WHY SHOULD I USE SOCIAL MEDIA? How I Transformed My Resistance and Discovered a World of Generosity—PASSION and TRUST
Embracing Social Media
I cannot say enough about the generosity I have found within my social media community. They constantly send words of encouragement and support. My social media community keeps me grounded with the latest information and provides direct responses to my questions.
As a leader and talent development expert, networking is essential. I do not have all of the answers. Yet, there exists a gap in acceptance of social media in senior executives and other leaders. This places a company at risk of becoming out of touch with both their internal and external customers.
It is all in how I frame my focus on social media. When people share with me, it makes me really want to reach out and help others that much more. With that said, there are many people that still do not trust social media. I am one person that has been there and shared similar feelings and concerns. It comes down to passion and trust.
The reasons for my resistance included time availability, fears associated with learning a new technology as well as concerns of privacy. The course of events this week helped resolve my remaining considerations.
I completed earning a certification to facilitate TrustWorks programs. These programs focus on trust within myself, as a leader and on teams. I got present to what has been stopping me with social media was rooted in fear. When I learn something I like to share it.
So, this past Saturday I co-facilitated 4 sessions on using social media at an MCA-I event with colleague and friend Terry Crosby. Talk about swimming in the deep end of the pool. The message here for me was to trust my community and provide ways to help others that experienced what I did. We share the same pain.
Terry is a valued colleague and mentored me in social media. Having a mentor as a trusted advisor eased the pain and plays an integral role in my trust for social media. Together we combined our talents to provide these insights to others.
I consider myself relatively new to social media. I have only really been immersing myself in it since November 2009. I can now target and reach my ideal customers easily. Social media allows me to find them right where they live, work and play. There was a point, for me, where finding people became the easy part and maintaining consistency and commitment became the challenge.
What grounded me in this new communication age was my underlying desire to network. Not from a perspective of what I can get, but really how I can serve as a connector to put people in touch with others. I love it!
It is a commitment. It is like priming a pump. If I keep pumping and pumping, the water is slowly rising to the top. But, if I quit, all of my effort is quickly lost. I have to begin rebuilding the momentum. This is why passion is important.
LinkedIn has been my sole social media presence for nearly 4 years and I was firmly anchored there. Putting my eggs in one basket became limiting for me as I discovered the potential other social media venues like FaceBook and Twitter offered.
At on time or another, I shared fears voiced by a lot of people in the sessions we taught this Saturday. In fact, I resisted FaceBook because I was concerned about privacy and mixing my personal life with my professional life. I discovered there are ways to balance this and privacy settings that addressed these concerns.
The other part of my resistance and perhaps the real root for me was letting go of my fears. In fact, I have found that my colleagues and friends that know a bit more about me have been developing into much more powerful relationships.
Now, Twitter was an enigma to me and for the most part, still is, because there are so many tools. It really is not what I would consider to be “user friendly.” I shifted my thinking from what was “wrong” with it to sort of making it like a puzzle and have made a game of it to increase my number of followers and lists I am on. I set goals like having 2000 targeted followers and being on 200 lists by February 28, 2010. With tools like TweetDeck, Twitter Karma and others, I can remove some of the mystery.
The biggest mystery is managing and investing my time in this sea of amazing opportunity. Where does one start when it comes to managing time on this? After all, I have been taught that I only get out of something, what I put into it. Again, I had to shift and transform my thinking. I could be online forever and the rewards could be limitless. This is where strategy came in for me.
I relied on Terry for guidance. Then, I did further research to create a chart which lays out my recurring and consistent daily communication strategy. I post at specific times of the day considering when my audience will read and forward my messages. I want to gain more social media clout to get my message out to more people. I work hard to follow proper etiquette. I truly respect my followers and want to provide the greatest value I can to support them.
I invest my time researching places like AllTop to find relevant blogs and articles to help my community. I can post and track my communications ahead not since I have a consistent strategy using HootSuite. This allows me to create and pre-schedule my communications to go to either Twitter, FaceBook or LinkedIn, or all of the above. It also shrinks the URL into something I can track to analyze topics my followers want.
My focus is to add value and create a community where people come together and share. Social media has made the planet a smaller place. I get real-time information that provides real solutions. I am honored to have a growing social media community that cares and shares.
Resources:
http://traffikd.com/smm/worth-your-time/
social media, fear, trust, twitter, facebook, linkedin, leaders, transformation, why should I use Social Media?, why, executive, senior executives, CEO
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Love this post. When you put your mind to something there is no stopping you. I have always admired your mastery of Linkedin. Where have you found the most success and why?
Thanks for responding Terry. I have found the most success in meeting new people at a faster rate. The initial brick wall was the fear and listening to other’s fears and owning them as mine. As a result of going for it, using multiple sources widens the net I can cast and reach more people where they live, work and play.