A day on LinkedIn — where to begin?
I joined the circus.
Well, I guess it was inevitable. Even though pouring your soul and your “authentic self” on LinkedIn or any other social media channel makes me cringe quite hard, apparently this is now part of the whole “personal branding” trend that’s been ruining our off-screen lives so here I go.
As part of my current role, I spend 50% of my time on LinkedIn and I never fail to entertain myself while doing so. As I scroll down my fellow graduates or Covid graduates -as I’d like to call us- who are complaining about being ghosted by recruiters, the random dude who is so in love with his company he needs to post 3 times a week about it and the visionary marketeer who is challenging the algorithm with their content, I take another sip from my coffee, I smile and I get on with my life.
Honestly, adding up to the crazy pool of content out there with some replicas and copy-paste wisdom on life is not how I wish to contribute. I don’t think I’d be any good at that. However, I always wanted to blog about my experiences, day-to-day reflections and I believe that having set up a Medium account, I achieved 50% of my goal.
Of course, I do have my own agenda with this. In my own time, I love reading things that make my heart a little warmer and leave me with a smile, thinking “yeah, I feel that”. That is the ultimate goal for the little blogging attempt I have going on. To connect. Not in a cheesy way, but to really feel that we are not as alone as we think we are. If you will, I will be the LinkedIn user who is rich in emotions and playfully forces you to reflect a quick second while you take a sip from your coffee, smile and get on with your life. Favour returned. Mission accomplished.
Coming back to my point, self-branding is difficult for me. Each time I am posting something, the red line I am drawing myself is to not feel like I am faking in my communication. If you are someone who doesn’t like to use social media to engage with people and you feel like you are the early millennial or the analogue Gen Z who is resisting the new advancements on how we use social media, you might understand where I stand. Physical interaction is a psychological need and I don’t think anyone would argue with that. However, if your world is turning into an assembly of fully remote components, you find a way to survive.
You might as well play with it a little and produce something that isn’t causing people more anxiety when they check your feed.
Maybe next time I will add more photos and balloons here, but I am kind of tired, and I am learning not to be a perfectionist so we’ll start with this for now.
I do admit that I edited this article couple of times thinking that my future employers will judge me on the language I use, the judgments I make but that might as well be the natural selection I am looking for to avoid anxiety loaded interviews in the future.
Whatever you are doing right now, remember to drink some water.
Peace and love,
Yaprak
