by Caroline Leach | Feb 5, 2017 | Social Media
Looking for a simple way to share great professional content in your social networks?
If your company offers an employee advocacy program, download the app and start sharing content that matches your professional goals for social media.
This can be a key part of your social media savvy strategy to personally brand and market yourself successfully in social media.
But first, what is employee advocacy?
It’s “brands empowering employees to support the goals of the brand, through employee-owned social media,” says Chris Boudreaux in Social Media Governance.
My employer makes it easy to share company-provided content with Social Circle, powered by Social Chorus. Nolan Carleton pioneered the approach, with much success.
(This is where I remind readers that opinions in this blog are my own.)
Here are 11 ways to make the most of your employee advocacy program, promoting your company while you build your own professional brand.
- Download the app. Make it easy to share content by putting the app on your mobile devices. You can use snippets of time during the week to review and share content.
- Choose content categories that support your professional goals. Align your own social media strategy with the available content categories. For example, you could focus on your company’s business strategy, the customer experience, the employee experience, career strategies or community engagement, just to name a few.
- Customize your feed for your content categories. Once you know what types of content you want to share, see if you can customize the content you see. This will make the process more efficient as you choose what to share.
- Select the social media platforms you want to post on. Assess how the available content lines up with the platforms where you’re most active for professional purposes. In my case, it’s LinkedIn and Twitter.
- Keep looking before you link. Just as you shouldn’t link to other social media content without reading it first, you should do the same with a company-provided message. Make sure it reflects well on your professional brand before sharing it.
- Tailor company-provided messages to your voice. You can use the company-provided messaging to share links, or you can edit it to be closer to your own voice. Just be sure that the edits you make reflect positively on your company.
- Share your pride in your company. Let your enthusiasm for your company shine through. Whether you love the employee experience, the products and services, or everything about your organization, share that sentiment.
- Follow your company’s social media guidelines. Make sure to follow the spirit and the letter of social media guidelines at your company. When in doubt, err on the conservative side. While you’re acting as a brand ambassador of your company, that holds you to a higher standard.
- Target 3 or more posts each week. Sprinkle your company’s posts among a broad variety of content you’re sharing. Don’t go overboard with excessive sharing. Since it’s company-related content, post it on weekdays. Your platform may enable you to schedule sharing in advance to post at a specific time.
- Share social content from colleagues. Keep an eye on content from colleagues who also engage in the advocacy program. Share their content if it fits with your overall goals. This promotes your colleagues, your company and you – a triple win.
- Experiment and refine your approach. Check the analytics for each of your social platforms to see how your community is engaging with content from your company. Make adjustments based on that, and keep fine-tuning as you go.
What if your employer doesn’t offer an employee advocacy program? Make a pitch to your Corporate Communications team.
Here’s a key data point. Consumers see recommendations from friends as the most credible form of advertising – as much as 83%, according to a Nielsen study.
And IABC Fellow Shel Holtz shares for corporate communicators that “employees are now your most credible spokespeople.” This is based on the 2017 Edelman Trust Barometer.
Also, check out the 2016 State of Employee Advocacy report from JEM Consulting and Advisory Services.
The study’s leader Jen McClure notes that, “Most employee and brand advocacy programs are still fairly new, and companies are still developing best practices.”
How are you using an employee advocacy program to promote your company’s brand along with your own?
by Caroline Leach | Jan 28, 2017 | Leadership, Social Media
It started innocently enough.
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.
I couldn’t be more proud that my employer is offering free screenings of the film to students in major U.S. cities. (This is where I remind readers that opinions in this blog are my own.)
The positive actions that we take individually and collectively have the power to change the world.
What are you doing to make a difference?
by Caroline Leach | Jan 8, 2017 | Corporate Communications, Learning, Social Media
It’s a new year. It’s time for a fresh set of goals. And it’s critical to think about them in novel and different ways.
In your professional life, how will you use social media to achieve your goals? How will you use social media to tell your story about your wins?
To start, think about how social media will change for professionals this year. Check out the post, along with Dorie Clark, Alexandra Samuel, Bryan Kramer and William Arruda for some fascinating ideas.
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.
I’m ever inspired by a talk that business leader Mark Cuban gave at my employer’s headquarters many years ago.
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.
- 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.
by Caroline Leach | Jan 2, 2017 | Social Media
It’s a new year. A fresh start. How will you revitalize your social media strategy?
You can start by thinking about how social media will change in the coming year.
No one knows for sure what will happen, but here are some interesting trends from personal branding expert William Arruda.
And at a macro level, Bryan Kramer has a roundup of 2017 predictions in social media and content marketing. This includes one of the best in personal branding, Dorie Clark.
As a communications and marketing professional in the corporate world, I think the following changes will have the biggest impact in the year ahead.
(This is where I remind readers that opinions are my own).
Life is lived on stage. Every day when you leave your house, you’re in the public eye. You could be photographed, recorded, tagged, tweeted and snapped, all without your express permission or even your knowledge.
The upside to all this? It’s one more incentive to live a high-integrity life. To do the right thing. To make the world a better place.
In the words from the film Ocean’s Eleven, “there’s always someone watching.” Make sure you’re presenting yourself as who you authentically are and how you want to be seen.
It’s not even clear how long our own homes will be a sanctuary from the public sphere. On Thanksgiving day in my leafy town, I spotted a drone in a nearby yard. It made me rethink my window coverings.
It also made me think about feedback. I used to work with a chief marketing officer who was a fantastic speaker. He owned the stage. And he always wanted to improve. After a big speech, he’d ask me for the video so he could critique his performance.
That’s a wise move for every professional. Take some time each month to evaluate how you’re coming across in video, in pictures and in words.
When I’m giving a big speech, I record my practice sessions on my phone. That has two benefits.
The first is a way to improve my actual delivery by assessing how I look and sound.
The second is a way to memorize the speech in advance, so I can deliver it in a more natural way.
How? By listening to the recording while I’m driving and when I’m about to go to sleep (a proven method for studying and remembering information).
Images trump words. As a word lover, it pains me to write that images are more powerful than words. But it’s true. Even my iPhone keypad is suggesting emojis in place of certain words.
Every social post needs an image. Research shows that articles with images get 94% more views.
Wherever I go, I take pictures on my iPhone. I may not use them right away, but I’m building a library of images for the future.
On New Year’s Day, for example, I wanted to share a personal picture.
The year before, my family attended the Tournament of Roses Parade (with reservations about the early hour and the relatively cold weather, by Southern California standards).
The perception of frostbite aside, my camera roll was filled with pictures of beautiful, colorful floats. A photo of South Dakota’s float of Mount Rushmore caught my eye. Four great presidents. In a month when our country will inaugurate a new leader. There was my timely and timeless image.
In addition to using my own photos, I subscribe to a few image sites, iStock and Canva. They’re well worth the investment, because they make content more eye-catching and professional.
Video trumps stills. For as much as photos are better than words, they’re starting to seem almost as dated as mere words. It’s the moving image that captures the eye. From Facebook Live to Periscope to over-the-top video, the moving image reigns supreme.
This will be an area of experimentation for me in 2017. I’ll start with a few short videos in my Instagram feed. I’ll try Facebook Live. And maybe I’ll turn some of my blog posts into videos. That idea that jumped out at me in Gary Vaynerchuk‘s Udemy course on building a personal brand.
Snap isn’t just for teens. Now that Snapchat is just simply Snap, it’s unavoidable in the news and the cultural zeitgeist. It’s how my teenage daughter and I enjoy spending time together, checking out her snap streaks and laughing over the funny moments she and her friends capture of every day life.
I’m still figuring out the basics, like how to take a decent picture that won’t be obscured in all the wrong places by the filter du jour. It feels like having all thumbs, like I did when I first joined Twitter and I hadn’t fully figured out why I was there yet. More to come on this topic as this learning project takes shape.
Professionals need a plan. With so many ways to share your professional expertise, ideas and achievements, a plan is essential.
It starts with setting goals. What do you want to accomplish? What social media networks should you be on? What are good ways to curate and create content?
From there, you need a calendar. I’ve been searching for a ready-made one, unsuccessfully so far. Right now I’m using an Excel spreadsheet. As this evolves into something better, I’ll share updates in future posts.
Right now, it’s organized by date, broken into weeks and months. For content ideas, I look at upcoming:
- Blog posts on social savvy for professionals
- Work news and events
- Conferences and training sessions
- Speaking engagements
- Hashtag holidays
- Personal milestones
For each piece of content, the calendar includes:
- Posting date and time
- Content headline
- Content summary
- Content type (e.g., blog post, photo or video with caption, etc.)
- Category (professional, personal or a mix)
- Creative (photo or video)
- Channel (which social network or networks)
- Hashtags (especially for Instagram and Twitter)
- Status (whether in development, posted or in the comments stage).
What changes are you making in your social media strategy this year?
by Caroline Leach | Dec 29, 2016 | Social Media
It’s that time of year. It’s when we all take stock of how we did and make plans for the future.
How do you know if you won social media? Here are 5 questions to ask yourself.
- What platforms are you on and why?
Be clear on which platforms you’ll be on, why you’re there and how much time you’ll allocate to each.
Here are my reasons for being in these social networks:
LinkedIn is all about work. It’s for connecting with other professionals, learning from others and sharing knowledge. And after attending an event, I send personalized LinkedIn invitations to stay in touch with people I’ve met.
Twitter is mostly about work. It’s for news and real-time information. It’s how I share what I’m reading and thinking about. It’s endlessly entertaining during big events. Think Super Bowl, Academy Awards and favorite TV shows.
Instagram is mostly about friends and family. It’s a way to experiment with images and learn more about visual communications. This is especially important as the world becomes ever more visual.
Facebook is all about friends and family. It’s about how you connect with the special people in your life for personal Facebook accounts. Just remember that some of your work colleagues may be in on it too. Keep it professional.
Snapchat is all about fun. It’s for learning to express yourself in new ways. My daughter keeps me endlessly entertained with her story and her snaps. It’s a way of lightening up about the world and having fun.
Blogging is about learning and discovery. It’s about writing until the “a-ha” moment, says career blogger Penelope Trunk. She’s right.
On that road to discovery and some professional twists and turns, my blog has evolved from corporate communications to lifelong learning to social media.
- How did you perform against your goals?
You did set goals, didn’t you? If not, this is a great time to think about your goals for the coming year.
One data point to help with the process is the analytics on each of your social media platforms to see which posts created the most engagement.
My goals were to blog twice a week, continue building a presence on Twitter and LinkedIn, and develop visual skills in Instagram.
How did I do?
With blogging, I posted more frequently this year than last year, although the average was just under 1.5 per week. That’s progress, though, and there’s more to be made in the new year.
With Twitter, I’m still attracting followers, but not as quickly as I’d like. I learned some things noted below that I’ll apply in the new year.
In Instagram, I posted more photos this year than last year. And more people commented this year. So that’s one way to show improvement in my photography and editing skills. And I’m ever thankful to a former colleague Joe Szopa for giving me a photography tutorial.
From blogging, I learned that the area I most want to explore is social media.
From Twitter, I learned that tweeting during company and professional events with the right hashtags and @mentions increases engagement and followers.
(Here’s where I remind readers that opinions expressed in this blog and other social media are my own.)
From Facebook, I learned that the personal and nostalgic wins the day.
From Instagram, I learned to use as many relevant hashtags as possible. Each post can have up to 30, so I keep lists on hand by topic that I can easily cut and paste. I also learned how to regram posts.
From Snapchat, I learned that I have a lot more experimenting to do!
Here I’m inspired by Wharton’s Adam Grant and his philosophy of helping others.
Social media is a great place to share good content. In the process, you can help others get their content to reach a broader audience.
As an example, a colleague Carlos Botero has been posting great insight about people and HR in LinkedIn.
- What would you do differently in the year ahead?
Here’s my short list:
- Keep up with changes, since social media is constantly changing, writes Guy Kawasaki in The Art of Social Media.
- Create a more efficient social media calendar for professional and personal posts.
- Blog more frequently about social savvy for professionals and better share it.
It’s also important to think about what will change in social media for professionals in 2017 and how to factor that into social media goals. These will be the topics of upcoming posts.
How did you win social media this year?
by Caroline Leach | Dec 26, 2016 | Change, Corporate Communications, Learning
What does the future hold for PR and communications? Check out the Relevance Report.
New from the USC Center for Public Relations this month, it’s full of innovative ideas on what’s ahead.
Global. Mobile. Video. Data. Emotion. These are just a few of the trend areas accelerating in the year ahead.
The biggest learning for me? It’s the parallel and seemingly paradoxical rise of data and emotion as drivers of influence. Data drives better decision making, while emotion is a prime influencer of people’s opinions and behaviors.
Find out more in my latest blog post on the USC Annenberg Alumni website.
It’s about what you’ll learn in this insightful report, with nuggets of wisdom from Annenberg’s Bob Feldman and Heather Rim as well as Pulitzer Prize-winning author Thomas Friedman.
The post is part of being a proud Annenberg Alumni Ambassador this school year. It’s a thrill to share the best of this distinguished school for communication and journalism.
The Relevance Report gives timely insight into trends that will impact society, business and communications. It features thought pieces from communications leaders who identify the issues, ideas and innovations that will be relevant to the communications industry in 2017.
by Caroline Leach | Dec 11, 2016 | Careers, Social Media, Work/Life
It’s the holiday season. That means year-end networking events.
They always seem like a good idea when the invitation arrives, don’t they?
Yet when the appointed hour comes, I often regret my affirmative RSVP.
Except I didn’t this month when I dragged myself away from a compelling work project at 6:30 one evening and made myself go to the event I said I would attend.
It was a professional networking event of my son’s high school, for alums and parents to get to know each other and share ideas.
To honor my commitment, I intended to stay for 30 minutes. But happily and unexpectedly, that extended into a fun-filled 90 minutes.
Why? As I reflected on it, there are a few ways to make the most of a networking event.
In particular, think about the social savvy aspect, or social media element, of the people you meet and the conversations you have.
- Have a goal or two. Why are you attending? What do you want to accomplish? For me, I wanted to meet local professionals related to my son’s school to feel more connected to the school and the local community. I wanted to meet interesting people and hear what they were doing.
In part, I was inspired by marketing strategist Dorie Clark‘s advice in Harvard Business Review about networking with people outside your industry. She makes a compelling case for deliberately exposing yourself to diverse points of view.
And just like social media is about sharing and giving, the same is true for a networking event. Approach it from the perspective of how you can help others.
How do you do that? Here are a few ideas.
- Scan the attendee list. Look up a few people in social media to see who you might want to meet. What have they posted about recently? How can that be a conversation starter?
- Scan the latest news. Know what’s happening in the world that day. See what’s trending on Twitter. You’ll be better able to engage in conversations and ask people for their thoughts.
- Wear something that makes a statement. Pick something that you feel great in. A bright color, an interesting tie or a fabulous pin can help you connect with people. And you’ll stand out in photos that are posted in social media.
- Stand in the doorway for a moment when you arrive. This helps anchor you and lets you scan the room to see who you might want to meet.
- Put your name tag on your right side. This was something I learned in grad school at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. When you shake hands, your name tag becomes more prominent and easier to read.
- Grab a beverage. Stick to one drink and sip it slowly. Hold it in your left hand, so your right hand is ready for shaking hands.
- Have a question or two ready. This will depend on the group. For mine, I asked about how people were connected to the school.
- Introduce people to each other. Make a point of connecting people you know to each other. Say something great about each person that provides a conversation starter.
- Look for small groups. It’s easier to start conversations with one or two people. You can start with a comment on the food or the venue or something interesting they’re wearing.
- Post about the event. Take an interesting photo, add a caption about something new you learned and share the spirit of the event.
- Share content about the event. If the event has a hashtag, search it and share relevant and appropriate content.
How do you make the most of a networking event?
by Caroline Leach | Dec 10, 2016 | Social Media, Work/Life
How do you keep your professional and personal social media activity separate?
The answer? You don’t.
Why? Because you can’t.
It’s all one big blend. It’s the way we live our lives today. What’s personal is professional, and vice versa.
It’s similar to the way that external and internal communications in corporations used to be separate spheres. There was a sharp dividing line between them. But now, what’s internal is also external. The lines have been blurring for quite some time.
In my own life, I used to draw a dividing line. I tried to limit Facebook to friends and family. If colleagues sent me a friend request, I steered them to LinkedIn.
But some people defied categorization. How about the person I worked with who was also involved with our community’s education foundation? Were they a professional or personal contact? In reality, they were both.
And some content I want to share with professional and personal contacts. As an avid reader, I get asked by people in both spheres about what I’m reading. Rather than spam people with article links in emails or texts, I share content in Twitter. People can opt in if they want by following me.
A good framework for personal and professional social media strategies appeared in Harvard Business Review.
Ariane Ollier-Malaterre and Nancy Rothbard researched how professionals use social media, noting that many “felt compelled to accept friend requests from professional contacts.” From their work, they identified four potential social media strategies.
- Open. You post whatever comes to mind. No filters. Not surprisingly, this is a high-risk strategy and is not advised.
- Audience. You keep your networks separate, as I used to do with friends and family in Facebook and colleagues in LinkedIn. This works for a while. But it increasingly becomes impossible to maintain as networks become more fluid.
- Custom. You post content to two different audience lists and/or on different accounts on the same platform. Unless you have a lot of time on your hands or retain an agency to manage your social media, this isn’t a sustainable strategy.
- Content. You post content that is appropriate for all audiences, similar to a G- or PG-rated film. In our increasingly blended world, this is an ideal strategy. You’re consistent and efficient in how you connect across the personal and professional.
The authors recommend the custom or content strategies. While the custom strategy sounds good in theory, it’s too cumbersome for real life, with the time constraints we all face. Try it if you dare, but my bet is that you’ll end up with the much more practical content strategy.
You can make your life easier and more satisfying by blending your social media approach with the content strategy. This requires acting consistently with integrity, class and style in whatever you do. And isn’t that part of living a good life?
What if you want to vent or share something snarky in social media? You have two options, if your professional and personal reputation is important to you.
The first is something we probably all heard from our parents – if you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all. The second is to keep it to real life, in a face-to-face setting.
It’s important to be thoughtful not only about the content you post, but also the content you share and the content you like. The aggregate of this activity reflects on you just as much as original content you create and post.
This is all part of what it means to act with social savvy in our ever-evolving world.
What strategies work for you in addressing the personal and professional aspects of social media?
by Caroline Leach | Nov 26, 2016 | Change, Leadership, Social Media
“If a company or a person does something great but no one knows about it, does it really matter?”
That’s a question I asked in my very first blog post.
Yes, there are random acts of kindness intended to be done under the radar. Yet, hearing about them can be inspiring when others share the news, like my sister did on Facebook.
While getting coffee in her Connecticut town, she overhead another customer buying a gift card for the police officer outside who was directing traffic. That’s an instant day brightener. And maybe it will inspire others toward similar acts of kindness.
Data and information are collected about us every day, according to The Reputation Economy by Michael Fertik. The question is what we want that data to say about us as a person and as a professional.
Do we want it to open doors or close them? Do we want it to augment the hard work we do every day or detract from it? Do we want it to make our life better or make it harder?
More and more, everything we do has implications for our own personal reputations as well as the companies where we work or that we own. This is both in real life, or IRL, as well as how that becomes represented in social media.
This means we each have great power to do good in the world, to a larger extent than has ever been available to us. And it also means we have the potential make major missteps.
This means each of us needs social savvy.
What’s that?
SOCIAL SAVVY: the vital ability for people to personally brand and market themselves successfully in social media in our ever-evolving world.
This skill is important throughout our lives.
It applies to high school students who are preparing their college applications or moving into the working world.
It applies to college and grad school students who are getting ready to transition into the working world.
And it applies to people throughout their professional lives. For corporate professionals in particular, the stakes for social media are higher.
Social media can help or hurt careers. It can add to or detract from a corporate reputation and an employer brand. It can make acquiring top talent a breeze or a burden.
The risks are high, but so are the rewards. And in our ever-evolving world, no one can afford to sit on the sidelines. The pace of change is too fast for that.
Corporate professionals often ignore or short-change social media. Why? They don’t have the time, they don’t see the value and they don’t want to make a mistake.
Developing social savvy is how professionals can create and implement a social strategy to highlight and share their own thought processes and achievements, along with those of their organizations.
Social savvy is a powerful way for corporate professionals to build their personal brand, advance their career and embrace their future.
What are some examples of social savvy? What does it look like?
- Using social media to build and amplify your personal brand, the unique value that you bring to the world
- Positioning yourself in the most favorable light, for a number of career and life paths
- Positioning your employer or company in the most favorable light
- Advancing your career through a positive social strategy
- Helping others advance their careers
- Helping your company achieve its goals
- Building your employer’s corporate reputation and employer brand
- Knowing what to do and not to do in social media
- Seeing the links between real life and social savvy
- Knowing when and how to engage with critics
How are you demonstrating social savvy?
by Caroline Leach | Nov 25, 2016 | Corporate Communications, Learning, Social Media
Podcasts are a powerful way to share your story.
But what exactly is a podcast?
It’s “a digital audio or video file or recording, usually part of a themed series, that can be downloaded from a website to a media player or computer,” says Dictionary.com.
Podcasts are taking off. From 2015 to 2016, podcast listening was up by 23%, Jay Baer reported from Edison Research‘s work.
What’s driving the growth? People enjoy greater mobility with smartphones and tablets, Baer says, rather than being tethered to a laptop. Podcasts are easy to listen to on the go.
This is why podcasts have become part of my own personal learning plan and drive-time strategy. Although I’m lucky by Los Angeles traffic standards, I spend more than 60 minutes commuting each day.
That’s a perfect chunk of time for learning. And with lifelong learning being both a pleasure and an imperative, what better time to listen to a podcast?
Data analytics and social media are at the top of my learning agenda. I’ve been enjoying FiveThirtyEight, Freakonomics and Social Pros.
It’s easy to get started. Just search topics of interest on iTunes, download your favorites and start listening.
My work colleague Doug Magditch first got me thinking about podcasts. He invited me to be in his Life at AT&T series, one of his Corporate Communications initiatives.
(This is where I note that opinions expressed here are my own.)
Doug’s conversations with colleagues show how employees are delivering on the company’s mission to connect people with their world – everywhere they live, work and play.
With a degree in mass media, Doug began his career as a reporter and multimedia journalist. His creative skills as a storyteller, his editing skills weaving together a narrative and his on-air presence make Life at AT&T a hit.
He invited Eliska Paratore, Joan Marsh and me to share what it’s like to be a woman in a leadership role at the company. Timing it with election season, he framed it as hearing about leadership “from the veeps.”
This was my first experience with a podcast, and I learned a lot in the process. Here are 10 tips for a perfect podcast.
BEFORE
What’s the best way to prepare for a podcast? Become familiar with the format and give yourself plenty of interesting material to work. This helps with responding naturally and spontaneously during the recording session.
- Listen to previous podcasts in the series. Understand how the format works. Identify what worked well and what you’d like to emulate.
- Talk with others who’ve been featured. See what previous participants recommend for preparation. This is a step I wish I’d taken.
- Think about the subject and what you want to say about it. Brainstorm and jot down ideas. Then narrow the focus to 3 key messages.
- Gather ideas, anecdotes and data. Chose those that support your key messages. Look for ones that add interest and provide credibility.
DURING
Many of these tips came from listening to myself after the podcast came out and thinking about what I could do better next time.
- Relax and have fun. Conversations are fun and sharing expertise is fun. Recording a podcast should be the same.
- Stand up. The advice for standing up during a phone call to give your voice more energy translates well to a podcast recording. People sound more confident when they stand.
- Use short sentences. This will help your listeners get your key points, not to mention making the editing process much easier.
AFTER
- Promote your podcast. Tell your social communities about it and why they’d be interested in hearing it. In my case, that meant sharing the podcast in LinkedIn and Twitter, including retweeting Doug.
This was easy, thanks to our company’s Social Circle. It provides great content about our brand, ready for sharing by interested employees in their personal social networks.
Inside the company, employees commented on the podcast in an internal social space. When the podcast was released, I visited the page a few times a day to read comments, like and respond to some, and bring additional colleagues into the conversation.
If you’ve recorded a podcast, what worked for you? And what podcasts do you recommend?
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