By Lora Teagarden
The background & the why that drives you
I wrote in my mentorship series on the importance of my digital network in helping create relationships, continuing to learn, and finding mentors. I’m still learning and feeling my way through the different platforms, but thanks to a lot of articles read on the subject and friends who specialize in AEC (Architecture Engineering Construction) marketing, I continue to make progress. I thought I’d spend this blog post (and the next four to follow) giving some background on what I’ve learned these last two years in the digital / social media world and sharing some tips and tricks for the different platforms. This week’s social media primer: the background and the why that drives you.
Social media: You’ve gotta be you
Every time I turn around, I see an article on the importance of being authentic, knowing your why, or living your brand. The moral to the story is: when people interact with you, they want to know “you”, not some fake version of you. And if you don’t know why you wake up in the morning or what makes you tick, how can you begin to authentically interact, let alone know what platform might be best for you or your brand?
When I decided to fully invest in growing my digital network two years ago through various social media platforms, I then mostly used Facebook for friends; Twitter for silly posts; and Instagram for pics of M, food, and friends. I had under 300 Twitter followers who were mostly old high school/college friends and – while that’s great to have – I knew it wasn’t going to help the business side of my life. I was interested in the growth of my profession and my career (I still am) and had read enough articles to know that I needed to start engaging these awesome people I saw on Twitter and Instagram. I needed to start sharing industry and architecture-adjacent news I thought was cool. That last bit is the important part – I had to think there was value in what I was sharing.
To this day, I don’t share anything that I don’t find value in, and that’s how I make sure to provide value to my followers. Sometimes that means sifting through hundreds of articles I’ve saved in my Feedly curation (more on that in two blogs) just to find the right article about architecture to share. My followers can choose to check out the articles or ignore them, but I know that if they do – they’ll find something of value, which builds my trust with them. That is a part of my why: I want to keep learning and making this profession the best I can, which means sharing worthwhile content and helping fellow architects and industry peers learn too.
I’ll share more in an upcoming blog about my curation process and how I decide when to share what.
Be you, part two
This is a scarier step because it makes you vulnerable, but you have to interact with those people you respect and who are doing cool stuff. When I first started interacting with Bob, Marica, Mark, the Archispeak guys, Rusty, Jeff, etc – I was scared out of my mind. What value could I even begin to bring to the conversation? But I asked questions, said hi, invested time, and offered up the young architect’s point of view.
Mostly I asked A LOT of questions. And here’s the thing – because they live into their why and want to see the profession continue to grow, they engage(d) back. They helped (and still help) me learn. And two years later, I count them among my greatest of friends and mentors. I embraced the vulnerability of asking what might seem like a dumb question to them – because sometimes that’s the only way to grow. I knew that if I wanted to grow, I had to lean into that.
The social media takeaway
In the coming weeks, I’m going to outline the social media platforms I use in specific, what benefit they brought me, and how they can help you. In the meantime, think about why you do what you do. What do you hope to achieve this year? 5 years from now? In your overall career? The platforms will mold, adapt, grow, and change after months and years, but if you know why you do what you do, you will be able to more easily adapt with them and keep growing too. If you aren’t sure what your why is or want to hone in on it, I *highly* suggest this book from Simon Sinek, Start With Why. If you want to get a taste of it, watch this TED talk. The book link will be waiting here for you when you’re done. It will be some of the best money you’ve spent in a while.
Editorial Note: This article is the first in a series of three published by the author.
See the article in its original format
Read Part 2
Read Part 3
Go back to July 2016 CRAN Chronicle