You have /5 articles left.
Sign up for a free account or log in.
There are more than 575 million people on LinkedIn. It's not the biggest social network, but it's definitely one of the most important channels for digital engagement. As the world's leading platform for career development and professional connections, LinkedIn fluency is a foundational aspect of employability and social networking.
It's no secret that I'm a huge fan of LinkedIn. The social network site/app with a professional bent was a major element in the construction of my UK higher education consulting work. LinkedIn was (and is) a conduit for learning, sharing, and leadership.
I've always shared thoughts, links, ideas, etc. on LinkedIn. It's part of my daily set of channels for engagement and learning. I'm literally on LinkedIn at minimum, 5 days a week.
Recently, I've seen huge increases in the amount of engagement on LinkedIn feed posts. Here, in no particular order, are some of my top LinkedIn posts (with a bit of extra commentary):
41 likes, 13 comments, 6,065 views: Apologies to those who work at stellar alumni association/relations/development shops, but this post came out of another poor experience with an alumni association. Maybe I've just had bad luck with certain alumni-focused departments, but there seems to be far too much focus on getting 'old money' or 'major gifts' rather than focusing on a broader view of what alumni can offer a university in terms of value, leadership, and influence.
41 likes, 8 comments, 7,330 views: A friend of mine is taking a big leap, leaving a full-time university job, and pursuing a career in consulting. I realize that a lot of my friends have an entrepreneurial spirit and often do end up in consulting. However, it says so much about the state of compensation at universities when you see a salary range for a soon-to-be-vacated job that is woefully low for the type of work that's being done. I get that there are a lot of intangibles when it comes to salary and university benefits, but it sometimes feels like an arms race is taking place: mountains of credentials and extremely low monetary compensation. That can't be a good thing.
92 likes, 9 comments, 5,517 views: A lot of universities have internal communications personnel. However, they seem to be focused exclusively on staff/admin/academics. Who is thinking about internal messaging as it relates to current students? Everyone says that students are "bad at email," but no one is actually doing something about why this is "a thing" at most institutions. It's such a fixable challenge, but it requires an awareness that it isn't the fault of students.
109 likes, 55 comments, 16,211 views: Literally the most-viewed post I've ever shared on LinkedIn took seconds to create. It was a thought based off of an experience from a higher education conference. The comments are all over the place as people interrupt the gist of this post as it relates to their own university website circumstance. This particular update was intentionally vague because I didn't want to mention a specific place. However, if your university website isn't mapping to the context/goals/outcomes/challenges of your institution, it will actually do more damage than good. Plus, a 'bad university website' often mirrors organizational culture issues.
50 likes, 5 comments, 4,792 views: People pay attention when universities engage in less than friendly banter with one another....especially when it happens on social media.
38 likes, 2 comments, 2,246 views: A 'replay' of one of my tweets from 2017 that was essentially a remix of a blog post from 2015, this LinkedIn update has proven to be quite 'likable.' I guess the more things change, the more they stay the same. People always ask me what needs to change in order for an organization to improve their digital engagement efforts and the answer is always the same: organizational culture improvements and better leadership.
By the way, are we connected on LinkedIn?
Do you tweet? Let's connect. Follow me on Twitter.
