Category: LinkedIn

Public engagement and social media, part two: Twitter threads, chats and LinkedIn articles

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In the previous post, I looked at setting objectives for your use of social media in a professional context, developing your online presence, and how you can collaborate with marketing-communications colleagues to promote your research.

In this post, I’m going to look in-depth at thought leadership on Twitter and LinkedIn, and highlight some ways you can start to engage in wider debates and raise your profile as a thought leader.

Being human vs being professional

Something that always comes up in discussions with academics is the line between the personal and professional. There’s a perceived risk in putting too much of ourselves into our online persona: what if we say the wrong thing? Someone might be offended, and we risk bringing our institution into disrepute.

But what’s the real risk?

Unless your political views are extreme, or you have outdated social values, your opinions are probably fine to share.

The bottom line is: use common sense. If you were in an open plan office, would you say the same thing? Treat online discussions the same as verbal discussions, and you’ll be fine.

In fact, there’s a risk in ‘always saying the right thing’. If we filter too much of ourselves out of our social media presence, constantly making sure that our updates and replies are corporately acceptable, our accounts can become bland and boring, and people might unfollow us.

Some people are comfortable separating themselves into two accounts: one professional, one personal. If you’re really concerned about saying the wrong thing, this may be the solution for you.

The no right answer that works for everyone. This is about your own values, your preferences and the culture of the people and organisations you work with. My own take on it is that the divide between the personal and professional are diminishing. The way people communicate online is changing, and people are much more comfortable expressing themselves openly.

So, if your activity on social media is a genuine reflection of who you are, your timeline will be more interesting, and people will be more likely to interact with you.

AkwugoAkwugo Emejulu’s Twitter account is a great example of an engaging academic profile. Her cover and profile images, for starters. She looks approachable and friendly, yet academic and knowledgeable.

Her username is her actual name, so she’s easy to find, and it’s clear that this is really her.

Names and faces will always be more interesting than logos and acronyms.

Akwugo’s biography tells us everything we need to know about her professional identity and research specialism, and we get a bit of flavour about who she is as a person. We can also see that Akwugo follows people, and she likes their tweets.

She doesn’t just broadcast: she replies and interacts, and this is a key part of thought leadership.

Telling stories in the real world

People and stories. When it comes down to it, that’s what social media is for. It shapes our approach to the marketing content we publish.

And, as experts, your storytelling starts with the people at the heart of day’s biggest stories.

Peter Neumann’s Twitter thread on the radicalisation of the Finsbury Park attacker is a very good example of expert analysis combined with storytelling. Peter starts with an analysis of the attacker, before exploring bigger themes around the process of radicalisation, current perceptions of radicalisation, and the spread of misinformation.

When the news is so bad, it’s important that there are rational, measured and academically-informed voices leading discussion and debate. Twitter is a great platform for doing that in real time, in response to current events.

Challenging current thinking, leading the debate

Twitter chats are a goo way to expand your network and learn from others, but they can also be a way to raise your profile by leading a discussion on a thought-provoking subject.

We’ve held a couple of Twitter chats recently. They were led by Hallam academics, in collaboration with the social media team here. The most recent one was led by Professor Laura Serrant, an expert on the nursing profession.

Twitter_promo_card_politicalnursing

You can see how it played out in this Twitter Moment, but essentially we engaged a large group of nursing professionals and academics in an hour-long debate about whether nurses should have more of a political voice.

From a Hallam point of view, we showcased one of our academics, and built on our reputation for being a real-world university. This kind of Twitter chat benefits from lots of planning, and genuine collaboration between communications professionals and academics.

LinkedIn has moved on, so should you

A lot of academics I speak to don’t realise how much LinkedIn has changed over the last couple of years. LinkedIn’s mission is to be the social platform for education and professional development. There’s a huge opportunity for universities here.

First, you can write articles on LinkedIn. If you publish regularly on LinkedIn, you have the potential to reach hundreds of thousands of readers (many of whom are 30-49 years old and, according to LinkedIn’s data, earn good salaries).

If you’re not familiar with LinkedIn articles, go and explore. There’s a lot of good stuff out there. They’re picked up by search engines, they’re easily shared (you can tweet your LinkedIn articles), and people can like and comment, which gives you another opportunity to interact with followers.

Lastly, how people use LinkedIn is changing. Have a read of this incredible article by Guy Kawasaki for some evidence of that.

Ride the wave, not the board

Surfing pioneer Duke Kahanamoku was asked how he always stays on the board when he’s surfing. He reportedly said: “Ride the wave, not the board.”

This same thinking applies to social media and communication. I’ve outlined some ways you can use Twitter and LinkedIn to do public engagement and thought leadership, but there will be other tools and technologies that enable you to do the same thing.

There are bound to be things I’ve missed here. It’s such a big subject. I’d love to hear from you if you’re interested in developing your profile for public engagement. Let me know if there’s something I can help with.

Joe Field, social media manager

@joemcafield

How to write killer blogs and LinkedIn articles

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I’m putting together some toolkits for Hallam staff who are using social media to tell their stories and engage with their audiences.

So this is the first in a series. It’s a simple how-to guide for people who want to write blogs and LinkedIn articles.

I’ll repost this under a new ‘Toolkits’ sub-heading in the social media guidelines.

What should I write about?

Your blog – whether you’re hosting it on WordPress or posting it on LinkedIn – is a window into your expertise, and you as a communicator. A good blog isn’t used as somewhere to store research papers and resources, or a method of sending out information. It’s a way for people to get a sense of your expertise, your ideas and your values.

So you should write about those things. Your expertise is what makes you different. Your ideas are what people will take away from your blog, and your values are what will keep them coming back.

A great way to get started is to write about something that’s in the news, and examine it through the unique lens of your expertise, ideas and values.

How many words?

The ideal blog post or LinkedIn article length is anywhere from 600 to 800 words, depending on the amount of rich media that you’re including in the post.

Getting the structure right

Your first paragraph is important. Along with the headline, it’s the hook that convinces the reader to read on.

Try a few different ways of opening your post, and run them by friends and colleagues. You could reference a recent news event, explore a personal reflection, or make a dramatic statement.

Once you’ve hooked them, your reader is likely to skim-read, so use section breaks, sub-headings, lists and bullets to break blocks of text up, and keep paragraphs short (one to three sentences).

Images and videos do the same thing, and they can help you illustrate a point. Make sure you have usage rights for visual assets. You can use the search tools on Google image search to find images that have been labelled for reuse.

Always check the usage rights for images

Picture captions can be a fun way to highlight a key point and re-engage the reader

Embed URLs as hyperlinks, and set them to open in a new window, so that your readers stay on your blog.

You want to take your reader on a journey throughout your post, so promise them something juicy (revelation, insight, facts) early on, then deliver it in the middle section.

Wrap things up with key takeaways and learnings, but don’t worry about making your ending too neat and perfect. You can leave loose ends for another post.

If you’re in doubt about how to end the article, pose your readers a question. Ask for feedback, opposing views, other sources.

And remember: your blog post is supposed to be a conversation-starter. Ask for comments, and respond to them. Maybe you’ll get ideas for a follow-up post.

Language, tone and punctuation

Unless you’re writing for a niche audience, plain language is a good idea. So, if you want to reach a wider audience, keep jargon to a minimum.

Avoid cliches and archaic words and phrases (use ‘while’ instead of ‘whilst’, for example). Your sentences should be a maximum of 30 words long. Your grammar and punctuation are important, but don’t use overly-complicated punctuation (I heartily recommend R L Trask’s Penguin Guide to Punctuation, by the way – it busts a lot of myths).

Use exclamation points sparingly, and only ever one at a time. Question marks can be used as and when you need them, and are also solitary characters.

Pay attention to the rhythm of your writing. Vary the length of your sentences to add pace and dynamics. Try it. It’s fun.

And it’s fine to start the odd sentence with ‘and’ or ‘but’. But don’t overdo it.

Your tone of voice should be warm, personal and direct (‘During the event, I was amazed to learn that…’, ‘By now, you’ve probably noticed that…’). If you’re writing something from a position of authority, you can afford to have a more authoritative tone of voice, but beware of sounding pompous.

I don’t recommend writing about yourself in the third person. Ever.

Remember, a blog post isn’t a news bulletin or an announcement. It’s more than technical writing: it should give the reader an insight into the situation or issue from the author’s point of view.

Your blog’s not just informative: we want to see the human being behind the words.

Different approaches to headlines

Write the headline last. You want to address the reader directly, so make it engaging. It could be counter-intuitive and subversive (‘Why face-to-face meetings are making you less productive’) – if that gives you a springboard into an interesting argument.

The list-article format (‘Six ways to manage your inbox’) works for some people, but don’t use it for every blog post, because your blog will start to look like clickbait.

Here are some common approaches for blog post titles:

  • Numbered lists: “Five cat photos that changed the internet”
  • Dates: “The best cats on the internet in January 2017”
  • Questions: “Why are cats so popular on the internet?”
  • Call-to-action: “Download our expert guide to cats on the internet”

Tags are important

Be sure to add some relevant tags to your post before you publish. They help people find your posts. You might want to use categories, if your blog has that functionality, so that people can easily search and browse your blog.

Writing on LinkedIn

To post your blog on LinkedIn, log in to your account and hit the ‘write an article’ button in the status update box. This will take you to a simple WordPress-style interface, where you can:

  • Upload a header image
  • Insert a title for your article
  • Add formatted text, including bullet points and sub-headers
  • Add rich media, such as images, videos and links

You can publish your article by hitting the ‘publish’ button in the top right, or you can close the browser window and come back to it later – it will auto-save.

When you publish your article, you’ll be asked to add a status update so that you share the link from your profile. Add a comment about your article and hit ‘publish’. You’ve just posted your first article on LinkedIn!

If you look in your browser’s address bar, you’ll see you’ve got a unique URL for that LinkedIn article, so copy it and share it with your networks.

By the way, here’s a really good article about writing on LinkedIn. A lot of it applies to blogging in general. Have fun, and let me know if you found this useful.

Joe Field, social media manager
@joemcafield

LinkedIn 3×3: Three really good things about LinkedIn

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Last month I presented at the CASE Social Media and Community Conference, an excellent two-day event for higher education mar-comms and alumni relations professionals to meet up and exchange ideas.

Alongside LinkedIn’s Higher Education Partner Charles Hardy, I spoke about our use of LinkedIn for brand awareness, business engagement and alumni engagement. You can see the full presentation here (make sure you click on the ‘notes’ tab so you can read my script).

The last part of the presentation looked at three groups of things: three good things LinkedIn does, three things which could be better, and three things universities could do differently on LinkedIn.

I’m going to expand on those thoughts in a series of posts (three, obviously), starting with three really good things.

The data is mind-boggling

LinkedIn has a lot of data on its users. Think about it: they know who you are, what your profession is and where you work. But they also know what skills you say you have, and what skills other people agree you have.

And, with the introduction of status updates and articles, they know what you write about.

The analytics are pretty good on LinkedIn pages. Free targeted posts are nice. Advertising can be very precise, and you can reach some very niche professional audiences.

And the alumni tool is still amazing.

For a university, the primary audience on LinkedIn is alumni. Businesses and employers are a secondary audience. LinkedIn’s data can be put to use for effective alumni engagement.

We know that alumni are a very diverse group of individuals. They don’t necessarily identify themselves as ‘Hallam Alumni’. They may think of themselves as ‘an art graduate’ or a ‘Sheffield Business School alumni’.

If we sift through the data, we could take a more targeted, personalised approach to alumni engagement. Of course, we’d need more resources to do that.

A snapshot of Sheffield Hallam alumni

A snapshot of Sheffield Hallam alumni

But the data is incredible. We have over 100,000 alumni connected to our page. We can see that the majority of them are UK-based. There are a lot of business and management graduates, and a lot of them are in business development, engineering and IT.

The data also suggests a gap: only 420 are listed as employed by the NHS. We train hundreds of radiotherapy, nursing and midwifery students every year. So we have to assume those alumni are not using LinkedIn, which means we can’t reach them through LinkedIn.

The learning portal is incredible

This is, without a doubt, the single best feature on any social media platform. Really. Facebook has Words With Friends, Twitter has the ever-evolving meta-game that is Twitter, and pretty much every social channel has stories, live video and stickers.

LinkedIn has learning and development, and lots of it.

If you haven't used the portal yet, dive in.

If you haven’t used the portal yet, dive in.

OK, so it’s essentially Lynda.com repackaged, and you need a Premium account, but it’s perfectly integrated, has a personalised interface, and it’s a comprehensive resource for anyone who wants to add some new skills to their profile.

LinkedIn is clear on its mission to be the platform for learning and development, and the learning portal really sets them apart. I’m looking forward to seeing what Charles and his team do with it in the future.

You can post news on LinkedIn

You can post news on Facebook and Instagram, if you present it in the right way (I’m looking at you, Buzzfeed). And you can do big announcements on Twitter, if you can tell the story in one tweet.

But news shouldn’t be 100% of your content mix on those channels. You’ll alienate people and they’ll stop listening.

On LinkedIn, news, announcements and future developments make for good content that gets a lot of organic reach, along with plenty of likes and comments from alumni.

People like that type of content on that specific platform.

Look at that organic reach. Now imagine posting that story on a Facebook page.

Look at that organic reach, and those likes. Now imagine posting that story, in that format, on a university Facebook page.

Again, you should mix it up, seeking engagement rather than reach by posting softer, more conversational content – I’ve written before about the power of nostalgia on LinkedIn, for example. But, in general, audiences on LinkedIn like news.

Those are three things I like about LinkedIn. I’ll follow up next week with three… less good things.

What about you? What sets LinkedIn apart for you? How do you use it? What’s different to how you used to use LinkedIn?

Joe Field, social media manager
@joemcafield

 

Using data to tell a story

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In my last blogpost I looked at ‘peak content’ and shared some tips for creating shareable content for use on social platforms. One of the most popular pieces of content shared on social is infographics. The great thing about them is that they’re an excellent way of using data to tell a story. Newspapers have long been creating them in print to illustrate stories, and the Guardian and the FT both have dedicated data journalists and designers that have created some great infographics in recent years. Done well, they prompt a discussion or conversation (or sometimes an argument).

The Guardian datablog is a good place to start to seek out some nice examples of infographics and data visualisations. It may be a few years old now, but their infographic on Government department spending in 2011 (below) is a fantastic example of what a good infographic should do – using data to tell an interesting story in a visually stimulating way. Yes, it’s busy, there’s a lot of information on there, but for politics nerds and designers it’s quite something.

Government spending 2010-11

However, it’s a bit too detailed for the average social media timeline – too much zooming in and losing your way. But if you have the time to pore over the figures it’s perfect.

An excellent recent example that worked well on social is the one below from National Parks Wales, who used some data about their parks to tell a great story about their impact on people, businesses and on the country. It’s simply done but well executed, and perfect for social. It prompted discussions about the importance of green space on well-being and the impact of global warming.

National Parks Wales

Here at Sheffield Hallam, we commissioned a designer to create an infographic for use both on social and as a handout for some of our regional stakeholders. We wanted it to tell the story of our impact in the city region through supporting jobs and driving economic growth. We posted it on Twitter and LinkedIn, and it was widely shared by our business-engaged audiences. It’s also a useful handout for staff who are working with stakeholders and want to provide them with something which demonstrates our impact.

SHU Value of Sheffield

Commissioning a designer is a good idea, but not everyone can afford that. If you want to try yourself, there are some useful free tools out there. Websites like FlatIcon have lots of useful free icons and images that you can download, and Infogram is a good online tool to help you create something from scratch. There are some good templates in software such as Prezi and even MS Powerpoint. If you do give it a go, have a read of Guardian data journalist George Arnett’s article on some golden rules and things to avoid before you get started.

Ally Mogg, head of news and PR
@allymogg

 

LinkedIn 3D conference: 7 key themes and a few takeaways

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Cherry blossom in Spring at University of Birmingham

The venue was University of Birmingham’s beautiful campus. Photo by Jonathan Crannage.

This week, I took part in the LinkedIn3D conference at the University of Birmingham, presenting a few stats about our University Page before starting a conversation about content – what works, what doesn’t. I was joined by Higher Education professionals from three key areas: careers, alumni and marketing-communications.

The conference, organised by LinkedIn’s education evangelist Charles Hardy, was opened by the always-brilliant Eric Stoller, and has since been documented comprehensively by Warwick University’s digital comms expert Dave Musson.

The format was free-and-easy, with much of the content on the day being shaped by those in attendance. Some key themes emerged early on, and they’re themes that will resonate with anyone in Higher Education who uses social media to support their work.

Here they are:

One team working

Large organisations have trouble getting teams to talk to each other, let alone work with each other. At Sheffield Hallam, planning for our showcase sessions has spurred us on, and we’re in the process of setting up a LinkedIn working group, dedicated to planning content and finding opportunities to make the most of the platform.

What we’re finding is that it’s difficult to get people from every single area round a table, so start with a core of people who can get on with it. Eventually, others will join in.

Content

Eric Stoller said it best in his keynote: “University Pages showcase the vibe of your institution, through the content you post and the comments people leave.”

Unsurprisingly, a lot of discussion throughout the day was about the amorphous subject of content. I opened the marcomms track by showcasing some of the things I’d been posting on Hallam’s University Page. In particular, a nostalgic post about our old campus on Psalter Lane, which has generated 149 likes and 39 comments so far.

That’s a really high level of engagement, and it continues to get more. In general, good content on LinkedIn seems to have more longevity than Facebook or Twitter, which are usually home to fleeting moments. Replying to comments is important, if you want to keep the conversation going, and doing it in a personal way usually gets better results.

Dave Musson talked us through his approach at Warwick: they post once a day, early on in the day, and it tends to get good engagement.

There was a lot of talk of LinkedIn’s interface, how to get round the lack of formatting options, and its lack of native video.

My lightbulb moment happened when the discussion moving towards the idea of alumni-generated content. Jonathan Crannage, digital content co-ordinator at Loughborough University, is a Sheffield Hallam alumnus, and tweeted me during the workshop about his collection of Psalter Campus photos.

That kind of approach to user-generated content would be really interesting to try on a University Page, and I’m keen to try it out.

Groups

A lot of people still use discussion groups to broadcast. At Sheffield Hallam we haven’t cracked that nut either.

The best advice came from Charles Hardy, who said that “groups need watering”. Online conversations take place between a number of people, so if you’re relying on one person opening the door to a group once a week and shouting into an empty room, you’re doing it wrong.

You can start a conversation from nothing, by involving a few people. So ask a question, prod people, and see what you can get moving. Someone raised a really good point about discussion groups: what can we offer our alumni through those groups, that benefits us and them in a mutually beneficial way? If you can answer that, your groups will suddenly become hives of activity and outcomes.

Eric Stoller suggested trying ‘ask me anything’ style Q&As with careers teams in groups. We’ll definitely give this a try.

Engaging stakeholders

This theme was originally about engaging academics, but was extended to ‘stakeholders’ after the morning’s workshops.

There was some discussion of employer engagement through Company Pages (as well as groups), but my biggest takeaway was around blogging. We talked about encouraging academics to blog on LinkedIn’s Pulse platform, but what about careers teams? Alumni relations teams?

If HE professionals start blogging on LinkedIn, University Pages can use that content to engage alumni, and group-owners can use those blogs to start conversations.

Another lightbulb moment: get your VC to blog on Pulse.

Also, hashtags work in Pulse. Seriously. Go try it now: search in ‘Posts’ for a hashtag and see what comes up. You’ll be amazed.

Employer engagement

Another theme that morphed and merged throughout the day, fitting into the ‘Engaging stakeholders’ breakout session in the afternoon. I’ll be honest, I don’t have much experience of doing this, and there was very little discussion in the sessions I was in of how to do it.

I’d probably do this through groups, as well as our Company Page, which is currently used more for employer brand stuff.

LinkedIn features

Charles Hardy was good enough to invite critical feedback from delegates on what they want from LinkedIn, and what features they’d want to see in the future. He also broke the news of LinkedIn’s new student app, which launched in the US this week.

I asked for a Pages Manager app. Pretty please, with sugar on top. We want notifications, a better interface, and to get away from our desks.

Native video is happening, although we don’t have an idea of when. But metrics and analytics are on the way, according to Charles. And Company and University Pages will soon be merged, making our lives easier.

So lots of good things on the horizon for HE professionals using LinkedIn, and it’s encouraging that they’re so keen to reach out to a very engaged audience, talk to them and listen to feedback.

If anything in the post resonates with you, let me know in the comments. Especially if you’re doing anything a bit different and interesting with groups.

Joe Field, social media manager
@joemcafield

#SocMedHE15: starting the conversation about social media for learning

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Long post alert! This post originally appeared in the University’s showcase magazine, Review, as a full-length feature of about 800 words. But it’s a really interesting piece about a fantastic social media conference, and it’s worth sharing here.

In December, a team of educational developers from Sheffield Hallam organised the first ever conference on the use of social media for learning in higher education.

The Social Media for Learning in Higher Education 2015 Conference featured over 60 speakers from eight different countries, and from 35 different higher education institutions, and other digital learning organisations.

Helen Rodger, senior lecturer in digital capability, was part of the conference organising committee. She says there was a clear need for a sector-wide conversation about the impact and application of social media on the global learning landscape. And the team were confident that Sheffield Hallam was the right institution to start this conversation.

She says: “The boundaries of social media are changing all the time. More tools and opportunities are emerging, and behaviours are adapting. It’s important that educators recognise and engage with the impact that social literacies have on business and society, learn to harness the power of social media, while remaining mindful of the wider challenges.

“We had three major themes for the conference: the changing learning landscape, the applied use of social media in teaching and learning, and the challenges faced by individuals and institutions in responding to changes. But, in the end, what really mattered was that people, who were all desperate to talk about it, came together to share their experiences of social media in learning, to become a community and begin the conversation.”

Education consultant and Inside Higher Ed blogger Eric Stoller delivered the opening keynote, offering his predictions for ways that UK universities could harness the power of social media tools.

A conference visitor using virtual reality technology

A conference visitor trying out Samsung’s virtual reality technology

Eric says: “Social media will continue to be used by universities for marketing and communications in 2016. However, an emphasis on the student experience will drive more use of social media by areas like student services, academic advising, career development, financial literacy, and mental health.

“The greatest areas of impact will be in career development – using social media to enhance employability – and as part of a digital identity component of a university’s digital capability scheme.

“I think there are going to be more individual administrators who start to use social media for student success and engagement. Marketing, communications, and PR are already using digital channels, but the real breakthrough will be when student services operations work in tandem via social media to support the student journey once on campus.

“In the US, there are scores of institutions using social media to enhance teaching and learning. In the UK, it’s a bit less consistent. I know that Sue Beckingham at Sheffield Hallam has done a lot of work with digital identity and LinkedIn for teaching and learning.

“Social media adoption in higher education has been much slower than in the business world. When universities realised that social media could be used for engagement, support, teaching, learning, and community-building, that’s when things started to change. Digital channels enhance the work of academics and educators, and in 2015 and beyond, today’s student needs to be fluent in using social media for the purposes of employability and career development.”

Helen agrees that things are moving quickly for higher education institutions, and that staff also need to be digitally fluent, but also to be flexible and responsive.

She says: “As practitioners, we’re surfing a very large wave at the moment, and it’s one that can change direction at any time. Sharing best practice and learning from each other are central to us adapting to the opportunity.

“The thing that really came across from the 2015 conference was the focus on the development of digital capabilities, particularly in the area of managing professional identities in digital spaces.”

Based on last year’s success, and the need to keep up with the constantly changing landscapes of education and social media, the 2016 conference is already shaping up to be bigger and more focused, to pick up on the significant related issues faced by higher education.

“We’ve had a huge amount of positive feedback from presenters and delegates,” Helen says. “Including lots of feedback from Sheffield Hallam staff who were involved. Overwhelmingly, the message was how great it was to be a part of this leading edge discussion, and how it made them feel proud to be a part of this University. The next step for us is to evaluate the conference to understand more about what why social media for learning is important, and this focus informs our strategies for the future.

“The conference had a huge impact in terms of reputation. Sheffield Hallam University is beginning to be known internationally for leading a critical discourse about the use of social media for learning in higher education. And that’s something everyone at Sheffield Hallam can have a role in.”

Want to get involved in #SocMedHE16? Submissions are now being accepted for the 2016 Social Media for Learning in Higher Education conference. And you can follow @SocMedHE on Twitter for more information.

Joe Field, social media manager