ideal to help your network by sharing the best of your perspective and expertise on social media. If that means skipping a post or not sticking to a schedule because they don’t feel right, that’s fine.
It’s okay — and even desirable — to post selectively, take a break for a while, or set aside a posting schedule. Yes, consistency is important on social media. And so is the quality of your content and the way you feel about sharing it. Like most things in life, it’s a balance.
And more importantly, what do you do when you’re not feeling it?
by Caroline Leach | Oct 30, 2019 | Careers, Learning, Social Media
It’s almost the end of the year. Do you want an easy way to gather your accomplishments for a year-end performance review?
You may be preparing for a performance discussion with your manager in the corporate world. Or maybe you run your own company and want to identify how you did this year.
In either scenario, reflecting on this year’s highlights helps you clearly see what you did well and where you can improve. It’s an opportunity to pause and celebrate the accomplishments of you and year team. It’s a chance to elevate what’s working well and make changes to what’s not working well.
But in the rush of meeting year-end goals, how can you simplify the process?
Try looking to your social media feeds. If you’ve been sharing consistently what you, your team, and your company have been doing, you have a ready-made record. (Of course, this presumes you follow your organization’s social media policy and haven’t shared any confidential, private, or sensitive information.)
A former colleague (and now an author!), Angelica Kelly, has a year-end ritual that relies on LinkedIn. “At the end of every year, I take stock of the personal and professional. I consider what I’m grateful for and what I want to improve,” Kelly says.
“After this reflection process, I use LinkedIn like a notepad and do an annual update,” she says. “Everything professionally relevant goes into my LinkedIn profile. This includes accomplishments, interests, volunteering, and big projects that highlight transferable skills and new knowledge I’ve gained.”
In addition to Angelica’s approach, if you posted content to LinkedIn or other social networks throughout the year, you can scroll through your posts to identify the highlights. You can capture instances where you and your team:
- Launched a successful new product
- Completed an important project
- Won an award for your accomplishments
- Spoke at a company or industry event
- Attended a conference and applied new knowledge
- Championed company news as a brand ambassador
After that, here are a few things to consider …
1. Link your achievements to the goals you set at the beginning of the year, as well as your bigger department and company goals. Does your social media content show how you made a difference for your company? Did you contribute to some of your company’s key goals and share about those (to the extent you could) on social media?
2. Quantify how others responded to your accomplishments. See what data you can cite from your social media posts. Did your content reach a large number of people? Generate multiple comments and a dialogue on an important work topic? Get shared in a way that helped build your organization’s reputation as an industry leader or a great place to work? Use numbers to quantify the impact of your social sharing.
3. Identify where you got feedback. Perhaps some of your posts served as mini feedback moments on some of your work. Did people make suggestions for improvements that you ended up using? Did people ask for more information so they could apply your learning to their own work? Social media can serve as an online focus group. See if that was the case for you this year.
As you reflect on this year, it’s also a great time to lay the foundation for the coming year. Are there new and different ways you could share successes and learnings on social media? Would you use social media activity to seek feedback and help solve problems? How could you hit what I call the social media trifecta — sharing equally about you, your team, and your organization?
With the year — and the decade! — coming to a close, I hope you reflect on and celebrate the accomplishments you and your team achieved this year. And if you have rituals you use to make the most of your performance review preparation, please share!
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