Too successful for social media? Really?

Some believe that posting nothing for days on social media functions as a symbol of professional success. You didn’t write one single comment, share one single vision with or ask for one single piece of advice from the large and exciting community opened to greet you at the click of a button? “Perfect! That means you were all wrapped up in doing everything else to ever bother yourself with such a nonsense.”

Hold it right there! Tony Robbins, Bill Gates or Elon Musk would beg to differ. And frankly speaking, so would little entrepreneur me. Care to find out why? You´re in luck! I just might have come upon the stories and numbers to prove my point. So buckle up and off we go!

The clock strikes 10 AM on the last Saturday morning of February 2018. This breakfast seems to be redolent of the beautiful memories awaken by a long conversation with a good old friend back in London and the calmness of a promise I make to myself. Which exactly? To stay away from my laptop…at least on the weekend.

Away from my laptop, yet not away from my phone. And certainly not away from the one social media miracle that Triangela owes many palpable partnerships to. Its name? LinkedIn.

Yes, be it through the heavy storms of project management, or the challenging hikes of system development, the team at Triangela is never too busy to read an inspirational post, like and support the ideas one step away from revolutionizing one industry after another or celebrate the milestones of our journey with a group of virtual friends. Who do we have to thank for all that reach? Us personally, to LinkedIn and Instagram.

As for “the effort or time we waste” given our social media interaction, well… it isn’t much, it is totally worthwhile, and it surely doesn’t stand in the way of our growth. At the end of the day all it takes is one tiny labour for a truckload of reward. Which?

Allow me to enumerate: the serendipity to have the world listening and speaking back to you; the good feeling imbedded in a “thank you” from a person you have never met; the satisfaction cosying up into the pit of your stomach when you realize how all people react similarly to a visual or written message despite the geographical distances between them. Now whose time is that precious to let all those experiences slip away?

Does the above sound too sweet and metaphoric for your taste? Fine! Let´s dive into the facts.

November 2017. A fervent hunt for the internship program that would tailor her career in finance brings Akosua Boadi-Agyemang into the arena of “dreams come true”.

Here, creative enough to transform a LinkedIn post into a concise job application and brave enough to tag Jeff Weiner in a short message of gratitude, Akosua raises the attention of a whole network of managers and CEOs. Among them, none other than Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

Months later the interviews are passed with flying colours and the deal is sealed. Akosua will officially join Microsoft starting summer 2018. As for her boldness, though ingenious, one can’t help but wonder: hadn’t it been for that drop of LinkedIn touch, would it still have generated an equivalent result? And if so, when?

You might imagine that our young professional’s wonder happens only once in a blue moon. Think again for Akosua´s wonder has been around for longer than you and I would incipiently suppose. In an article signed Hiranya Fernando Careerly for Business Insider, by March 2014 the share of recruiters using social media, in particular LinkedIn, to detect and attract talent had expanded to 94 %.

With more than 9 in 10 international recruiters actively looking for a candidate “surprisingly” on LinkedIn, it´s hard to believe you should get busier somewhere else.

But what if it isn’t a job that you are after? Oh boy…don’t I have two stories for you.

November 2017. 5 000 miles away and much much Northern off the coast of Miami Florida, somewhere in Stockholm Sweden, your friend and mine Robert, Triangela´s CEO, gets a gift box with a blue ribbon on top. Inside? An offer. The subject? A collaboration. The channel of distribution? You guessed right: none other than good old LinkedIn.

December 2017. The Christmas tree is decorated, the pies await in the oven patient, grown and aromatic and a new snow mulls over the prospective of breaking through the clouds once again. Amiss the slow-paced music from a laptop, a phone chants with a high-pitched tone of its own. Looks like Triangela has gotten an e-mail.

The sender? Nobody we know (at the moment). The business proposal? A charm. Why us? Six words and a pattern: an Instagram post about our portfolio. Hence, for one reason or the other, seems like social media puts us straight on the radar.

Needless to mention the chemistry would be instant two out of two times. Needless to reemphasize how grateful we are to LinkedIn and Instagram for bringing us together with the people we might have never met otherwise.

So tell me. Are you still too successful or too busy for your social media profile now?