When our client Julian John used social media (in this case LinkedIn) to spread his message to decision makers and directors within his network, things quickly escalated. Julian is a wonderful communicator – making our job at Front Door Communications a lot easier – but he also works in disability inclusion, which can be a challenging message to get across to press, but here Julian describes how a simple, honest and genuine social media post really can help you stand out from the crowd.
Having a presence on social media seems to be a business essential these days, but to what end? It can be quite hard to quantify the results, although I’ve certainly had some engagement from both LinkedIn and Twitter in the past, so I take the time to post every now and again – on a whim.
That said whim led me to post on LinkedIn as an opportunity to highlight the work Delsion does to support organisations to be more inclusive and also how Delsion started – which is a story in its own right.
So, I posted the following:
I’ve put very similar posts on LinkedIn previously and normally engage between 1000 – 2000 people which is a great way to highlight what we do as an organisation. So, I pressed publish on the post, played with the kids, watched some telly and went to bed and thought nothing more of it.
I was in the office the next day and astounded to see that the post had reached nearly 250,000 people. Ten days on and it reached over 22 million views. It has now generated over 8000 connection requests and nearly 10,000 people have posted comments.
LinkedIn handily provides some analysis for each post which shows us that:
- Between 30,000 and 150,000 from each of the following organisations have read the post: EY, Accenture, IBM, PwC, Deloitts, Amazon, HSBC and Microsoft.
- Predictably over 1 million people involved in Sales have seen it but also 350,000 executive directors and the same number of project managers as well.
- Geographically the top hits are London and New York with around 450,000 views from each city and additionally 200,000 were from San Francisco.
With regards to hitting the right people in the right organisation in the right location, I genuinely couldn’t have wished for more.
Timewise it has been intensive but the connections, conversations and opportunities have all definitely been worth it and as a platform to promote Delsion and what we do is priceless.
Why did the post go viral? That’s the big question. The feedback has been that it was succinct, had a human interest element but mostly because people felt it was genuine and sincere.
What it also is for me is an indication of the far reaching interest that people have around diversity and inclusion as individuals and organisations.
The outcomes are obviously the clear opportunities but also our increased reach through social media and its now case of making the most of our increased profile as it is now.
All in all, it’s been a welcome if surprising couple of weeks. What’s the chances of doing it again?
I reckon it is about 22 million to one.
About the author
Julian John is the founder and Managing Director of Delsion. After an acquired brain injury left him having to learn to stand, walk and talk again over a decade ago, Julian now helps businesses regionally and across the UK to be more inclusive in the workplace through Delsion, a people and development consultancy.
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