What do you look for while reading LinkedIn posts?
I look for insights, lessons, ideas and other information that can make me a better professional and that is what I think can make it worth spending precious time on the app and other social media platforms.
It doesn’t matter if it seems some individuals and organizations are rightfully using the platform to blow their trumpets and promote their brands, what’s important is that there are useful takeaways from their posts as long as they are telling the whole truth about their success stories and not making false claims.
One way to guarantee getting the desired valuable nuggets is to follow and engage with the people and organizations you can learn from. LinkedIn will also suggest to you those with similar interests based on your profile and other details.
Don’t rush through the posts you want to learn from. Read slowly and note the key points that explain how the individual or organization accomplished what is being written about.
If any line in the post reminds you of something you should have done or can do thereafter, decide on what you can do immediately and have a realistic timeline.
Don’t hesitate to comment on the posts to express your feelings or what you gained from the post if you want to. Even if you disagree with any point in the post, say so politely.
Two examples of valuable posts I learnt from and will apply the lessons in the new year are the following:
From Joshua Oluwafemi‘s end-of-year appreciation post of the great work done by his amazing team at Dataphyte, the point about prioritising #productdevelopmet struck me as one thing we need to do at @Media Career Development Network in the new year to diversify our operations and be more relevant in the media industry.
I’m already learning a bit about News Product Development and the achievements of the Dataphyte team are indicative of how well we can do in the new year if we give more attention to key projects.
Secondly, the valedictory post by Fikayo Idowu on his last day at Tech Cabal also got me thinking of how we can step up producing insightful special reports on the media industry.
READ MORE: Media skills money-earning opportunities (1)
In one year of joining the organization, Idowu wrote about being part of the team that has produced and implemented seven special reports and projects with two more to be published soon.
At Media Career, we are preparing to publish our annual Nigeria Media Capacity Development Report which documents details and data on many capacity development programmes implemented by Media NGOs, Institutions and others in the country and beyond.
Reading Idowu’s post has inspired me to get our team to think of more special reports we can produce in the new year for journalists and media professionals, including media students.
I thank Joshua, Idowu and many others who take the time to share valuable posts on LinkedIn which is supposed to be more of a learning and networking platform than other social media.