Building your career with social media

Skepticism is fine

• It’s ok to be skeptical

• My friend Katia was, but then she embraced it and built a business out of it.

• She’s in her 50s.

• Which addresses another potential objection: age. It doesn’t matter.

• My friend Boyd Neil is in his 60s and is the Senior Digital Strategist at Hill+Knowlton.

• Another ‘oldster’ is active on social media, too. Any guesses who it is?

Maggie

• Margaret Atwood: no longer a young ‘un, but with over a million followers.

Behold the power of brand

• Social media can do a lot to help your career.

• One of the things it does really well is help build brand.

• Cliché alert: “building brand” actually means something outside of marketing circles.

• Building brand – your personal brand in this case – is how you become a trusted resource that people notice and pay attention to in a specific area.

• It can help position you as a subject matter expert, and get you the notice you need to take your career to the next level.

So how do you do it?

• Thought leadership

• What is thought leadership?

• Who do you think of when you think of a thought leader?

• Steve Jobs

• Seth Godin

• Malcolm Gladwell

• Ken Steele

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Steve_Jobs_with_red_shawl_edit2.jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Malcolm_Gladwell_2014_(cropped).jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Seth_Godin_in_2009.jpg

What is thought leadership?

• Thought leadership: providing people with valuable insight, information and analyses in a specific area that they’ll use, pay attention to, etc.

• Sometimes thought leaders are referred to as authorities, but this doesn’t mean authority in the same way academic authority is used. You don’t have to be an academic to show leadership and insight: you just need the qualities of leadership and insight.

• In fact, thought leaders are usually not academic.

Thought leadership to dos

• You develop your thought leadership a little bit each time you share interesting, relevant content about your area of expertise / interest.

• You do it every time you answer a question, solve a problem, share your opinion or even just engage with someone on a professional topic.

Everyone’s getting in on the action

How can you get started?

• Look at some of the leaders in your field

• Question: what are you interested in, professionally?

• What are some of the issues in that field?

• Hot topics?

But there’s already too much of this!• Won’t this just add noise?

• What have I got to say that’s unique?

• Everything that can be said has already been said.

• I don’t have the time.

• All legitimate concerns. You don’t want to add to backgroundnoise; you want to add value. So what do you do?

• Lurk – watch what the people you pay attention to do: topics, style, frequency, etc.

• What do you know that isn’t being discussed?

It’s all about you

• What do you have to contribute?

• What do you know that – while it may not be absolutely unique – not everyone else knows?

• What’s your area of expertise? Everyone’s got one.

Where to do it?

• Traditionally, this has been a blog.

• Doesn’t have to be one anymore.

• Tumblr

• Facebook

• Wordpress.com

• YouTube

Think outside the box

• Video: youtube.com/user/bookjunkielit

Networking

• Where do you network professionally?

• LinkedIn

• Meetup

• Facebook

• Other

Meetup: Social Media Café TO

What can you do?

• Answers questions

• Provide a valuable service

• Make connections

The dark side

• There are risks of using social media. It is possible to screw up.

• Using that as an excuse to ignore social media and avoid it isn’t the best solution.

• So what can you do to engage with social media and protect yourself?

Nothing is private on social

• Assume social media is public. All the time. Forever. Even if you’re sending a private / direct message.

• Acid test: don’t say anything on social media you wouldn’t want to see on the front page of the Globe.

Err on the side of caution

• Don’t say things you wouldn’t want attributed to you.

• Don’t react in anger.

• Don’t assume.

• Don’t ignore privacy.

• Don’t break copyright.

• Don’t disparage.

• Avoid jargon or marketing speak.

• Don’t swear.

Stay in touch

• http://markfarmer.net

• Twitter.com/markus64

• linkedin.com/in/markfarmer64