Contemplating Life’s Choices

My experience going to a networking event earlier this week after not going to one in years due to the pandemic, I was reminded how overwhelming and uncomfortable they can be if you’re not naturally inclined to go hang out and talk with strangers. It can become worse if you realize you have to spend your time talking to strangers about yourself if being your own hype person doesn’t come naturally to you.

For those who attending a crowded networking event and having to talk about yourself over and over sounds like the worst way to spend your time I’ve got a solution for you.

Networking through writing and sharing your knowledge.

Seriously. We all have something that we know more about than someone else. Even if you’re fresh out of college you have a perspective about that experience that someone who graduated 20 years ago no longer has. Even if someone else does the same thing you do, your life’s experience impacts your perspectives so you have something worth sharing that is unique to you.

So, how do you do this?

Use your LinkedIn space and just start posting. You could write about a book you read, a podcast you listened to, or a course you learned from. You could share a recap of a conference you went to or a webinar you watched. Even recap of a lesson learned about a mistake you made but recovered from is a great way to start building an online presence in a way that you can control. Truly, write the post and edit it for a week if you need to. Or post it quickly and edit later if you find a typo or something doesn’t make sense. You don’t have to have the pressure of coming up with something to say on the spot and you can develop your ideas at your own pace.

If you want some examples of what this looks like in practice check out these posts I shared on LinkedIn. They’re older but you’ll get an idea of how this works.

• Talking about a Pluralsight course I watched
• Sharing my experience on a panel with other local leaders
• Showing gratitude for others who impacted my career journey
• My thoughts on an article I read

My tips for maximizing this practice are:

1. Tag whoever you’re talking about. It could be the course author, the podcast host, the company event you attended. This will help your post become visible to other people who may not know you (the networking part of sharing your knowledge). Additionally, it can help you connect with other thought leaders you are talking about. I have been able to develop really great relationships with people I first learned from by sharing the value I got from the knowledge and content they created.
2. Don’t feel you have to be a brilliant content creator to do this. Sometimes writing on a site like LinkedIn can feel like you have to have some new and original thought or be just as eloquent as that person with a million followers. I’m here to tell you it doesn’t have to be that way. You just have to start somewhere and share what you know based on your experience and perspectives.
3. Post regularly. It doesn’t have to be daily either. Once a week is fine if you’re just looking to maintain a presence, especially if you have something like a theme day where people know to look for your content on the same day each week. If you’re job searching or looking to expand your network I’d try for a couple times a week. If you go too long between posts you risk missing on any boost in the algorithm that might help you connect with more people. The other issue if you go too long is you risk people stop seeing your content and then your visibility becomes minimal. If you’re writing to network or job search you need to be consistent to stay top of mind.

The idea around using what you’re learning as a networking tool is it eliminates the task of showing up to in person or virtual networking events where you’re competing for attention and time.

Sharing your thoughts on what you’re learning in a written format will help you solidify your knowledge. If you read a book and can’t figure out how to apply it to your life or how to share what you’ve learned that may mean you need to do more research and learning to fill your knowledge gaps. This isn’t a bad thing as it’s better to realize you don’t know enough to write about something vs when you’re in a conversation with someone who knows about the topic only to find you don’t have the understanding you thought you did.

And don’t forget, that getting good takes practice. I won’t even say I’m great at it at this point but what I am learning along the way is I have a lot of thoughts so there’s room to do better at being concise, breaking things up into smaller topics, and probably just getting clearer at what I want to share. Either way, we all have to start somewhere so don’t let the fear of not being perfect stop you from putting something good enough out there. *Takes own advice and stops messing with this and hits publish…