SURVIVING THE DOWNTURN – USING THE POWER OF LINKEDIN TO STAY CONNECTED

After spending an amazing day in Houston attending the HERWorld17 Energy Forum on International Women’s Day, I wanted to expand on a topic that was touched on during the discussion in regards to staying connected during the current employment downturn in the oil and gas industry.

As one of the guest panel speakers in the “Navigating the Transition” discussion, I mentioned how important it is to stay active on LinkedIn and keep the lines of communication open within the industry. As a follow-up from that discussion I want to explain more about how best to use the power of LinkedIn to expand your network and let people know about your expertise.

LinkedIn is a valuable tool for networking opportunities that cannot be understated. Don’t just use it like you would Facebook and do nothing more than scroll through your newsfeed looking for job ads to jump out at you. You have to be proactive, creative and resourceful. Use it to advertise yourself and be seen. If all you’ve ever done is view other peoples articles and posts and never contributed by way of posting updates or publishing articles then you would have no idea of the networking power doing such things can provide.

To the passive non-contributor, all you’re going to see is the number of likes and comments people provide on posts, but to the author of such posts there is a host of analytical data that LinkedIn supply so you can track the reader engagement of your posts…statistics that the general viewing public don’t see. For whatever reasons, most people are reluctant to be seen to be reacting to posts…maybe out of fear of having their peers judge them or because they don’t want to be seen as the only person “liking” or commenting on a post that seems to have very little, or no, public engagement. This is a shame because they don’t realise that liking or commenting on articles is actually a way of making their name stand out within their network and give them exposure with very little effort on their part.

In an effort to show you what the LinkedIn author of posts and articles sees, I’ve taken some screen shots of the analytical data LinkedIn provided on some of my posts, above and beyond just the “likes” and comments the post has visibly attracted. As you can see there is a “Views” number, which tells me how many people have actually clicked on an article or stopped scrolling on a post long enough for them to read it. While some of my posts have only attracted one or two likes, and at times not even a single comment, they have had over 1,000 people engaging and reading the article. But wait, there’s more!!

As if that little nugget of information isn’t enough to convince you of the benefits of staying active on LinkedIn, these analytics get even better. While they don’t give you the names of the people viewing your post, like with the “likes” and “comments”, they do breakdown the views into different demographics and record the companies where the viewers work, what job titles they have and what cities they live in. Now if that’s not going to give you a pretty clear indication of who is reading your posts then I don’t know what is.

Suddenly all of these covert readers are not so invisible any longer. They may think they are but the author of the posts and articles knows otherwise. These covert readers might be looking at the number of “likes” and “comments” on someone’s post and thinking “wow, this guy has only got one person liking his post so I’m not going to put myself out there and be seen to be liking something that no-one else seems interested in. But in reality over one thousand, or more, people are thinking exactly the same thing and covertly engaging and learning something valuable from your post.

That is what keeps me regularly posting articles and updates on LinkedIn. That is the power you have over getting your knowledge out to the people who need to know it and who are interested in what you have to say. Don’t ever underestimate your knowledge and what you might have to share with your peers. Don’t think that people aren’t interested in your posts judging by the number of “likes” and comments they attract. These numbers can be very misleading. Sure, it’s great to get lots of likes and comments but it’s not showing you the full picture of reader engagement. The number of views does.

Everyone likes to learn new information…just like you are now by reading this if you didn’t already know about the LinkedIn post analytics. Writing articles is a great way of indirectly mentoring people and passing on your expertise to others who are interested in learning more about specific topics within their chosen field of expertise. Sharing your knowledge is a great way to get your name seen by your industry peers and to help educate people at the same time…win-win!

BUT…and there’s always a but…there’s some important rules to remember:

• Always make sure your articles or posts are relevant and informative
• If you’re writing about a news event, try to be very current – no one wants to read articles about something that was in the news months, or even weeks ago.
• If you’re writing a post or article about something you feel very passionate or strongly about and want to let off some steam, don’t publish it on LinkedIn straight away. After drafting it, wait for at least 24 hours before posting it and re-read it before you do. Things said in the heat of the moment when you are enraged about something can come across as very aggressive and unprofessional. Making a comment on someone else's post can be especially troublesome if they have written about something you have an emotional connection with. I'm guilty of doing this myself (as recently as yesterday in fact - while sleep deprived and jet-lagged, but that's still no excuse!) and it's understandable when people are so stressed about their work situation, but avoid doing it at all costs.
• Always proofread everything thoroughly to make sure there are no grammar mistakes or typos because if there are, it can affect your credibility as an authority and make you look careless. If English is not your first language and you are targeting an English-speaking audience then you need to be extra careful. I recommend you get a person who has English as their first language to proofread it for you before publishing it. With most roles these days requiring extensive reporting practices it is very important you don’t give a bad impression of your report-writing skills to possible future employers.
• Always re-read your post or article after you have published it and if you see a typo then go in and edit it – DO NOT leave it like that. So many times I see update posts with typos in them which makes it look like it’s been written by an 8-year old…don’t you be one of those! You are trying to make the best impression you possibly can on any future employers who could be reading your post so give yourself the best chance of standing out from the crowd for the right reasons, not the wrong reasons.

Ways of Engaging on LinkedIn

There are many ways you can get your name and profile seen by your peers on LinkedIn. Below are some ideas on how to start accumulating LinkedIn “Views” analytics data. This in turn generally attracts more views to your profile as readers wonder what your professional background is and want to know more about the author of the posts:

• Share other peoples posts. If you found something interesting and informative then chances are many other people in your industry will also. Always try to write an explanation of why you found it interesting and want to share it.
• Write a status update, just as you would in Facebook. These always attract more attention if there is an eye-catching photo attached to it.
• Post a link to an article on some other website, for example an online newspaper article about a relevant industry story that you found interesting and think your peers would also be interested to read. It’s always best to write a sentence on why you have posted it or found it interesting, so it invites the reader to click on the link and go to the article. It’s also a good idea to click on the link yourself to make sure it works and leads you to the correct article. Quite often newspaper articles are only accessible if you are a paid subscriber to that publication and it’s really annoying for non-subscribers to click on the link but not be able to access the article.
• Write your own articles and publish them on LinkedIn and then write a post in your newsfeed with a link to the article. Generally when you publish an article on the LinkedIn site it will automatically prompt you to write an introductory post and then instantly post it to your newsfeed once you click on the “Publish” button.
• Write an article on an external website and then post the link to this website, along with an explanation as to why you are linking to it. Most times a clickable image of the article will automatically appear once you type in the URL of the website and this is most desirable. Unfortunately this doesn’t always happen though and only the heading of the article will appear, with no image. If this occurs you can add a static image that isn’t a clickable link but be warned…when you do this the article header clickable link disappears and you just get the typed URL link showing. Many people will click on the photo instead of the URL address and not be taken to the website. Many will not bother trying again on the URL link, so will never actually read the article. People are attracted to pretty pictures so you want to try and have an image as the clickable link to the article.

Providing an image link to your article is beneficial because:

• People are attracted to an article by an eye-catching image and they automatically click on an image first rather than a URL link.
• People can be lazy or just in a hurry so if it’s going to take more than one click to get to an article and they’ve already used up one click just to view the image then they’ll just continue scrolling through their newsfeed.
• The URL address may not stand out amongst the text in the post you have written, especially if you’ve included hash tags or tagged people or groups. These come up in bold blue writing, just like the URL address does so they may mask the actual link text that people need to click on.

It is very easy to publish an article on LinkedIn. Simply go to the top of your newsfeed and you are given the option to either "Share an article, photo or update" or "Write an article", as shown below. You can write the article and leave it as a draft and come back to it at a later date if you don't have time to finish writing it in one sitting - as you can see from my screen capture while I was writing this article.

In summary, it’s important to engage with your LinkedIn feed and be visible to people who matter most to your career. You can do this by:

• Liking other peoples posts
• Commenting on other peoples posts
• Sharing other peoples posts
• Writing your own updates, preferably with an image added
• Writing your own articles and publishing them on LinkedIn
• Posting a link to an article you may have written on another website
• Posting a link to other peoples articles on other websites, such as industry-related online newspapers and magazines

Being both engaging with other peoples posts and creating your own is vital to staying connected. Also continue to make valuable connections within your professional network so every time you do post something, the right people are seeing it. 

I hope this article has been of some benefit to those who have never actively posted on LinkedIn. If you have any questions regarding publishing articles on LinkedIn please don't hesitate to send me a message and I'll be glad to help wherever I can. The more you do it, the easier it becomes. By studying the post views analytics you get to know what type of posts people respond to the best and how to better engage with the people in your network.

Why not set yourself a challenge to post a link to an article you find interesting... or even be bold enough to write your own... by the end of this month! Getting friends, family or colleagues to proofread it for you is a great idea for bouncing ideas off each other. Even possibly form a small network of people and get together and brainstorm ideas for interesting and professionally relevant article subjects. The combined knowledge of a small group of professionals could create an amazing library of informative and educational articles. I can't wait to read them!

AMANDA BARLOW is a Wellsite Geologist in the offshore oil and gas industry with an extensive field-based geology career.

Amanda is also a recreational marathoner who has run 61 marathons in 18 different countries and is the author of the following three books: “Call of the Jungle – How a Camping-Hating City-Slicker Mum Survived an Ultra Endurance Marathon through the Amazon Jungle” and also “An Inconvenient Life – My Unconventional Career as a Wellsite Geologist” and "Offshore Oil and Gas PEOPLE - Overview of Offshore Drilling Operations".

You can connect with Amanda through LinkedIn at:

https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/amanda-barlow-wsg

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