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.
by Caroline Leach | May 27, 2018 | Learning, Social Media
My research about how people are using social media to boost their careers asked about do’s and don’ts.
Here are 10 do’s and 5 don’ts. While some of the don’ts are the flip side of the do’s, the don’ts add more perspective and context.
One of the best survey comments was this: “A twist on the Golden Rule, if you will: I try not to share something that I wouldn’t want to read from someone else.”
That sums it up in a nutshell. Read on for how to put that take on the Golden Rule into practice. And thanks to the people who generously shared their thoughts that inform this list.
DO
Share good stuff. Share content that will help people in your networks be better in their work and their life. Good content can come from anywhere – your experiences, your reading, your network, your employee advocacy program, and so much more. Good content is good content, regardless of where it’s from, as I shared in Part 4 of this series.
Be positive. Keep it upbeat and friendly. Somewhat surprisingly, positive stories get shared more often than negative ones.
Be authentic. Be yourself. Share your experience. After all, no one is exactly like you. That is your strength and your opportunity.
Be reciprocal. Engage with content you like that’s aligned with your areas of focus. Ask questions. Post comments. Share relevant content with your networks.
Be social. Have conversations with people, just as you would in real life. Engage in dialogue, rather than making statements.
Be kind. Everyone is struggling with some kind of burden, whether you can see it on the outside our not. Act with kindness and compassion.
Post content that reflects well on you and your employer. What do you want your carefully curated network to see? What do you want your current or future boss and colleagues to see? What do you want your customers to see?
Consider these questions every time you share content. Ensure it will reflect well on you as well as your employer. You are a brand ambassador of your organization. Take that responsibility seriously. (Note: opinions shared in this blog are my own.)
Keep your social profiles updated. Spend a few minutes each month refreshing your profiles, especially LinkedIn. Did you complete an important project? Win an award? Get quoted in an article? Give a speech? Add it to your profile and include media and links.
Try new things. Keep experimenting. Observe how others are innovating. Try posting at different times than you normally do. Experiment with new forms of content, especially video. See what a new app can do for you.
Provide context for your reason for connecting with people. This will help people quickly understand why you want to connect. It’s why you should always personalize your LinkedIn invitations. You’ll stand out among the sea of unpersonalized invites. And you’ll forge a stronger relationship right from the beginning.
DON’T
Post too frequently. What is too frequently? Anything that makes the reader wonder how the poster has time to do their job. In general, one post a day in each of your social platforms is fine. Are there exceptions? Sure, a few examples are if it’s a big news day in your world or if you’re live tweeting an event.
Be too personal. What’s too personal? Pictures from a medical procedure. Posts about personal conversations with your significant other. Saying you don’t plan to be with your employer at your next service anniversary. Yes, I’ve seen people post all of these things.
Post political statements. There is no upside here, and there’s plenty of downside. Wharton professor Adam Grant recently shared that “when solving a problem with money on the line, people ignored the advice of experts with different political views, even though the task had nothing to do with politics.” Sharing your political views limits your audience and your influence. It’s best to keep political discussions among your family and friends.
Post anything that reflects poorly on you or your employer. This includes not sharing any confidential or proprietary information of your employer. Be sure to read all links you share, essentially looking before you link. Don’t share if there’s anything in the least bit disparaging about your employer or your industry.
Immediately spam new connections. Don’t. Do. This. Ever. Establish a relationship first over time, before you even think about pitching new business or asking for a meeting in someone’s busy schedule. Instead, take the time to understand what’s important to your new contact, and how you may be able to help.
Thanks to Tim Ferriss and Maria Popova, I no longer feel compelled to respond to every message. “Sometimes, the best ‘no’ is no reply,” Tim subtitled a section in his book, Tools of Titans. It’s about the “tactics, routines and habits of billionaires, icons, and world-class performers.”
In interviewing BrainPickings.org founder Maria Popova, Tim shared these words of wisdom: “Why put in the effort to explain why it isn’t a fit, if they haven’t done the homework to determine if it is a fit?” she asks.
“Maria could spend all day replying to bad pitches with polite declines,” Tim notes. “I think of her policy often. Did the person take 10 minute to do their homework? Are they minding the details? If not, don’t encourage more incompetence by rewarding it.”
Indeed. Hear, hear!
What would you add to this list?
by Caroline Leach | Apr 22, 2018 | Learning, Social Media
What did you share in social media in the last week? How did your network respond? What did your analytics look like?
In part 3 of this series of posts on social media research I did in March 2018, I’ll share the data relevant to those questions.
Part 1 in this series covered the survey goals, methodology, respondents, and professional and personal social media use.
Part 2 looked at the reasons why people are active in social media to boost their careers.
Part 3 in this series covers:
- What types of LinkedIn content get the most engagement
- What topics on LinkedIn get the most engagement, and
- Strategies to increase engagement with your social media content, regardless of the platform.
How is engagement defined? It’s likes, comments and shares of your content.
LinkedIn content types that get the most engagement
By far, Sharing an article was the type of LinkedIn content that gets the most engagement, with 68% of respondents choosing it.
In second place, half of that at 34% said Sharing a photo.
Tied for third place was Sharing an idea and Resharing content of others at 22%.
In last place was Sharing a video at 19%. This surprised me the most, given how popular video content has become. However, the addition of video has only come to LinkedIn in the last year, so it’s still relatively early days. I expect to see this percentage grow over time, as more people experiment with video content.
Some of the comments added great ideas to the mix:
“On the job photos, specifically of participation at a company event, with a company leader, or an interesting ‘behind the scenes’ moment.”
“Articles on industry thought leadership topics get read/liked/shared by my peers.”
“Content that congratulates or promotes and tags others in exemplary work.”
LinkedIn topics that get the most engagement
The topics in LinkedIn content that attract the most engagement are:
- Industry trends (48%)
- Leadership (34%)
- News about your employer (30%)
This confirms two of the top three reasons people are active in social media to boost their careers – accessing news about your industry and profession (81%) and learning continually about your industry and profession (77%).
Strategies to increase engagement with your content
Lastly, what are effective ways to increase engagement with your social media content, regardless of the platform?
Two strategies rose to the top:
- Tag people in the post, if they’re in an accompanying photo or video (75%)
- Mention relevant people in the post (65%)
Some of the comments offered up more ideas:
“Hashtags generate interest, especially from young professionals.”
“When people are authentic with their voice and message and thank (tag) the people who helped contribute to the project or idea get a lot of organic engagement.”
“Provide my point of view when sharing an article – not a headline, but instead an insightful suggest that might entice someone to read it. Ask a question.”
Two strategies that were only selected by 20% of respondents are actions that I have found valuable in increasing engagement.
First is to tag people in the post, even if they’re not in the accompanying photo or video. Why? This alerts them to content that may be of interest to them or their network.
The caveat here is not to overuse this strategy to the point that it becomes annoying to others. A way to decide? When someone you’ve tagged multiple times does not engage with your content.
A group of people who do a great job tagging people in posts are colleagues at my employer. (Note: opinions expressed in this blog are my own). Sarita Rao, John Starkweather, Sarah Groves, John Stancliffe, Eisaiah Engel, and Knox Keith are a few good examples. By tagging relevant people in their LinkedIn and Twitter content, they make sure that their content is seen by a wider audience.
Second is to sent separate, tailored messages to relevant people, alerting them of the post. This strategy I learned from others who sent me brief direct messages in LinkedIn to tell me about an article and why I might be interested in it. They did not specifically ask me to like, comment on, or share their content. But if I found value in the article, I engaged with it.
Many people commented that they don’t post frequently as a career-building strategy. One respondent said, “I have not built the confidence yet to post my own ideas in LinkedIn. I’m trying to figure out my voice before posting my ideas and also what I want to represent with my personal brand.”
An easy way to get started with content updates is by tapping into an employee advocacy program, if your employer offers one. These programs serve up ready-make, on-brand content that you can share as is in your social networks, or add your point of view.
The next post in this series will share how survey respondents are taking advantage of employee advocacy. How are you using it?
by Caroline Leach | Apr 15, 2018 | Learning, Social Media
Why are people active on social media professionally?
This post answers that question, based on a survey I fielded in March 2018.
The main goal? To learn how fellow professionals are using social media to build their careers.
In this series of posts on the survey results, part 1 addressed the survey goals, methodology, respondents, and professional and personal social media use.
Now let’s turn to why people are active in social media to boost their careers.
Respondents could choose as many answers as applied, including an “other” option asking them to specify.
The top 3 reasons?
- Build a network (86%)
- Access news about your industry and profession (81%)
- Learn continually about your industry and profession (77%)
Lower down the list that I expected were:
- Find a new job (47%)
- Establish yourself as a thought leader (46%)
- Raise your visibility among key decision makers at your employer (40%)
- Position yourself for a promotion (11%)
- Change careers (10%)
It surprised me that Establish yourself as a thought leader wasn’t higher than its spot as the #5 reason. Because social media offers such a significant opportunity to share content and establish thought leadership, I hope and expect to see this number grow in the future.
In fact, it could even be considered the flip side of Learn continually about your industry and profession. In comments, many respondents wrote that they sought out and followed thought leaders for continual learning.
Here’s what a few said:
“I follow key leaders within my company on LinkedIn and Twitter, as well as best-selling authors and speakers and influential business men and women to know what’s happening in our industry, but also learn career advice that will help anyone regardless of industry.”
“I read articles daily on LinkedIn to find out more about my industry and learn about other industries I’m interested in.”
“I follow several thought leaders on social media … and they help me expand my horizons and my thinking, hopefully to the benefit of my entire team!”
With so many people looking to social media to continually learn new information that’s relevant to their career and industry, that creates an opportunity for YOU.
How so? If you’re not already sharing your experience and expertise in social media, consider what you could share that would add value to others who are looking to learn.
Are there questions that colleagues often ask you that tap into your expertise? This could be a place to start in thinking about the types of content you could share.
And you can begin with small steps. LinkedIn is a great place. From your home feed, share an article, photo, video or idea. Or experiment with posting an article once a quarter during the calendar year. See how your network responds and adjust your approach. More content ideas are in my post about engaging topics for LinkedIn.
You can try to same thing with Twitter. Share an idea, an article or a video. Keep it simple by sharing your LinkedIn content in Twitter as well, tailoring it for the micro-blogging, shorter format on Twitter.
Be sure that any information you share is appropriate to be posted in public, in alignment with your organization’s social media guidelines. (Note: opinions express in this blog are my own.)
Other great learning strategies that respondents mentioned:
- Join LinkedIn groups of interest and be an active participant
- View Twitter trending topics
- Tap into YouTube for how-to videos
- Follow influencers, brands and trade publications
- Check out competitor company social media activity
- Search hashtags, even attending events virtually by following hashtags
It was exciting to see the focus on continual learning in the survey results.
Why?
My post on telling your career story in Instagram, cited a 2017 report by the Institute for the Future. It estimates that 85% of the jobs people will do in 2030 haven’t even been invented yet.
That’s only 12 years away. Even if this estimate turns out to be much lower than 85%, there’s still a lot of learning we all need to do!
Speaking of learning, “a blog is a learning process,” says career blogger Penelope Trunk in her online course called Reach Your Goals by Blogging. “A blog is a document of how you’re becoming an expert.”
She also says, “you MUST learn something in each post. Write and write and write until something surprises you. The ending is your “a-ha” moment.”
My learning moments? My surprises?
First is discovering that the process of writing these posts about my survey is serving as an additional layer of analysis, beyond reading and thinking about the results. Writing about the results makes me think about them in new and different ways, perhaps because it’s more active.
This led to my second learning moment – connecting continual learning with thought leadership. In simply reading through the responses, I did not reach that conclusion. Yet it became clear that one was the flip side of the other, once I could see the words on screen in this post.
If you need a compelling reason to start establishing yourself as a thought leader, here it is …
People are seeking thought leaders, we all need to learn continually, and you have insights to share.
When you share them, you learn yourself, contribute to your network and start to establish yourself as an expert.
What will you share in the week ahead?
by Caroline Leach | Apr 10, 2018 | Learning, Social Media
How are people using social media to build their careers?
There’s plenty of anecdotal evidence by simply observing the platforms – mainly LinkedIn and Twitter, followed by Facebook and Instagram.
But we live in a data-driven world, and numbers are important. So I ran a survey on the subject in March 2018.
As I tell my mentees in the USC Annenberg mentoring program, some of what I learned in grad school is surprisingly timeless in our fast-changing world.
“Uses of Communications Research” was one of those evergreen courses. My professor, Dr. Sheila Murphy, is with Annenberg today, exploring how message factors, individual level factors, and cultural level factors impact decision making.
One thing that has changed a lot is the functionality of Survey Monkey. It felt gamified in a fun way as I continued editing the survey until the platform gave it a perfect score. It also gave an estimated completion rate and time.
In my next several posts, I’ll share the survey results. This one covers survey goals, methodology, respondents, professional and personal use of social media, and a list of upcoming topics. (Note: opinions expressed in this blog are my own.)
SURVEY GOALS
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.
METHODOLOGY
The survey had 42 questions in 5 sections:
- Your professional and personal social media use
- Your approach to privacy
- How you use social media to build your career
- Your (open-ended) comments
- About you
RESPONDENTS
Here’s how people were invited to respond:
- Posts in this blog
- A LinkedIn article and follow-up posts for 3,200+ connections and followers
- A LinkedIn article on the USC Alumni Association page with 46,000 members
- Tweets, including a pinned one in March, for 2,100+ followers
- A Facebook post
- Emails to everyone in my personal email contact list
- Emails to the Forum-Group for senior-level communicators
- Emails to the USC Annenberg Alumni Advisory Board
- Emails to USC Annenberg Alumni Ambassadors
My original goal was to reach 500+ responses. It was humbling to put in so much work and hear from approximately 100 people. But for those respondents, I am extremely grateful. You know who you are, and thank you for being part of this initial experiment!
This is research I may do annually to view trends over time. And I may do a few shorter pulse surveys each quarter on a topic of interest. I’d love to hear from you if there are specific questions you want data on.
Nearly one quarter of the respondents provided their contact info for follow-up interviews. I’ll do those throughout the year and write posts about people who are using social media in innovative ways.
Data points on the respondents
76% are employed full time, 19% own a business, 11% run a side gig. Respondents could choose more than one answer
41% work in media and communications, 12% in marketing, and 8% in business and finance. The survey used occupation groups from the U.S. Department of Labor
24% are managers, 21% are directors, 17% are individual contributors, 16% are business owners, 8% are vice presidents, and 3% are C-Suite
56% have a bachelor’s degree as their highest level of education, and 33% have a master’s degree
45% are Gen X, 29% are Gen Y/Millennials, 18% are Boomers, and 3% are Gen Z/Centennials
59% are women, and 40% are men
In response to “how would you describe yourself?” 67% are white, 10% are Hispanic or Latino, 2% each are African American or Asian, 11% preferred not to answer, and 8% chose “other” and wrote a comment. My favorite ones? “Really? I’m a human,” and “You know this is becoming a trickier question to answer, right?” Yes, absolutely.
PROFESSIONAL AND PERSONAL SOCIAL MEDIA USE
For professional use, not surprisingly, LinkedIn was the #1 platform with 98% using it to build their careers. Twitter was a distant second at 47%. Facebook followed at 34% and Instagram was at 19%. YouTube was 12% and Snapchat was 2%.
Others mentioned in comments were Nextdoor, WordPress, Goodreads, Amazon Author Page, StumbleUpon and about.me.
For personal use, not surprisingly, Facebook was #1 at 88% on the network, followed by 75% on Instagram. Of note, the survey was fielded while the user data controversy news was beginning to be reported about Facebook, which also owns Instagram. As the story plays out, results might be different a few months or a year from now.
By comparison, Facebook is used by 68% of U.S. adults, according to Pew Research Center in February 2018. It also reported that 73% use YouTube, 35% use Instagram, 27% use Snapchat, and 25% use LinkedIn.
Many people blend the personal and professional in a single social media account on a platform – 38% for Twitter, 35% for Facebook and 22% for Instagram.
As far as maintaining separate accounts for professional and personal use on the same platform, 59% DON’T do that. For those who DO maintain separate accounts, 28% do for Facebook, 19% do for Twitter, and 17% do for Instagram.
While some respondents DO blend the professional and personal in social media, this data confirmed that LinkedIn and Twitter lead for professional use and Facebook and Instagram lead for personal use. Respondents also have higher social media usage rates than the general population.
UPCOMING TOPICS
Sharing the data from the survey will fill several upcoming posts. Those posts will then form the basis for a comprehensive report.
Here are the upcoming topics:
- Why people are active in social media and how it’s helped their careers
- How often people visit various sites and how often they post
- What content gets the most engagement and how people increase engagement
- The role and impact of employee advocacy programs
- How people approach privacy
Plus some synthesis of several open-ended questions:
- Do’s and don’ts in social media
- Lifelong learning strategies in social media
- Productivity with social media: boon or bane?
- Using video in social media
- Serendipitous moments in social media
- Bad things that have happened and how people handled them
- The next big thing in social media for career building
- Who’s doing it well? Interview series with some of the survey respondents
What else do you want to know about how people are boosting their careers through social media?
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