Hello! I am Elizabeth Oyer, President of EvalSolutions, Inc. where I provide program evaluation and business consulting services. Over the past two years, I have learned a lot about networking strategies in an effort to expand my business, increase my exposure, and build my professional skills to complement my evaluation expertise.
Part of this work has been using the LinkedIn platform more strategically to reach professionals in the sectors where I provide my evaluation, data science, and business consulting services. Through networking and reading blog articles, I am learning to be more intentional with my presence on LinkedIn. This has been a new skill for me, and I’m definitely still developing a knack and instinct around it.
Here are some things I have taken away on this journey.
- Presence matters, and it takes intentional focus. LinkedIn is a social network and if you don’t engage regularly with the people and content, your feed will not evolve to more than a random stream of posts. As you look for content of your connections, of those they follow, or people making important contributions, you will gain access to content that is more impactful for your work.
- Posting for the point of posting is just noise. Now, this is my OPINION and many LinkedIn experts will disagree with me. I’m just going to put it out there that posts that don’t add value to my day in terms of knowledge, resources, important events, or other relevant information are simply thinly-veiled self-promotion without staying power. The content producers who stay in my feed are sharing to add value, not just to be heard.
- Generic is just…generic. Revealing yourself in your posts is an art that I’m still learning. I can tell you that it takes confidence and courage to share your personality; however, a mentor recently pointed out in her review of my marketing that it was very hard to see much of “me” in my online presence. This helped me to take more chances with finding a voice that balances my professional and personal perspectives in a way that is aligned with my values.
Cool Trick
I think we all know that hashtags are a “thing” when you post. I recently learned that you can search for hashtags ahead of time to select a tag that has more followers. This is what you want because your own content will be more broadly disseminated when aligned with a hashtag that’s trending. Here is a great article to learn more.
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