LinkedIn Tips From LinkedIn, How To Break Out Of Your Bubble & Fun Weekend Distractions

Welcome to Potentially Focused! It's Thursday morning, December 12th, and it's definitely winter again on the East Coast. Wherever you are, I hope you're warm and your day is off to a good start!

Today we... Get tips from LinkedIn on how to effectively grow your community and opportunities on their platform, and learn how to break out of our (very) personal bubbles.

Plus, we've got some fun distractions for the weekend as always!

Potentially Focused is a newsletter for busy people in the TV business (or not) who are curious. Everyone interested in growth, great new possibilities, and the stories we tell ourselves and others that either get us there or hold us back. Each edition features quick links to at least one great piece of content on professional development and one centered on personal growth. It's practical information just a click away.

Please like, subscribe, and share with someone inside or outside your bubble! All are welcome in this space!

All my best,

Marco

And we're off...

TIPS FROM LINKEDIN ON HOW TO POST EFFECTIVELY (ON LINKEDIN)

Social Media Today, a terrific newsletter that focuses on social media every day (not surprisingly), just shared a summary of recent tips from LinkedIn on how to write posts that grow your LinkedIn community.

Below are some of the key points they passed along...

We've all heard this first one, but it's worth repeating.

“LinkedIn members who post twice per week see up to five times more profile views. Complete your profile to demonstrate your credibility and help your profile viewers learn more about you.”

Next up, here's a handy chart to cheat off of when you're prepping a post...

In terms of hooks, LinkedIn provides a few examples:

• Share a surprising statistic:?“The average manager wastes 12 hours per week. Here’s how to get that time back.”
• Ask a thought-provoking question:?“What if your top-performing employee is actually hurting your team?”
• Make a bold statement:?“Remote work is overrated.”
• Share a personal story:?“I just turned down a job that would’ve doubled my salary. Here’s why . . .”
• Tease research findings: “I analyzed 1,000 cold emails. The findings surprised me . . .”

And, as for CTAs, they suggest:

• Asking a focused question about readers’ experiences
• Inviting specific examples from your readers’ work
• Seeking new perspectives
• Requesting opinions on a particular aspect of your post
• Encouraging readers to share the post with someone who could benefit from the information

Beyond that, there's information about topics to consider posting about and how commenting and interacting with other people's posts helps you build up your LinkedIn presence.

Again, probably things you've heard before.

One thing that surprised me was that LinkedIn suggested the use of hashtags. They're something I thought the platform was de-emphasizing. According to the article, LinkedIn had this to say about hashtags:

“Using hashtags can be a helpful tool for viewers to easily identify what a post is about and find other related posts. However, it’s important to use hashtags that are closely related to the topic of the post for them to be most effective. In addition to hashtags, we also consider conversation topics and keywords to help surface relevant information for professionals looking to advance in their careers.”

According to Social Media Today, using hashtags that are not already terms that you’ve mentioned in your post is the most effective approach, as LinkedIn can already infer topics and subjects based on the context of the post.

Finally, to help you up your hashtag game, here's a list of the Top 50 LinkedIn Hashtags:

You are welcome! Looking forward to your posts!

And now on to...

HOW TO BREAK OUT OF YOUR BUBBLE

Bubbles. We all have them. We live inside them, and they serve a purpose to a point.

Your external bubble is made up of all the things you come into contact with and do routinely as well as the people who regularly surround you. They give us comfort, order, and safety, or at least the feeling of all those things.

We also create internal bubbles; psychological and emotional spaces in our minds. These ways of thinking and feeling help us defend ourselves against threatening perceptions and uncomfortable emotions. And, they express themselves in biased self-perceptions, rationalizations, delusions (my personal favorite), and suppressed unpleasant emotions.

This article does a nice job of describing our bubbles, and why, despite the comfort they offer us, we need to break out of them. In fact, they list seven reasons why it's critical.

Please make time to take a look at your convenience.

My strong suspicion is most of you already know it's important to push outside of your usual experiences. However, it's not always an easy thing to do and can be intimidating.

So, if you're feeling a bit claustrophobic in your personal bubble(s) but finding it difficult to push through them, here are five suggestions from the article to help you bust out:

1. Accept that new experiences will be uncomfortable at first but recognize that the discomfort will dissipate with every experience you allow yourself.
2. See these as challenges to pursue rather than threats to avoid.
3. Make no assumptions and have no expectations about what the new experience will be like. Curiosity is an acceptable middle ground between excitement (rarely possible the first time you leave your bubble) and fear (much too strong an emotion for most new experiences). Say to yourself... “I wonder what is possible.” or “I want to find out.” or “It might not go well, but I’ll be okay if it doesn’t, and I will learn from it.”
4. Understand that new experiences generalize, meaning that new experiences in one area of your life translate into greater comfort in other parts of your life (you come to see yourself as capable, a nice feeling).
5. These experiences are self-reinforcing; you feel good after, and good things usually happen. After you’ve had a new experience, it’s very satisfying, so you want to have that feeling again by exposing yourself to more.

I'm excited about what you'll find outside of the familiar and routine.

Let us know about your experiences if you're so inclined!

HAPPY WEEKENDING TO ALL!

Like we do every Thursday, we're passing along some fun distractions for your weekend.

First up, if you're near Teaneck, New Jersey this weekend... There's a new film festival launching. It's called fliXfest and takes place this Sunday, December 15th from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.?at?Teaneck Cinemas. I'm not connected to it, but it's across the river from the town I grew up in, and I always love to see storytelling supported.

And, if you've watched or heard about Amazon's new show, The Sticky, here's a rundown of the true story that inspired the series. I recently binged and enjoyed it. But then again, I'm always up for anything that feels a bit in the Fargo vein and has a cast including Margo Martindale, the one and only Jamie Lee Curtis, and any cast member of Silicon Valley to boot...

And speaking of casts, Ted McGinley has been in quite a few. Early in his career, he got stuck with the label of being a show killer when he joined several successful series toward the end of their runs. That label stuck and hurt. These days, he's in the great cast of Shrinking, which he's been part of from the beginning and talks about in this Variety piece, that also includes video.

WE ARE OUT OF HERE!

We're all done for today! In this edition, we... Got LinkedIn's best advice on posting effectively on LinkedIn and discovered how to break out of our bubbles.

And, we passed along some fun distractions for your weekend!

We'll be back with our next edition on Tuesday! Until then, wishing you all fun and relaxing days off!

Thanks to you all for reading. Please let us know what you want more or less of. Please feel free to share information you’d like me to pass along to our readers. Also, always happy to feature guest contributors.

And of course, please like, subscribe, and share.

Much appreciated always,

Marco