Career aspect: Social eminence - Restless patience in career journeys series

Building upon the article I published in January 2022 titled Be restlessly patient & take control of your career journey, and based on the feedback and interest I received on the topic, I've initiated a series of follow-on articles to extend details on the different career aspects I've introduced in the first article. The aim is to make the career aspects as clear as possible; providing pointers and examples where applicable, in order to make them actionable, allowing you to plan and track the different activities against them easily going forward.

In this article I'll introduce the Social Eminence career aspect. In my first article, Be restlessly patient & take control of your career journey, I've briefly introduced this career aspect as follows:

How active are you in professional Social Media and external circles, your level of engagement, the quality of your point-of-views, and feedback you provide. How are you recognized and perceived in professional social domains; aiming to be well know in your domain of expertise, among other professional interests and areas.

Going one level deeper to clarify this aspect, it relates to your engagement in platforms such LinkedIn, twitter, and more generally, forums, communities, working groups... within the different professional domains and industries. You need to be active and recognized as a leader who provides: solid, interesting and well-thought-of point of views and takes on various matters within their domain of expertise as well as other areas of interest. From experience, having seen it with myself and others, this is one career aspect that is harder than most to venture. It doesn't come naturally to most. To many people's surprise in this day and age, there are a lot of people who still don't feel comfortable with public posting. However, this is one of the lighter and more fun career aspects to tackle, and much like everything else, you can ease yourself into it with very small steps initially, honing it until it comes naturally and becomes a habit.

Moving next into how to engage in this career aspect:

• You can start with short posts, with 1 or 2 sentences giving your opinion or feedback on topics of interest. Then make your posts longer or deeper over time. For instance, one of the simplest actions you can take when you post a new badge in your feed, change the default message with a short personalized point of view, or opinion; the importance of the skill, your journey getting there, the journey from there...
• Respond actively in forums or communities when you feel you have a input that can benefit someone else on a certain subject. There is no harm in doing it, if you're right, you get lots of credit for it (and it feels good!), if you're proven wrong, you've learned from it.
• Share your point of view actively on other people’s posts (commenting), and don't shy away from a heated discussion, defend your point of view if needed. Just don't get side-tracked by trolls or if conversations become unproductive. You may also consider reporting inappropriate content where necessary, or just block out the distractions.
• Adjust your platform settings and customize them for your own benefit so you can really focus on what matters the most for you in the platform, making you more focused, efficient and productive.
• Like, comment and share purposefully, responsibly and consciously - the actions you take are promoted to your network as well. Remember to separate between professional from unprofessional topics, each have their forums, and they don't need to be intermixed.
• Try out different varieties of content types, such as podcasts, videos, graphical, as well as textual content. It may be hard, but it takes practice and you can certainly excel in them over time if you put your mind into it.
• Consider writing articles and blogs, initially on topics you are comfortable with, then expand from there.
• Take time and proof read your posts, it gives a very good perception when the message comes out in an eloquent and flawless manner.
• Utilize # hashtags and @ mentions in your posts to reach a much wider audience.
• Update your professional profile and always keep it current on the different platforms & communities.
• Consume learning, education, articles... on Social eminence, they can help you get started until you get a hang of it. I've found the following resources useful , and I am sure if you searched further, or asked for recommendations from people who are doing well in this area, you can find a lot more resources to consume:

Get started with LinkedIn - provided by LinkedIn Learning

Check your LinkedIn Social Selling Index (SSI)

How to Step Up Your Social Listening on Twitter

As to why it's important, as you can dutifully note, social media is a force to be reckoned with - the reach is just amazing, on an epic scale. It definitely helps in:

• Asserting your Domain of expertise (technical eminence).
• Boosting your levels of Networking & visibility.
• Providing the opportunity to nurture the?Give-back and IP, IC, publications career aspects.
• Discovering Programs & training based on your social network recommendations.
• Connecting with, or in cases being introduced to, Mentors & sponsors through your social network and connections.
• Locating new and interesting Opportunities to excel.

With that, it should be clearer now what the Social Eminence career aspect is all about, how you can engage in it, and why it's important for your career.

This concludes the sixth article in the Restless patience in career journeys series - more to come as I unfurl the rest of the aspects, so stay tuned.