Don’t spray, stay or stray. Understand your audience

So you have some interesting knowledge and insights to share? That’s great, but don’t risk it falling flat because you haven’t found or understood your audience.

Social media technologies have made it easy for us to share whatever we want, with whomever we want, whenever we want. It happens in an instant and can feel enormously gratifying. Yay!

The problem is:, in this hyper-connected world many people are acting without considering their audience. They are engaging in a practice I like to call “spray, stay or stray”:

• SPRAY: You shout into a megaphone and hope someone will hear your voice. You don’t know who your audience should be, so think everyone should hear your message.

• STAY: You limit your voice, unsure of who will value what you know. You have something of value to share, but are unsure where to find your audience. 

• STRAY: Your voice is confused and chaotic. You are unclear what you want to say, so you bombard your audience with multiple, mixed messages.

While it can be tempting to just get your ‘stuff’ out there, it’s worth pausing and considering who you want to share what you know with.

Here are four questions to ask yourself to help you define and find your audience.

1) Who will gain the most value from what I know?

Write down who’ll be interested in your subject matter. This could be colleagues in your organisation or people who do similar work to you elsewhere. Depending on the insights you want to share, your audience might be completely unrelated to your day job. That’s OK.

2) Why is this the right audience?

You cannot be all things to all people, so prioritise your audiences. They should sit at the intersection of the insights you want to share and your professional and personal objectives. Ideally, you’re learning from your audience at the same time that you’re sharing what you know.

3) Where is my audience?

Find where the ‘party’ is already happening and join the conversation. Research hashtags related to your topics in target platforms. While LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional platform, don’t overlook your company’s enterprise social network if your audiences are internal. Attend relevant events. Say ‘yes’ if asked to present on your subject at an event.

4) What do I want to tell my audience?

To avoid ‘straying’, be clear about what you want to tell your audience. If you’ve done the work upfront to identify the core insights you want to share, this step involves crafting 2 or 3 bite-sized messages carrying knowledge, opinion or advice (or a combination) aimed at each audience. These will sit at the heart of what you communicate. Mobilise your writing around these messages in your post, article or presentation.

Sharing your voice with an audience isn’t a performance. The reality is: connecting with your audience is more like immersive art. When you get it right, it’s mesmerising and engaging, and your audience will feel part of something important.  

I took the photo featured in this post at THE LUME Melbourne, a multi-sensory digital art gallery, which opened last year with Van Gough Alive. Immersed myself in Van Gough’s world while perched at his ‘Night Café’ drinking bubbles with my partner. Connection with the audience well and truly nailed!

Sharing what we know over time builds our impact and influence. If you’re absent from social media or your profile is unprofessional, how does this reflect on your value proposition and personal brand? If you’d like to build your credibility as a socially engaged leader, get in touch.

Know your stuff? Don’t be scared. Your insights matter more than you think

We all happily pass on our knowledge, insights and advice to friends, family and people we work with, yet many of us hesitate to share our thinking via social media platforms. Why?

Perhaps it's because we believe we’re not senior enough or that no one will be interested in what we think; that what we know isn’t very exciting or helpful. Or we may worry that we’ll come across as a show-off. After all, social media makes our thinking available for anyone to critique or cut down.

While laying our insights and opinions bare for anyone to see can be a scary thing, there is plenty of upside. 

Sharing what we know over time builds our impact and influence.

Meaningful participation in social media begins with identifying the core topics or 'pillars' of knowledge and insights that you want to share. I suggest you narrow it down to 3-4 themes. To help identify these, ask:

• What are you most interested in? Think about what excites you, both in and outside of work.

• What are you good at? Others will be keen to know how you built this expertise and will be interested in your tips and insights.

• What experiences and lessons can you share? The things you have learnt can be helpful to others starting out.

People who are successful in sharing their insights in social media consistently share knowledge, opinion and advice related to their core topics. Importantly, platforms like LinkedIn are increasingly prioritising these posts over the empty, humble brag.

No matter what your job role is, or how senior or junior you may be, what you know will be valued by others.

There is a ready audience interested in what you know. There are people out there who will benefit from your insights. Sit down and figure out what those areas of interest will be for you. What do you want to be known for?

If you’re absent from social media or your profile is unprofessional, how does this reflect on your value proposition and personal brand? If you’d like to build your credibility as a socially engaged leader, get in touch.

The rules of civility and decent behaviour in social media. AKA what would George Washington do?

Recently a dear friend suggested I read The Rules of Civility by Amor Towles. Set in the late 1930s in NYC, it’s a seductive and a mesmerising read for fans of old Big Apple glamour and the influence of chance encounters on our lives.

The book’s title is inspired by George Washington’s Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation. Towles imagined these ‘rules’ were most likely studied by Tinker, one of the book’s ambitious main characters, so he included them at the end of his work.

Washington’s rules cover everything from how you should conduct yourself in public (don’t kill fleas, lice and ticks in the sight of others) to how you should dress (in your apparel be modest), eat (drink not nor talk with your mouth full) and how you should engage with others (think before you speak).

The rules led me to think about the intense scrutiny of social media platforms right now. We’re reading about fake accounts, bots, and buying followers online. Fake YouTube views. Social media users worn out by angry, disrespectful online interactions about politics. Social media platforms hitting rock-bottom in rankings of people’s favourite brands. And recently social media executives were again in the spotlight at congressional hearings on online election interference, talking about the steps they are taking to clean up and secure their services.

Stir all this together and it’s no wonder we’re asking ourselves whether social media has had its time in the sun. Is it still useful? Should we engage? Should we close down our accounts?

There’s still plenty of value in social media engagement, but it’s up to us to behave like decent, empathetic human beings in the process.

Little did George Washington know that when he penned his rules, he was writing the guidelines for civilised behaviour in social media. Here’s my take of a selection of his rules to guide your thinking about the insights you want to share, finding your voice and nailing what you want to be known for in the social world.

Your insights 

Undertake not to teach your equal in the art himself professes; it savors of arrogance. You’ll have your insights and experiences to share in social and so will others. If you haven’t been in someone else’s shoes, then don’t try and tell them they’re wrong. Demonstrate respect for the learning and expertise of others.

Go not thither, where you know not, whether you shall be welcome or not. Give not advice without being asked and when desired do it briefly. Consider the value of the insights you share. If you don’t know anything about a subject, then avoid adding noise to the Twittersphere. If you’re asked for your opinion and have an informed view, then share your knowledge and be crisp and concise.

 Your voice

Be not forward but friendly and courteous; the first to salute hear and answer and be not pensive when it’s a time to converse. When you share your work, be prepared to have a conversation about it. Social media is not a one-way street – engage with those who are interested in your insights. There’s nothing more depressing for someone asking a question to hear nothing but crickets.

Being to advise or reprehend any one, consider whether it ought to be in public or in private; presently, or at some other time in what terms to do it and in reproving show no sign of choler but do it with all sweetness and mildness. Showing no choler is an old-school way of saying don’t be angry or irritable in your interactions. Playing the blame game and getting angry in social media doesn’t help you. If you have an issue with a post someone’s targeted at you, consider whether social is the right place to respond. If it is, then deal with the substance of the post in a calm way.

Your brand

Associate yourself with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation for ‘is better to be alone than in bad company. To me, men (and women) of good quality are those people with whom I can have a respectful banter about subject matter we’re interested in. Focus your energy on sharing what you know with those who may benefit from your learning and experience. Don’t sweat the trolls trying to drag you down. Leave them be.

Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience. Of all the rules, when it comes to thinking about your brand and reputation in social, I think Washington nailed it with this one. Show up regularly, be open and have empathy for others. Then you’ll be well on the road to building a great reputation based on engaging in social with integrity.

If you haven’t had the pleasure of reading Washington’s rules, do so. They’re informative and fun. In the meantime, before you send an angry tweet or spam your network, take a deep breath and ask yourself: what would George Washington do? If we take a leaf out of his rule book, we can lift the tone of conversations and behaviour in social media, but it starts with us.

Don’t be a passenger. Get in the driver’s seat with social

My first car was a 1986 first generation Hyundai Excel. It was blue, with a clunky gear box and a 70-horsepower, 1.5-litre motor. It could go from zero to 100kph in around 13 seconds (my best guess).

Yes, it was an underdog in the motoring world, but I loved it. The first time I jumped into my car as a licensed driver, I was excited and I imagined all the road trips I'd go on with my mates in the future.

Having wheels gave me an incredible sense of independence and control. No longer a passenger at the mercy of public transport or my exceedingly chatty chauffeur (my dad), I was in the driver’s seat and in charge of the car.

Managing your social media is just like being in a car. If you stay in the passenger seat, you’re at the mercy of the driver. The only way to truly stay in control and manage your impact and influence in social is to jump in the driver’s seat.

The only way to truly stay in control and manage your impact and influence in social is to jump in the driver’s seat.

 I’ve written about the importance of being social before.  In particular, I believe women need to get over the self-talk that making themselves visible is not a ‘nice’ thing to do. Let’s park that for now (sorry – bad pun).

The key to not feeling overwhelmed by social media is to engage in it thoughtfully. Here’s a model I like to use when I’m helping clients learn how to get in the driver’s seat and take control of their social media engagement.

My insights. Think about what it is you want to share and why. What subject matter are you an expert in? What are you trying to achieve? Remember, using social in a purposeful way can be about your work agenda or something personal.

My voice. How will you share what you know and create value for your followers? Finding your voice is about identifying where your audience is and the right channels to engage in generous, open conversations about your subject matter.

My brand. Think about how you want to be perceived. Even before someone meets you, your social media footprint will tell a story about who you are and what you stand for. Consistency is key. Keep this in mind when you’re working out what you’ll share on social and how you’ll do it.

Working out what you want to share, how you’ll create value and how you want others to perceive you will give you the beginnings of a roadmap in how to navigate social.  

The most important step of all in social, however, is to stop being a passenger and jump into the driver’s seat.

Plan the trip, invite your community along for the ride and then get behind the wheel and drive. When it comes to being social, the journey is just as much fun as arriving at your destination.