I think writing on social media for my more than close to 1850 followers (at present) on LinkedIn brings tremendous responsibility in sharing my thoughts and comments in as accurate a way as possible to reflect my values and beliefs or opinions on issues. I took up this responsibility because I felt over the past year I have grown these followers slowly and organically and there is a kind of social media intimacy at a level I believe was enough to start three different blogs to engage all people that I know through my different styles of writing.
Prior to the pandemic year 2020, I knew LinkedIn existed but did not want to create an account to connect with strangers on a professional basis. I had been deliberative about sharing personal information over the world wide web for all to judge and never want to deal with the effects like doxxing, trolls and cyberbullies.
Facebook versus LinkedIn
Even when I started working, I found that Facebook is more of a safe comfort zone because I only added real friends from the university that I knew well. I often posted personal photos that are only for a select closed network to reminisce close friendships as I was more interested in the personal side of people. Recently, with greater confidence in managing my online presence on Linkedin, I found there are more benefits than drawbacks going on LinkedIn.
I started with very safe postings that did not reveal much of my personal side since I have a deliberative cautious type of personality. Still, over the one year that I was on Linkedin, I have organically grown all the followers by getting to know them as far as possible on a one to one basis. I believe it does take a certain kind of practice to know who are the sincere social media engagers. It boils down to taking the intuitive heart work where one has to start small to build trust and social media intimacy.
Social Engagement Style
My social engagement style is that I rather have a small group of followers whom I know well and genuinely respect their content, views and ideas. Personalized more intimate encounters I think beats having a very large follower numbers if I don’t have the time to get to know them well as unique individuals. Hence, I will do my best if possible by direct messaging new contacts when time and personal attention can be given to those who want to join my network. Ideally it will be best to know as much as they are willing to share privately in confidentiality. Hence, over time as my LinkedIn followers build up, I have a mindset change due to trust and social reciprocity. This is where I started having the belief that regular public engagements on social media with authentic thoughts have the power to effect good changes in the real world of work.
Personal touch of LinkedIn
Occasionally, I was pleasantly surprised to have one or two contact who claim to want a “fan” like getting to know session on zoom or call rather than a professional one and it reinforces my belief that LinkedIn can reconcile two different purposes. That is having the professional yet not lose the personal human touch as well. Thus, I believe LinkedIn has two beneficial purposes where users tend to be strong in the professional touch and second are interested to gain more genuine social connections. It is good as it can bring forth constructive discussions that can bring about immediate changes in each others respective workplaces during this volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) period.
Facebook versus LinkedIn
Even when I started working, I found that Facebook is more of a safe comfort zone because I only added real friends from the university that I knew well. I often posted personal photos that are only for a select closed network to reminisce close friendships as I was more interested in the personal side of people. Recently, with greater confidence in managing my online presence on Linkedin, I found there are more benefits than drawbacks going on LinkedIn.
I started with very safe postings that did not reveal much of my personal side since I have a deliberative cautious type of personality. Still, over the one year that I was on Linkedin, I have organically grown all the followers by getting to know them as far as possible on a one to one basis. I believe it does take a certain kind of practice to know who are the sincere social media engagers. It boils down to taking the intuitive heart work where one has to start small to build trust and social media intimacy.
Social Engagement Style
My social engagement style is that I rather have a small group of followers whom I know well and genuinely respect their content, views and ideas. Personalized more intimate encounters I think beats having a very large follower numbers if I don’t have the time to get to know them well as unique individuals. Hence, I will do my best if possible by direct messaging new contacts when time and personal attention can be given to those who want to join my network. Ideally it will be best to know as much as they are willing to share privately in confidentiality. Hence, over time as my LinkedIn followers build up, I have a mindset change due to trust and social reciprocity. This is where I started having the belief that regular public engagements on social media with authentic thoughts have the power to effect good changes in the real world of work.
Personal touch of LinkedIn
Occasionally, I was pleasantly surprised to have one or two contact who claim to want a “fan” like getting to know session on zoom or call rather than a professional one and it reinforces my belief that LinkedIn can reconcile two different purposes. That is having the professional yet not lose the personal human touch as well. Thus, I believe LinkedIn has two beneficial purposes where users tend to be strong in the professional touch and second are interested more genuine social connections. It is good as it can bring forth constructive discussions that can bring about immediate changes in each others respective workplaces during this volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) period.
Public and private social media engagement
I am glad it is time that I am more confident at regular public postings due to knowing behind the scenes what these 1850 followers are like in the private message space. Organic content sharing I believe brings more reach to my audience out there who are already in my network. I am glad to have consistently engaged them through responding to their direct personal messages over the past year. Due to my rather cautious personality in managing the double edged sword of increased connectivity of social media, I only took it more affirmatively that public posting of content brings more benefits that harm.
I remember a handful of people have privately direct messaged me saying they do look forward to my blog postings as they could engage with it. Thus, I feel that I need to effectively manage my social media writings by bringing awareness of certain social issues and yet have to be mindful of weeding out unnecessary trolling at the early stage by being even more discerning. This is because the last thing I want is to have more real followers getting trolled for their opinions in my LinkedIn space. Hence, I do see my postings here as taking on a kind of “thought leadership” that goes beyond my personal writing sphere.
I would like to highlight one impressive social media engagement that I had recently. This brings out the best of this platform where we can connect with responsibility, depth and authenticity which I highly value. Hopefully, I can manage this double edged sword by bringing out what is a form good social media engagement. Overall, with this post, I hope this will encourage less trolling and more meaningful discussions. Moving forward, I believe this will set the precedent for building greater social media intimacy and enhance all our professional relationships.
Being responsible for my thoughts
As a “thought leader” responsible for my posting, I hope to offer protection to people who would share the same interest and viewpoints and genuinely want to air their questions and point of view. Thus, I am more discerning of those who wishes to engage publicly on my public social media postings and bring out an example of a “model” social media engagement to set the correct precedent.
Impressive social media engagement
I am impressed with Jenny Lai who recently connected with my latest LinkedIn post on “Surviving the digital world in a difficult season”. I decided to republish what was on my LinkedIn social media page in a format that looks like a “mock” interview session (edited from original LinkedIn post) with the author (me) of the blog post.
Jenny(Jen) Lai: This course is useful but the challenge on how to implement it at our unique work places that may or may not be supportive to the changes
Li Nah: What are the unique challenges would one face then?
Jenny(Jen) Lai: This is subjected to the acceptance of the work place to carry out – resistance to changes
Li Nah: The course I took is practical and it gives the not so technologically literate learners like me an understanding of digital market trends in a competitive online market sphere. I believe that if a leader likes to transform his business from physical to online there will be resistance from workers.
There will be change in roles which made some duties obsolete like the manual printing of flyers as technological changes are implemented. This will redefine work roles for workers as manual work in traditional marketing may become obsolete once new digital technologies becomes available.
This caused the digital divide as it is now easy to replace workers who have a keen mindset to go on the path of least resistance. That leaves the current workers in a position where they have to upskill or be left behind so a mindset shift will need to happen inevitably.
It marvels me that even integrating a Google map on a website can be so easily done without knowing very advanced IT skills now. Just need a good learning attitude and pick up the technical knowledge made for the layman to understand.
Jenny (Jen) Lai: Yup however, despite all these requirements that we all know, perhaps there are still gaps for different leaders to identify to address the learning gaps in any organization- hope this insight may help.
Li Nah: Yes, thanks for your professional and thoughtful discussion. This has helped me to think about how to engage with other professionals who are interested in leadership transformation in the workplace.
Jenny(Jen) Lai : Yup – preparation with a growth mindset will the key drivers to move forward the various phases of digitalization
Li Nah: Thanks for the insightful comment. I believe a self-aware leader can help prepare workers to keep pace with the phases of digitalization.
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