By Linda Van Valkenburgh, MS, CCMC, CJSS, CSMCS, CELDC
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindavan/
[email protected]

How many social media accounts do you have? It’s probably more than you think. The average person has seven social media accounts. If you are under the age of 34, that number rises to eight. Even those over 55 have four to five.
Now, with that many different platforms to communicate on, what are you doing to leverage them for your success? Social media is more than pictures of food and videos of cute kittens. These days people use social media to further their own careers.
Let’s go over a few ways you can make your social media work for you.

Focus
The first step is to focus your efforts. With seven different profiles to maintain, chances are you haven’t updated some of them in a while. Start by picking two or three and update them regularly. This will give you an up to date and active profile that people will want to engage with.

Choose the Right Platform
You’ve probably noticed by now that certain platforms work better for some things than others. For example, Instagram is great for images, but not so good at text.
Choosing the right social media platform for your message will mean you reach a receptive audience. Since you want to build your professional personal brand, LinkedIn is a great place to start.
People go there expecting to network professionally. In fact, 80% of B2B leads on social media come from LinkedIn.

Don’t Lose Your Personality
You want to be professional, but you don’t want to lose your personality completely. People are more likely to connect and engage with you when you show a bit of personality.
Just be careful not to go too far when expressing yourself. Plenty of careers have ended based on a single tweet or post that was done in bad taste.

Add Value
The lazy way of using social media is to find content that someone else has already created and post it. You won’t get the most out of your social media this way. People know that you aren’t adding value or anything unique.
Instead, develop your posts to be original content. This should be easy considering you are writing about yourself and what you do. Now you have something original to say that will add value to your followers’ lives.

Choose Shared Content Wisely
I know I just finished telling you the importance of creating your own content. But strategically sharing another’s content is important too. You just need to choose what you share wisely.
If there is someone you want to build a relationship with, sharing their original work will help you with this. The same goes for your well-established contacts. Sharing content from people you have a direct connection with can help you build your relationships while also adding content to your social feed.

Start Generating Leads
Use your social media to generate leads. One way to do this is by posting your original content, but put the bulk of it behind a gateway. Create a guide on how to accomplish something. Put it on your website behind a gateway that requires a phone number or email.

Make Your Social Media Work for You
By making your social media work for you, you turn what was once a distraction from productivity into a useful business tool. Start by focusing your efforts on one platform and then build out from there.
Make it your goal to increase your reach and engagement so that you can improve upon your brand awareness.

Let’s get to work!
Linda
If you are ready to move your executive career forward contact me today at 203-323-9977 or [email protected]