What to write about on LinkedIn - LinkedIn Tutorial

- We all fall into a pattern of believing that things that we know about, everyone knows about, that there's nothing that you're uniquely qualified to talk about. That is 100% not true, you have unique insights, you have understanding, you have lessons that you've learned from your unique career that are worth sharing with the world. And you've got to feel comfortable with the idea that it's worth getting those out on paper. How do you know what to write about? There are certain things that I think really help you understand what it is that you want to talk about. What are the kind of things, when you meet with someone for the first time and you're talking to them about what you do, what are the stories, the anecdotes that you share that hook people? That make them want to stay with you rather than looking over your shoulder to go connect with someone else in the room? What is it that you are struggling with today? Think about the things that you struggle with day to day at work, that you've struggled with in the past, that you hear colleagues struggling with, when you talk about overcoming adversity or, and no matter how big the adversity is, it could be very small trials and tribulations, it could be really large, difficult, hairy problems. Whatever it is, when you talk about problems, when you talk about overcoming certain things people like hearing that. They like to know that there are solutions or they like hearing how you think. So think through the kind of issues that you're dealing with every day. All of those are topics. When I talk to people and they talk about, well, what am I going to write about? One of the things I do is say, what are you working on right now? What's going on that you're really struggling with? And they'll come through with a couple different answers. Oh, I'm having trouble hiring someone. I'm organizing my team and I don't understand, I have a problem person, I'm trying to figure out where to move them to. All of those are topics for posts. Or why did you quit your last job? Someone gives you an example of why they quit, that's a topic. There are all kinds of things that happen, every one of those is something that you could be writing about. For example, I'm thinking about writing an article right now. One of the things that comes up constantly when I talk to people about my day to day work is what's it like working inside of LinkedIn? And I talk about the incredible process it's been for me to learn how to communicate with engineers. And learning the dealing with engineers is different than the journalists I used to work with. And the difficulties and the pleasures of learning an entirely new language. I think it's going to be a great post, I think it's a post that's going to reach a couple audiences I really want to hit. People who I want to hire, understand what life is like inside of LinkedIn. I think it's an important piece for understanding where the world is going as technology infuses more and more of what we do. And I love to hear the conversation. I want to hear people give their own stories about learning to talk to people from different walks of life. So that's an example of what I might want to write about. For you, think about the topics that you discuss every day, that you talk to your husband or wife about, that you talk about at parties. Make a list of all the things that you might want to write about and I guarantee you you're going to come up with three or four sure-fire winners that you can start with.