Ideas for Your Online Presence Before, During, and After Your Talk or Presentation
The best time to share about your upcoming talk or presentation is before it happens. Some people find that their most engaged post on social media is announcing that you’ve submitted your abstract to speak (or your publication). People are excited by the possibility and what you care about. Telling your story of your upcoming speaking engagement is a great way to do that.
Sharing on social media can start early, but I don’t want you to think it’s the only way to help your online presence and the people coming to your talk. You’re going to explore many ideas today, but you don’t have to try all of them. I hope that there’s at least one idea that resonates with you and you’d feel comfortable trying it yourself.
When you submit an abstract for or are invited to speak
Add your website URL and social media handle to your bio. This will help people find you before, during, and after your presentation.
I’ve just submitted an abstract to speak at…
Announce that you’ve submitted – If you’ve been invited to speak, a good time to share on social media is when you’ve agreed or committed to that engagement. It’s great to add your social media handle and a link to your personal academic website if you have one, along with your bio. You might add that information to your CV.
Connect with people before you go
Once your talk is confirmed, you can add it to your website and you might take time to connect with your fellow panelists or event organizers before the event.
Conference Hashtag
If there is one, you can check out the conference hashtag and make plans with people who will also be at the event that you want to see, especially if you live in different cities or countries.
Business cards
If you have a business card, add your social media handle and website there is a good idea.
Share your talk on social media
When you’re sharing your talk on social media, people need more information than you expect. They need to know what your talk is about, when your talk is to know if they can attend, what the event is, and any link where they can learn more information. This is something you can share on any social media platform or across all your platforms.
Some professors hesitate to share their upcoming talk on Facebook where they may have a more personal audience, but these people are excited by what you care about when it comes to your research and how you choose to spend your energy. You might include , on all social media posts, any definition or story that helps people better understand why this talk or research matters to you.
Tag people or organizations that are related to your talk or event.
The conference hashtag can be added to your post about your talk but you can also add a hashtag that relates to the topic of what you are presenting on.
You can share the post about your talk before, during or after the event.
Create a graphic or infographic
If you create a graphic or share an image to go with your talk, a great resource is Writing image Descriptions on Accessible Social – which helps you create social media posts accessible for people with disabilities.
The next ideas are for things you can do while the event is happening.
Check out the conference hashtag, again
If you checked out the event hashtag, you might find that people weren’t using it. Once the event starts, you can start using the conference hashtag and check it out! See if there is a conversation you want to be part of, or an event you want to check out.
Be open about your online presence
The best thing you can do for your online presence while at an in person event, is to be open that you have a website or that you’re on social media.
Help people find and connect with you
You can make this easier for people by making a QR code that helps people go to your website, have this info on a business card, create a hand out with information or resource about your talk (that includes people need to your online presence) , or use an end slide in your presentation to help people connect with you after the event is over.
Resources to take home and share
When you create a resource like a handout or links /slides to share, that can go on your personal academic website. They can also be shared on social media using that conference hashtag to help people find this resource that you’ve already taken the time to gather.
Will this be recorded?
Ask if there is going to be a recording. Sometimes, there isn’t an official recording but you can ask if you can record yourself.
Stay connected once you’re gone
Connect with people you meet or you like and admire on social media, while at the conference. Helps others be more likely to learn about you.
It’s okay if you don’t do any of that too
I have never had time for any of that at conferences, personally. In person events can be overwhelming for me as an introvert. Because of that, I don’t have the brain capacity to remember things like take a photo, much less record some videos.
Anything I just talked about – some of those things can be prepped in advance others you don’t have to do live (you can do afterward)
Next are ideas you can do after your presentation or talk is over.
Whether there was a recording of your talk or not, you could always record your talk and slides using zoom, then post the video to your website or social media. There are options to share the full version of your talk, if you like to. You can just share the title slide, or full text version of the talk, or even the full slides.
Connect with people when you’re back at home
If you didn’t connect with people during the event, sometimes connecting AFTER the event is easier. You can look at the conference hashtag. Look through the business cards you collected. See the conference program and look at the bios to see who is on social media.
Create and/or share resources
If you didn’t have resources to share at your talk, if there are things you want people to know after the fact, you can create a graphic or handout that is shareable on social media or a page on your website.
Celebrate other people
While you can post about your own talk, you can also post about your panel and thank the conference and event organizers. If you want to participate in the conference community but not want to talk about your own talk, you can celebrate others instead. It’s a great opportunity for PIs to celebrate their lab members or grad students who are at the event. There are so many ways to celebrate people instead of yourself, if that feels comfortable or more exciting for you.
These don’t have to be professional shots. A messy desk shot or photo of you working on your slides or going over your notes on the plane. Something that feels quick or easy to you.
Take pictures during the event
Snap a photo of things you see, people you meet, friends you catch up with. Ask someone to take photos of you while you’re speaking or pose at the conference.
You could record a video of your talk
This can be before, during, or after the event.
You can record a video about your talk
Record a short video introducing your talk and the main takeaways. This video is especially for people who couldn’t be there live for your presentation.
Record some b-roll
If you like video, record b-roll video. Take a sip of coffee, getting ready to speak, short travel clips, video of fellow panelists or friends. These might be put into a longer video or Instagram reel.
But these might feel like too much – so even though they are fun ideas, don’t be stressed if you do none of them.
Dr. Andrea Rexilius joins me on The Social Academic to talk about her new edited anthology, We Can See Into Another Place: Mile-High Writers on Social Justice (The Bookies Press and Bower House 2024). This innovative, multi-genre anthology brings together writers and faculty from the Mile-High MFA Program at Regis University in Colorado.
In this featured interview, Dr. Andrea Rexilius joins me to talk about social justice, radical imagination, and the power of storytelling. Read Andrea’s bio.
In this interview
Meet Andrea
Jennifer: Hello everyone. Welcome to The Social Academic. This is Jennifer van Alstyne and we are right after Election Day [USA]. So there are a lot of feelings and emotions out there. And even though this episode isn’t gonna air for a little while, the topic we are talking about today is social justice.
Andrea: Sure. Thank you Jennifer. Good to see you. I am a professor and writer living in Denver, Colorado, teaching at Regis University in the Mile-High MFA and Creative Writing Program. I think that’s all I’ll say.
Jennifer: Great. I’m curious because you’ve reached out to me about this episode and I’m wondering what prompted this anthology? What made you decide to bring together these faculty, these writers from the Mile-High program together into one collection?
Andrea: Well, they’re such interesting writers. They’re varied in terms of their genre, their aesthetic, which is also representative of the program that they were all teaching in. But a lot of them, there’s about 20, 21 of them in the anthology, and they don’t all always overlap. So I wanted to kind of, since they’re all part of that same conversation, teaching similar students working with the Mile-High MFA program at various times over the last nine years. I just wanted to put them a little bit more in conversation with each other, especially some of them that hadn’t crossed paths before, just to celebrate all of them together and share their work with, I think some of them probably looked each other up, but just to share their work with one another and with the public, with everybody else, because there’s just tremendous writing coming from all of them.
Jennifer: Yeah, the collection was tremendous and emotional and almost fraught with language that really pulls you in.
I’m curious, the anthology brings together a lot of genres, like multi-genre anthology. What made anthology and book the right format for sharing these stories?
Andrea: Yeah, I think in terms of anthology, it was kind of unusual to gather a kind of multi-genre format for an anthology. They’re traditionally fiction or their creative nonfiction or their poetry. A lot of writers only maybe read in one of those genres. A lot readers only read in one of those genres. We also have a graphic narrative, a comic strip in here. We have some playwriting.
And so all of those different ways of kind of conveying ideas seemed interesting to gather into one publication and to sort of begin to maybe break down some of those barriers across genre. There’s more and more interest in hybrid writing and reading hybrid materials, but something that actually celebrates genre distinctions and also genre overlap seems like an important thing to sort of add to the literary conversation.
Jennifer: I felt like your essay at the start, the introduction was so powerful in terms of shaping, the openness and the hope and the tenuousness that writers can achieve through storytelling. I found myself transported into each one of those writer’s forms. It felt like I was jumping from poetry to play to that, the graphic one, it was just overwhelming in the sense that I hadn’t really considered so many voices on this subject in the genre-bending kind of format. It was a different kind of experience to me compared to other things that I’ve read about social justice that I’ve watched about social justice this year. And it felt more powerful because of that. Like the collective of voices and the difference in genre made it more meaningful and impactful for me.
Did you find that when you were putting together, the different sections, and the layout for the book?
Andrea: Yeah, absolutely. It was really interesting because initially what kind of bound the writers together was their overlapping relationship with the MFA program. But I also just wanted to create an artifact of that kind of archive. All of those voices that were part of that community at the Mile-High, which is still continuing on, but that’s the first nine years of it. And I didn’t have the theme so much in mind when I first started gathering things. I wasn’t sure, is this something I’m just going to make as a kind of PDF that I make available to the community? Or, am I going to try to seek out a publisher, and put it into the larger world?
Pretty early on I had begun gathering some things and in the process of gathering them, I started shopping around some local presses in the Colorado area to see if it might be something they’d be interested in. And as sort of a long answer to what you asked me. But as I was shifting into, “Okay, it’s actually gonna be published by a press, it’s going to be a book that is available to anybody. It’s not just sort of in-house community. I started noticing patterns in the early submissions. And that’s where the theme began to develop from.
Also, seeing like how some of the poems communicated with the fiction, just the little overlaps and detail that were coming in were really interesting. That’s how the [Young Adult] interview got in there as well. ‘Cause there were so many writers, like Stephen Dunn’s piece, Addie Tsai’s piece, Lori Ostlund’s piece, where they’re talking about experiences in high school or as young adults and how writing impacted them, why they became writers and avid readers, and what their experiences to were with reading. They weren’t always delightful.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Andrea: So that started to kind of naturally grow out of the process of gathering those submissions.
Jennifer: I’m curious, who do you feel should really read this book? Who should go out and buy a copy or buy it for someone that they know or love?
Andrea: I mean, on the day that we’re recording this, I would say everybody should go read this book. I mean there’s many different representations and iterations of what we mean by social justice in the book, you know? It speaks to social economic stuff. It’s speaking to race relations, all kinds of different power dynamics speaking to neurological difference, the environments. It’s just a wide swath of what we think about when we are collectively, socially trying to enact justice for ourselves and our daily lives. But it also, like, the thing that I think about when I come to social justice is the idea of ‘radical imagination.’ And the idea that the mind, the interior, I quote Emily Dickinson at the beginning of the book, I love, I’m a poet, so I’m always referencing her, but she has a line, ‘The brain is wider than the sky.’ So this idea that like the mental space, the interior space is larger than this external world. It can imagine anything.
So when it feels like something, when possibilities are shutting down, I think the most powerful thing you can do is just remember that you have your own imagination. You can envision a different way forward. You can still be disappointed. You know we still have all of our emotions in relation to these things, but being able to maintain and hang onto that hope and awareness that like it’s always yours. It’s always in you. You always have that power of the interior and the mind to think differently than what the external world might be kind of crushing you into thinking and feeling and being.
Jennifer: Ooh, that was powerful. I needed to hear that too. I’m like crying. I’m like, what do I have tissues near me? And I don’t. But what I really gravitated toward from what you said is the word, ‘hope.’ Like the imagination can create hope. It can create futures that we haven’t experienced or thought of. It can be world opening. How do you hope this book can inform or provide an entrance into some kind of change or transformation?
Andrea: Yeah, that’s a good question. I mean, I’m gonna quote a couple things and then talk about the final section of the book.
Jennifer: I love that
Andrea: My frameworks at Emily Dickinson again, “I dwell in possibility” because I think so much of diminishment of hope is feeling that the possibilities are becoming fewer and fewer. But again, that idea of radical imagination, if we can imagine something different than what we are being told must happen, or that there’s this kind of non-linearity, there’s always a possibility for something to shift or to swerve. And the more we think toward that possibility, I think the more empowered we stay.
And then this Toni Morrison quote was so important in thinking about putting together this book. She says, “Don’t let anybody convince you this is the world is, and therefore must be, it must be the way it ought to be.” That speaks similarly, I think to the Emily Dickinson piece about possibility that nothing has to be any particular way. Sometimes it’s that particular way.
But knowing that we still have so much inside of us that can speak out, that can share our experiences, that can voice things that the dissent from the powers that be, I mean, hopefully we retain that powers. I mean, people go underground, they make zines. We get the word out in whatever way we need to. And right now there’s this book, the last section, we move into questions for the reader that kind of bring you into this state of reflection and get you in touch with your own ideas and imagination.
So, what would you like to give voice to? How do you survive and thrive when everything feels like it is on fire? That’s a great question for today.
Jennifer: Today’s the day for that one. Woo.
Andrea: And probably in the coming days and first of the year, that’ll be a great one to speak to. What is your hope for re-imagining of our societal and cultural future? What actions would help us move individually and or collectively toward that re-imagined future? So finding ways to bring those spaces, those radical imagination and those imaginings into external action, to starting small, making it grow larger, finding people to share your voice with who, who have similar thoughts and feelings, putting it in a book form, reading something where other people speak to that.
Jennifer: A lot of professors, faculty members are listening to this podcast. And I’m curious, is this a book that would fit well in like a classroom discussion? Is this something that can or should be taught?
Andrea: Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I think it would be great for high school, for college or book clubs for all kinds of reading groups because they’re part of the multi-genre aspect too. There’s something in it for everybody. If you’re not super into reading essays, there’s a comic. If you don’t love poetry, there’s short stories. If you aren’t into any of that, there are some interviews with why young adults, authors at the end.
There’s places for you to do your own thinking and writing and responding to whatever was in the book. It’s meant to be engaging in that way, to invite people to participate in the conversation of the book, and to add their own voice if they think something’s missing from it, if there’s something, that they wanna add, all of those openings are are there. And it would be great.
I think too, just thinking about in a classroom setting, thinking about how the different genres and pieces in here speak to these topics as well. What unique things happen formally in short story or poetry or essay. So yeah, thanks for asking that.
Jennifer: Now, as editor, maybe you don’t have like favorites, but I’m curious if you have one or two pieces you could share with us that especially faculty members might find a spark, or something that really draws them in.
Andrea: Yeah, I mean, you mentioned Steven Dunn and I think his piece in here is just absolutely brilliant. And he is speaking about his experiences in English class and then feeling left out of that conversation, feeling like it’s a conversation just for white people. He’s only reading stories written by white authors and is being told that his voice is incorrect, that he needs to correct his grammar, his way of being, his way of speaking. And I think that’s another thing like that this book demonstrates to some extent, through the genre, but also part of what we were all trying to do in the program together with students was just let every let people know like, you can be who you are.
So in order to be a good writer, you have to speak, you have to get in touch with what, who you actually are and what you actually want to say. And that’s when the writing becomes the most powerful. You shouldn’t be trying to conform your voice to anybody else’s. And I hear that in Steven’s piece and Addie Tsai’s piece.
There’s a lot of interesting reflecting in a lot of the pieces too: David Heska, Wanbli Weiden is writing this essay about his grandmother who was in a Native American boarding school that are infamous for, cultural obliteration and all kinds of horrific things. And she has this nostalgia for the boarding school.
He’s kind of reckoning with that, and sort of wondering why, answering why she might have that nostalgia in really interesting, complicated ways. And the ending of that piece I think really speaks to that reckoning with his grandmother’s state of mind and why she might have had that nostalgia and what other of nostalgia she had. I don’t wanna spoil the ending, but that’s one of my favorites because it.
Jennifer: I loved that piece.
Andrea: Yeah.
Jennifer: I’d be happy if you’d be open to reading something. That sounds great.
Andrea: I’ll read maybe a little bit from Steven’s piece that I was talking about. More beige. All right. I dunno what happens. Okay. It’s a snow day here. I usually am wearing bright colors, but I’m engaged. So this book to, or the piece from Steve Dunn, it’s from a book that he is working on called Travel With Nas, and he is co-writing it with a bunch of his friends and family members, which is, so it’s a collaborative project. He recently published another book, Tannery Bay, which he co-wrote with Katie Jean Shinkle. So that idea of sort of conversational collaborative writing comes through in his work in general too.
Jennifer: I love that.
Andrea: This is Intro / An Excerpt from Travel with Nas by Steven Dunn.
“I grew up in a small town in West Virginia: Kimball (population 500). I read a lot before going to middle school, but outside of textbooks and newspapers, I read only one book from the ages of 12-21. I’m a novelist now, a Creative Writing professor, and I write book reviews.
Reading only one book was partly an institutional fault, and partly my fault:
Partly my fault because I cared more about math painting and maps.
Partly an institutional fault because of poverty. And we were assigned only one little funky ass book throughout middle and high school, The Old Man and The Sea. We watched Of Mice and Men,Grapes of Wrath and Little Women. I hated English classes because they were mostly about correcting our language by prescribing us with ways to speak. We learned that the generations of language we celebrated in, cried in, analyzed with and joked in was wrong. And the books were about white people and white problems and white triumphs and white hopes and white dreams. So I was like, ‘Fuck English and literature and all that white bullshit.’ I was right and I was wrong.
I was wrong about English and literature because of course Black people have been writing literature about us, I just didn’t know shit about it, And them white folks ain’t care enough to teach it. I was right because I was listening to rap. And I was wrong because I was listening to rap.”
—Steven Dunn
Jennifer: Oh, Steven Dunn’s words are so powerful. I love that he’s interested in collective writing and also that he posts about the writing that he does on Facebook. So even if you’re not, the book’s not out yet, but like, I feel like I know a little bit more about Nas and about his process of writing it because he’s open to sharing it.
Online presence as an author
Jennifer: Actually, that kind of brings me into my next question. I’m curious about your online presence as an author. What’s it like to be a faculty member and a writer, and just like a person who your personality is like quite vivacious in the sense that it’s so memorable. How do you craft all of that online and show kind of your personality when you are in online spaces?
Andrea: Oh, wow. That’s a great question. I’m pretty introverted. Pretty like, I feel like it’s hard to know how that comes across. But I think of my social media, the way I curate it, because we’re all sort of curating it to some extent. I’m trying to maybe express my academic self on there, posting about books, about readings, sharing events with students, trying to kind of build that community with the MFA students and everybody in the Front Range, bringing different communities that I’m part of together. I’m teaching at Lighthouse Writer’s Workshop, a community creative writing place, and also at a Regis University. So sort of colliding some of those folks at times. And then I have my sort of like more artsy poetic life where I am doing some volunteer classes at this farm in Lafayette [Colorado] that some of my friends run.
Jennifer: Really?
Andrea: They have a little, they have a farm share. It’s called Community Farm
Jennifer: That’s so cool.
Andrea: And there’s an art lab. So I had a former student of mine donated a bunch of arts supplies, and so it’s just overfilling with art supplies. So I’ve been hosting like collage and mask making parties there.
Jennifer: Ugh, that’s amazing. Mask making parties. I’m so jealous. So Dr. Rexilius and I know each other from Naropa University at the Jack Kerouac School back when I was in my MFA program. So I’m so excited we’re having this conversation now, but I am super jealous of these art classes. That sounds so fun. And I love What I see from you on social media is a lot of your artistic side. Like I remember your moth costume, your masks. Like I love seeing that part of who you are in online spaces for sure. What about as an author, we talked about like what you do for your community.
Andrea: Right. Right.
Jennifer: What’s it like talking about yourself as an author online? That one’s really fun [Andrea holds a mask to her face].
Andrea: Talking about myself as an author, I probably should do more of that because I tend to keep my process pretty low key. I don’t share about my writing process as much. I share more about the end result. I might share more about my creative process. I share more of the kind of masks and art making that I’m doing visual art making.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Andrea: But if I have something finished published, then I tend, I’ll share that.
Jennifer: Nice.
Andrea: Yeah. But I like to keep my process a little bit more to myself because I like to have it untouched by other opinions.
Jennifer: Oh, I’m so glad you shared that. That’s a really nice perspective. It’s not so much as private as protecting it almost.
Andrea: Yeah.
Jennifer: Like protecting your process. That’s beautiful. Oh, thank you for sharing that with me. I’m curious, is there anything you really dislike about social media or about being online?
Andrea: I don’t like social media.
Jennifer: You don’t like it at all? That’s totally fine.
Andrea: When you asked, I was like, ‘oh!’ I just panicked. I was like, do I have a presence? I do because I’m the Director of this program, I have a presence to be online for that. I do have different sort of pages that I manage. So different hats that I put on. I post more of the artsy personal stuff on my own page. That’s me. But it also, part of me is that community aspect. And then I have some program specific pages where, it’s maybe a little more professional or like posting, sharing work by the authors, in this collection sharing student work. As much as I know if people tell me about it, but it’s fine.
Jennifer: That’s always part of the process.
Andrea: Yeah. I don’t wanna… I try not to spend a lot of time scrolling on social media.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Andrea: But yeah, I guess I like, the part of it that I do like is it does connect so many aspects of my world over the years that otherwise would have, many of them I think would have, disappeared from my life entirely. Like friendships in high school, things like that. And it is really nice to sort of just see what people are up to. Even if I’m somebody that I was best friends with when I was 16 or something just to see, get a glimpse of their life.
Jennifer: I saw a childhood friend of mine who I haven’t talked to in, oh my gosh, a couple decades maybe, just had a child. And I was so touched for her, like we don’t talk, but it still felt meaningful to me. So you don’t like social media and you have actually a strong online presence compared to a lot of faculty members because you’re wanting to be part of that community and wanting to bring together communities as well. That’s really interesting.
Andrea: Yeah, I always think if I didn’t have this job, I would leave Facebook, but I’m still there.
Jennifer: Oh, that’s interesting. Yeah. You’re still there. That’s true. Well, you gotta have somewhere to share your masks.
Andrea: That’s right. Yeah. I might keep it just to share the masks. I say I would leave, but I probably just share weirder things.
Jennifer: Right, a little bit leaning more into your personality. Exactly.
Jennifer: Now academics who I’d say don’t consider themselves writers are listening to this, and I want them to go out and buy your book. I’m also curious, like if they are interested in leaning into more social justice lenses or social justice audiences, even for their writing. Is there somewhere you recommend they start? Maybe if this is their first time leaning into that area? I’d say they’re academics who maybe don’t consider themselves writers, even though they do quite a bit of writing.
Andrea: Well, there’s lots of amazing literary conferences of all sizes and topics and themes. There’s a couple of things that I would note. Like in Denver, there’s a really great conference that The Word Storytelling, A Sanctuary runs. They have a conference called Margins. And so it’s an audience primarily of people of color who are writers. Talking about all types of different things. Some of that overlaps social justice. And I think that idea, radical imagination too, is this sort of holding equally everybody’s voice and making space for everybody’s voice to be heard. And maybe even making more space for the voices that are typically more marginalized. So that place would be a good place to start. There’s also a website called Writing the Other that is for writers and thinking about the publishing industry and how to, thinking about representation, appropriation, those kinds of issues, and how to navigate those as writers which I think also relates writers, academics, social justice, kind of entwines with all of those things. And then looking at this anthology has so many amazing authors in it. You can read any of them. Read interviews by them. They’re on podcasts. They’re doing online interviews. They have amazing things to say creatively, critically, academically. So there’s 20 people right there who have your back and can, who are also really open and friendly and up for answering questions. I shouldn’t speak for all of them, but reach out, see if they’re willing to engage. They definitely do a lot of them do classroom visits. They are used to sort of doing interviews and podcasts and things like that too.
Jennifer: Oh, that is so cool. I want everyone to go out and get your copy of We Can See Into Another Place. This is an important anthology, especially for academics like you. Oh, it made big difference when I read it, and I hope it does for you as well. Andrea, is there anything else that you’d like to touch on, talk about before we wrap up today?
Andrea: I think we got everything. Thank you so much for having me. It was really lovely to see you again and have this conversation with you.
Jennifer: Oh, I’m so excited to share your book with everyone and to feature you on The Social Academic. Thank you so much.
Dr. Andrea Rexilius is the author of Sister Urn (Sidebrow, 2019), New Organism: Essais (Letter Machine, 2014), Half of What They Carried Flew Away (Letter Machine, 2012), and To Be Human Is To Be A Conversation (Rescue Press, 2011), as well as the chapbooks, Séance (Coconut Books, 2014), To Be Human (Horseless Press, 2010), and Afterworld (above/ground press, 2020).
She earned an MFA in Poetry from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2005), and a PhD in Literature & Creative Writing from the University of Denver (2010). Andrea is the program director for Regis University’s Mile-High MFA in Creative Writing. She also teaches in the Poetry Collective at Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver, Colorado.
Introducing Dr. Monica Cox, professor and change maker for equity in the workplace
Jennifer: I’m so excited to feature Dr. Monica Cox, a professor, author, and change maker. Monica, thanks so much for coming today to talk about your new book Never Defeated: Nine Lessons from the Workplace Front Lines. I wanted to be sure to get that right.
Monica: It’s okay. That’s fine. It’s very long. So you did a great job. Thank you. So great to be here and to meet you in person, kind of.
Jennifer: Yeah. I know we’ve been connected on social media for a while and I’ve been following your amazing work, but I’m so excited to introduce you to The Social Academic community. Would you mind telling people a little bit about yourself?
Monica: Sure, sure. So I am of course Dr. Monica Cox. I am an academic and a professor, an engineering education professor. I’m also a former administrator and I am an entrepreneur who is the CEO and founder of STEMinent, LLC, which offers a variety of offerings that have an umbrella of helping people to emerge whole and bold and strong in the workplace, or whichever environment they so choose. So that’s me in a nutshell.
Jennifer: Bold and strong. I love it. I love it.
Monica: Yeah, thank you.
Writing Never Defeated
Jennifer: Tell me, What prompted you to write Never Defeated? This is such a powerful book. What, what made you know that it had to be out in the world?
Monica: Okay, so there’s the business answer and then there’s kind of the other heart related answer.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Monica: So I would say from a business perspective, I have a Stop Playing Diversity brand, which is based on just my commitment to authentic diversity, equity, and inclusion. And the quick part of that story is that when I was hired in my most recent organization, I told them not to hire me if they were playing diversity. And of course, they didn’t know what that meant. But over time I realized that a lot of the things that I needed to be successful in that workplace as a black woman administrator just, they weren’t there. And I decided to trademark Stop Playing Diversity, and that meant that I wanted to have guides coaching the business arm, and I wanted to write a series of books. So Never Defeated is one of the books that I’m gonna write as part of the Stop Playing Diversity brand and the trademark for the business. Amazing. So, like I said, that’s the business part.
Monica: The personal part is that I went through hell at work. It was a mess. And there’s a quote in the book where I talk about a blueprint and I wished I had a blueprint before I started this experience. But I always said, sometimes you have to be the blueprint. And as I was learning and documenting what was going on, I would look at tweets and kind of just record the tweets. And I wrote essays based on the things that were resonating with people on social media. So that is the heart part of this, where it’s my story where it also is informed from the voices of people who’ve gone through situations very similar to mine. And as you know about social media, there was also the upheaval with Twitter/X. And I thought, if it goes away, what about all of that information, all of those conversations. And this book is kind of the way for me to almost take ownership, to take back some of the valuable conversations and resources that came out of a really good time for me on social media. That was the long story.
Jennifer: Ohh! And a beautiful one that really touched my heart. So I hear what you mean when you say the heart side of, of your reasons for writing this very important book. Never Defeated is so powerful because it reads as authentic, it reads like you’re talking to me. And I think that’s what made me pick it up and not put it down until I finished.
Monica: Thank you.
Jennifer: I mean, I was like walking around the house with it, trying to make sure that I got all of these words in because, you know, sometimes when we see things on Twitter, it does make a meaningful difference in our lives. But seeing all of it at once, like being able to read your words, it just, it was, it was quite meaningful for me. I really appreciated it. Yeah.
Monica: Thank you. And I’ll say something really quickly about it, even this morning, my husband was telling me that someone was reading it and the words were powerful. So I thank you for this. It is still kind of difficult for me to process all of it because I’m also healing as I share what I’ve talked about. So it’s not easy for me to just be like, let me read this every day now. No, that was my life and I lived it. And it was just a moment. And there’s just an element about that that I wanna put about the book too, where it felt like I was sharing a piece of myself and it’s just that it’s all compact, but that was really my life with the death of, you know, my parents and so many real things that have impacted me. So, so even now I feel a little emotional talking about it because it was that real to me as a person.
Jennifer: Oh, I hear you. I hear you. And I really appreciate that maybe despite the emotional weight of writing the book and sharing, like you, you still put it out there in the world and you still write your tweets, even though, I mean, I, I guess I wonder, is there some fear when you’re talking about, you know, things that happen that are maybe not talked about in the room, like, but like you are saying it on Twitter. And so I’m wondering what are your feelings about that? Was it different when you were writing the book?
Monica: So, when I talk about the tweets, this seems very spiritual and some people may not get this, but I will, I will be asleep. And when I wake up I hear like, it’s almost like the words come to me. And so I’m writing them because it’s like, this is what I’m supposed to say for the day. And sometimes it’s punchy, but it is almost like you, you and I talking right now. I just know that there’s a thought that has formed. And so that’s what that is. I don’t feel the fear. When I write things that are so truthful because it is just as clear as to me that that’s what I’m supposed to say.
Jennifer: It’s like already formed in your mind when you’re going to say, I get that. ’cause it’s a poet. That’s how I write poetry. It’s not how I write social media posts, but it is how I write poetry. And so I really, I hear you when you say like, the feelings that, like, that happens when you’re writing it in your head and then it’s out there and you’re like, but I’ve already, it’s already there. It, it exists.
Monica: Exactly. And sometimes I’ll even, I have my phone next to me and I’ll write something as a note. And so that’s something too, like I’ll wake up at 3:00 AM and that’s one thing, the part about the book is that I had a book consultant, a developmental kind of editor.
Jennifer: Wonderful.
Monica: Thank you. And at first I was not going to write stories. Hmm. The first draft was very much practical, and that was it. And she pushed me to include more of myself in the book. And I did not think that I was ready to do that because there are some stories people didn’t know about. And I knew that I would be very vulnerable sharing, for example, how I contacted the president of my university when there were things happening after the murder of George Floyd. And you know, kind of what happened, like I’m whistle blowing on myself. To say, this is what I did with other people during this time. And one thing that people have really complimented me on, and I was very careful about is making sure that I, I was very truthful with my stories without naming names.
Jennifer: Yes.
Monica: So if people do not know where I work, you would not know. And my developmental editor, even by the time she looked at it, she’s like, I don’t even know where you work. So I realized that that’s an immense skill to be able to tell so much. And I do that on social media as well. So, so much without fully telling you what’s up.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Monica: And that also is something I would say that I have to tread carefully with from a legal perspective. Yeah. Because I was so involved in a legal case for three years where I had to decide, am I going to remove myself completely from social media? Am I not going to write? Am I gonna shut down my voice? Or am I going to figure out how to still share my truths without incriminating myself without telling too much? It was, it is a slippery slope to do this work. And I’ll say it’s very strategic, very deliberate. And I hope that’s what you see even as I’m like teetering right there. But nah, I, I know how to say it.
Jennifer: I’m curious when you say that you really had, you approached a point in which you had to make a decision whether to remove yourself from social media or to stay, what helped you make that decision?
Monica: Well, it’s the motivation for me actually being on social media. Once I was an administrator, I said it in my book that it was kind of like an archive for me, but I got to a point in my organization where it became very dangerous for me to be there because of the lack of equity work that they were doing. But also I could tell that I was being set up to be this scapegoat. And I wasn’t going to be that person, I was going to fight. So I had an attorney who I worked with at the time, and two of the things that he mentioned about social media usage is that it’s archived. And I mean, it’s an archived record, of course, of what happens. And he said, you have to tell the truth. Like in, in a court of law, it would be like the timestamps and is what you’re saying true. So I used it very strategically and I always said, because it literally got to a point where I was being harassed because of some stuff. I said, if anything, God forbid ever happened to me, then my husband, maybe my legal team, the people around me could look at what I wrote on social media and have that as evidence of what I was going through. So I was hiding in plain sight.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Monica: And people didn’t understand. What, why does she do this every day? Because I want people to know what happened on say, you know, Monday, February 17th. You know, people would say, “Oh, it’s too much. Why would a department chair do that?” Because I was concerned.
Jennnifer: People tend to have fear when it comes to social media, but you actually found some protection in it in the sense that it was a documented record.
Monica: Absolutely.
Jennifer: I’m wondering, for listeners who may be experiencing something similar on their university campuses, what kind of documentation do you recommend that they practice?
Monica: Well, I would say social media could be good, but you don’t even have to use your real name. You know, so some type of pseudonym or something. And I mean, of course if it ever came to the point where people needed to know that was you, you could say it was you. But that’s one way that you can use it. Another way. I mean, it’s email. When I was a department chair, I used to think about this all the time. There are some like basics. When you have a meeting with someone, you wanna make sure that things are clear. So you can send an email afterward. One of the things that people need to be careful of is having conversations on the phone, because that’s not really documentation.
Jennifer: Right.
Monica: You need it to be written. You need the summary to be written. And one thing that I even learned through my organization is that I would send things and people would not respond. But when it was time for me to compile information, you know, I could have, you know, five examples for of like, when I did contact people, like, “Hey, I told you I was in distress on this date. I told you that I was having this issue with an employee.” And I think that’s going to be one of the big things that we do strategically moving forward to protect ourselves, particularly in an anti-DEI age. People are going to avoid, they’re going to want to walk that fine line, but if we are in distress, we need to put that out there in writing that this is unacceptable. I am being treated this way and this is how I move forward. And I think one other quick thing I’ll say, the reason this is, this is very vital is because I’ve also learned through my experience that the policies are not in place to protect certain issues like microaggressions. There is no law against someone microaggressing you. There is no law in place against workplace bullying. So when you are experiencing situations that make you feel that your life is in danger, or in the case of, I don’t know if you saw Dr. Bonnie, Dr. Antoinette Bonnie, her full name is Candia-Bailey, she ended her life. You know, we need to tell our stories in ways that sometimes are cries for help, but are sometimes those records after we have left an organization to say, this is what happened on this day. This is my voice. These are the people who knew, you know, et cetera. Sorry I went off. That was long, but.
Jennifer: No, Thank you for sharing that much about all this. I, and I think that I have wanted to ask this kind of question before, sometimes I’ve had guests on my show that have experienced some bullying on social media and other things. I know I had Dr. Carlotta Berry, who came and talked about it. But you’ve been through the kind of legal battle and something that’s public. And you’ve written about it in ways that I feel like people will really hear what you’re saying and it, they’ll take it in and they’ll start practicing some of those things themselves. Like, I want to help inspire change with this conversation. And so I really appreciate you being open and authentic about that.
Social media presence and growth, How it’s changed for academics
Jennnifer: Now, when I think about your time on social media, like it’s been so impactful for your thinking and, and your thought leadership and what you share with people. But how has it changed over time? Like, you’ve been on social media for a while, right?
Monica: I have. I think Twitter was documented. I think I started in 2010. So how has it changed? I think people are actually talking, which is funny to me. You know, academics were not talking back in the day. I think there’s still some fields where people just kind of post their accolades, but now people are having more conversations. I also think when it comes to marginalized communities, people are bold, bolder about talking about the issues that are going on in their personal lives. So they’re showing more of themselves. They’re also talking about problems that they experience. I see a lot more political statements.
Jennifer: Yes.
Monica: You know, even religious statements, displeasure with things. And I wonder if it’s like the younger generation that’s coming in, but I feel they just have less fear when it comes to displaying themselves. And just talking about. I’m southern and you know, I come from this more subdued, maybe cultural environment. But I mean, there are people who drop in their pics in tight dresses. They’re kissing up on folks, you know, they’re just like grown and sexy. And I think we need to see people who are just beautiful in every form, who are thoughtful and funny. And so that’s what I see. I see people who are human more and not afraid to be human. And that’s good.
Jennifer: Hmm. What about for yourself? Do you feel like you’ve leaned more into that over time? Or have you always shown up and been authentic?
Monica: You know what? I think that all of this connects back to our disciplines because I said I’m an academic. And so as an academic in a STEM discipline, it’s got its own culture. Engineering has its own culture. I’m in engineering education. So that’s got its own culture. So it’s like nested cultures. And I would say my culture is very, very, very conservative in how they move. And this was like the running joke of me on social media where everybody would say like, “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe Monica said this. Like, is she off?” And one of my friends even said in my community, she said she didn’t wanna look at my social media because she’s like, she’s gonna get fired for saying stuff.
Jennifer: She was scared for you.
Monica: That’s what she said. And that also speaks to that culture. So how have I changed? I have gotten out of the fear of my community and I have connected so much broader, like my platform, I think across all of my social media. And I probably have repetitive followers as well. But it’s about 75,000 people.
Jennnifer: Wow.
Monica: And you know, I started with a handful.. And the noise of my community is so quiet, it’s so quiet now in terms of what they think, because I see the impact of my work. I see the feedback that I get, like people who are leaving careers because of a book, because of a tweet, people who are sharing their stories because of things that I’ve said. And I’ll even give this as like a testimonial. I knew that. I know there’s something to it. I started a newsletter on LinkedIn in December, and I only have maybe like 13 editions. ’cause it’s biweekly. And I am up to, I wanna say like 8,500 subscribers right now.
Jennifer: Wow. Back from December. Since December!?
Monica: And I had maybe 700 in the first day. So there is something that is happening that is bigger than what I am. So that’s it. It’s the boldness, it’s the, I don’t care what my academic community says about me, because I know that what’s happening is more impactful and bigger than what’s in their box.
The Accomplice Academy with Dr. Monica
Jennifer: Hm. Ooh. Tell me a little bit about the Accomplice Academy. I wanna make sure that people who are listening can join if they’re a good fit for it.
Monica: Absolutely. So it is a really intimate group right now of people who want to be equity accomplices. And what I mean by that is people who we have, we focus on three areas. One is, I talk about like the level of risk. You know, as an accomplice, you’re gonna understand that what you’re doing is high risk. And so I engage through a subscription service, a monthly subscription service, where we talk about what it’s like to take those risks and how people can do this and protect themselves in the process. The second area that’s kind of connected back to being an accomplice is like looking at the level of change. And so I really focus on systemic change. So if you are in an organization, how are we making sure that we are offering sustainable solutions for people to remain safe and for equity to be real? And the third part is really having people focus on others instead of themselves. Many times when you see people who are allies, you know, they’ll, some of them will wear it like a banner and be like, “I’m an ally, I’m an ally. Come to me!” But I often tell people, you’re not an ally if I don’t say that you’re an ally. And it’s this space where sometimes as an accomplice, we do the work and people don’t even know that we do the work. But that’s what it means to do it. And I, I brought up the example in the book about, you know, going to the president of the University, of my university and saying, this is what’s happening in our organization. Please look at these statements from our engineering students. Look at the statements from our engineering faculty and staff, and take that into consideration when you hire the next leader of this organization. So, like I said, even though I shared what I did at the time, it wasn’t that people knew it. And as I told you, my developmental editor was like, you need to share stories. And I was like, okay, I’m finally gonna tell people that I was an equity accomplice in my institution at a very dangerous level, at a pretty high level. And I knew that the consequences could have been a lot worse if the leader was not committed to racial equity. That was a lot. So those examples, that’s what The Accomplice Academy is. It’s like doing the work and having the support to talk about it in a safe space. And I would say a couple of my most active people, one is an LGBTQ plus advocate who is a burnout coach, and another is a professor in a state where they have anti-DEI laws now. And you know, we really talk about this, what does this look like in your roles as a coach or as faculty. So thank you for mentioning that.
Jennifer: That is amazing. It sounds like a group where real change can happen, not just change within ourselves, but change in our communities. That sounds so cool. Thank you. Oh, I’m curious, since we were just talking about being a good accomplice and, and how being an ally is really about making sure that other people feel that we’re good allies, not just ourselves. What’s one way that we could be better accomplices or allies on social media?
Monica: Man, there are a lot of ways. I think one is like amplifying statements that I think are very courageous. You know, so if there is someone who is saying something that the world needs to hear, and if they could be, you know, criticized for it, or if they’re in a vulnerable position by saying that, I think that the very public way that we show support sends messages to organizations that we are aligned with that person. Another is actually putting real content out. You know, being brave, being courageous and saying, you know, this is what systemic change looks like. Or here are some examples. So, so tips. You know, I think social media is a wonderful place to educate. And if we have handbooks, if we have resources that have helped us, if we have contacts, you know, other books, this is the prime place for audiences to see how to do the work really well. So sharing is another piece, but I think being authentic, like once you’re there, and I feel like this gets to like the risk part, but once you are on there, it’s about being that consistent voice so people know that you are trustworthy, that they can rely on you, that you are that person who is for the cause. And so consistency. I feel like that’s an internal thing, you know, for you to, for someone to be courageous, there’s a difference between the theory and action of it. And that’s what I mean. Like my inner circle of accomplices is so small right now because anyone can post just a good statement. But it’s the translation of that statement into action, under pressure that shows me if you are really an accomplice, because it can come with negative impacts on your livelihood.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Monica: And that can include a job. Maybe you lose an opportunity because you’re too dogmatic or because you know, you’ve said something that is really pushing the envelope. But from a business perspective, I often tell people, anyone who reads what you present and they’re turned off wasn’t someone you probably needed to connect to in the first place, because you are gonna have a lot more issues down the road. And that’s what I say even about doing equity work. You know, if someone’s like, “Oh, can you tone it down? Can you do whatever,” guess what? I’m not the consultant for you. Go to the one who’s going to help you to clear things and make sure everything is measured in your organization because that’s what you’re looking for. You’re not really ready for the accomplice level. That’s the work that I’m proposing.
Jennifer: Ooh, that’s really helpful. And I think it also helps people know whether they should join the Accomplice Academy. Like, are you, are you really ready to, to do the work and to take action in your organization? Oh, that’s fascinating. Absolutely. Oh, I love that. Okay. Well, I wanna show the book again.
Monica: You know, just, I’m also an author. I write fiction. Yes. I have one that’s dropping this week.
Jennifer: I’m gonna get it. I’ll say I love romance books. I do.
Monica: Thank you. Thank you. Because you know what, that’s a taboo. So we can talk about that.
You know, we talk about authenticity, people like, what are you doing? Are you out there writing smut? What’s happening? And I’m like, my people love each other. Okay. They love, they love on each other. They love each other. So I will say that, and the thing that I will also mention is that I put social justice things in my book as well. So even in the one that’s coming up, and I’ll say this really quickly. My protagonist did not earn tenure, but she was involved in a domestic abuse situation. And we have an issue where she goes to Alabama and because of their laws, she can’t be an unwed mother and keep her job.
Jennnifer: Oh wow.
Monica: Yeah, with STEM students because of donors. And so that sounds very familiar. The arranged marriage part of my romance is when, spoiler alert, her principal boss doesn’t want to lose this amazing teacher. And so, they kind of like each other anyway.
Jennifer: Oh, That sounds great.
Monica: It’s this whole social justice thing that’s embedded in romance and how they have to move forward. So I’m just putting that teaser out there to say, it’s not just smut, although you get it, but it’s the lessons behind how women of color have to move professionally and personally to be successful and to be whole, bold and strong. Same thing.
Jennifer: I so appreciate that. As a survivor of domestic violence, myself, I found love. I found romance. Like I can’t wait to read this book. It’s, it’s, yeah, it’s on my reading list. I’m very excited. Okay.
Monica F. Cox, Ph.D., is an unstoppable force who has made it her mission to disrupt and trailblaze her way through the world. Her unapologetic approach to life has made her a change agent and leader who is unafraid to make people uncomfortable. Despite facing personal and professional adversity, Monica was raised by her educator parents to persist and pursue her dreams.
As a 2020 Fellow of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), Distinguished Professor of Engineering, and former department chair at The Ohio State University, Dr. Cox is no stranger to conflict. Her unwavering dedication to advocating for people and women of color has transformed the fabric of her department and the larger organization.
Dr. Cox’s research focuses on the infusion of equity in STEM education and the empirical exploration of women of color in the workplace. With over 130 publications, a presidential award for research, and approximately $20 million in led and collaborated multidisciplinary projects, she is a true expert in her field.
If you’re writing a book and you want people to read it, watch this. Dr. Jane Jones invited me to talk about how to share your book on social media for academic authors.
Who is your reader? Who’s interested in reading your monograph, edited collection, or academic book? How do you get a bigger audience for your book as an academic? You deserve a stronger online presence for your book. Let’s talk about finding your book’s audience on social media.
What can we learn from watching reality tv? Well, quite a bit. Today I’m going to talk about 7 things you can learn from The Circle, a reality television show about social media on Netflix.
Hi there, I’m Jennifer van Alstyne. I help professors feel confident when showing up online. I empower them to build an online presence so they can help more people with their research and teaching. Welcome to The Social Academic, my podcast about your digital footprint as a professor in Higher Education.
Now, if you’re on my mailing list you may have seen my email about my application to be on The Circle Netflix. If you’re watching the new season, you already know that I did not make the cut. But I love this show, and learn so much from watching it. So, I’m excited to talk with you about The Circle today. I still have my fingers crossed that I’ll appear on a future season. Seriously, my goal is to be on a Netflix show in my lifetime.
What is your online presence? It’s what people can find about you when searching your name online. It’s what people can discover about your research and the work you most care about. I’d love to help you have the online presence you deserve in 2024. Let’s talk about working together on your website, social media, or bio writing.
First, let me tell you a little bit about The Circle because I know some of you may not have watched this show before. By the end of this episode of The Social Academic podcast, you’re going to go and watch The Circle. This is one of my favorite shows, and I hope you love it too.
The Circle Netflix is a competition reality show where strangers move into an apartment building where they can only communicate with each other through a closed social media network called The Circle. Each person gets their own Circle profile where they can share a bio and a profile photo. Here’s the thing, if you’re in The Circle there’s no way to tell if the other contestants you see there are real, or if they’re catfish. Some people enter The Circle as themselves. Other people enter The Circle with a fake profile they think will advance them further in the game. The winner of The Circle gets a cash prize and bragging rights.
I love reality television. I especially enjoy watching The Circle because contestants build real relationships through chat, interactive games, and virtual parties. Because contestants interact with The Circle by speaking their messages out loud (it’s a voice-activated social media network), we get to see their reaction to the Circle Chat when a new post is shared. They also verbalize their thinking before sharing their own messages in the chat.
This will be a fun episode of The Social Academic, so pop some popcorn, take a seat, and listen up. We’re about to dive into 7 things you can learn about social media and building relationships from watching The Circle on Netflix.
1. People don’t know anything about you when they come across your profile for the 1st time. Have photos on your profile that show your personality.
When you enter The Circle you don’t know anything about the other contestants. If you’re coming on the show, you’re aware that there are other people in the same apartment building you are. But, each of you walk into your own uniquely designed apartment. You get a few minutes to explore before The Circle sends you an Alert.
The 1st Alert invites contestants to set up their profile on The Circle. That way, other contestants in the building can learn a little bit about them when they engage in conversations in the Circle Chat.
Choosing what to include on your profile is so important. The people who are visiting your profile don’t know anything about you. The first thing that you can learn from watching The Circle on Netflix is that having photos on your profile that show your personality makes a big difference. Your photo is the first thing that people see about you on social media.
I love getting to hear contestants talk about which profile photo they’re choosing. When you’re looking at your photos trying to decide which one to use as your profile photo, think about which shows your personality best. What are you trying to communicate with your profile? Think about the outfit that you’re wearing, what kind of expression is on your face, and what’s in the background.
When you have a profile photo that shares your personality, people learn a little bit more about you instantly. Your profile photo leaves a lasting impression on social media.
For academics, sharing a photo of yourself on social media helps people recognize you. If you’re headed to a conference and tweet about your talk, you want your fellow conference attendees to be able to learn a bit about you. And it’s great if they can see a photo of your smiling face.
2. Remember things about the people you talk with to help you have deeper conversations.
The Circle on Netflix is a closed social media platform. You might compare it to Slack or MightyNetworks. You can only engage in conversations with people through the general Circle Chat and through direct messages, messages which can be with one or more people.
Having conversations with people in The Circle is the only way to build your relationships. And yes, this does advance you in the game. But it also deepens your relationships in real life. Whether these people, the other contestants in The Circle, are catfish or not, the conversations you have with them are real.
The only way that you can learn about the people in The Circle is by having conversations with them. My second tip is that remembering things about the people you talk with helps you have deeper conversations. What do I mean by deeper? Well, more meaningful, lasting, and relationship-building conversations.
For the competition in The Circle on Netflix, this makes a lot of sense. When people give you more information, they might slip up and let you know that they’re a catfish. They might let you know about who their friends are and who they are most loyal to. They also might share a story that you can relate to, something that tells you about who they are, what they care about, and why they are here. What you share with people in The Circle, can help the influencers each week decide if you should stay or be voted out of The Circle.
Whether you’re on a closed social media platform like Slack, or a public network like LinkedIn, Remembering the conversations you have will help you have deeper, more meaningful relationships. Networking is all in the details.
Academics, you have so much to remember, I get it. I’m not saying memorize what people tell you. One way to help you remember the details about the people you meet is to see if you can find 1 way you connect with them. One thing you have in common. Maybe it’s a shared research interest. Maybe you both like dogs. You’re more likely to remember something you share, something you have in common, so that’s my tip for you!
3. People can tell when you’re not being yourself online.
I realize I just mentioned catfish in The Circle and I didn’t quite explain what that is. A catfish is someone on social media who is pretending to be not themselves. Someone is “catfishing” when they have a profile on social media that does not reflect who they are in real life.
This is different from an anonymous account, where a person chooses not to share their real name. “Catfishing” is intentionally appearing as a different person. The term grew in popularity after the MTV show Catfish Began in 2008. The show is now on its 8th season where the show’s hosts uncover fake profiles of people in romantic relationships where one person is catfishing the other online. One thing I find notable about the show Catfish, is that many of the people who have fake profiles have real feelings. Even though the person is fake, oftentimes the relationship is based in real emotion.
On The Circle Netflix, being a catfish might help you make a lot of money if you make it to the end of the game. However, it can also hurt you to be a catfish. This is because of tip number 3. People can tell when you’re not being yourself online.
And yeah, okay, in real life this is a little bit easier now that we have video chat. But in The Circle on Netflix, you don’t have this option. You can’t see if someone’s real. You can’t even hear their voice. You can only go by what they share with you in the chat and on their profile.
At some point on every season of The Circle, some contestants hunt catfish. They’re looking for fake profiles. It’s an easy reason to vote someone off of the game. And may help you determine if you can trust someone to be loyal to you (or not). So if you are thinking about applying to be on The Circle you can totally be a catfish. You’ll probably have a fun time playing. Just know that it’s hard to convince people you’re someone you’re not. Authenticity shines through. People want to see you. And they get suspicious if they can’t tell who you are.
One of my professor clients wanted to know if they should have an anonymous account on social media. When I asked why, she said, “I’m not sure if I’m allowed to have a social media account. But I don’t want to miss out.” It’s not the 1st time I’ve heard this from an academic, so I said, “That’s probably not the case, but since you’re worried, let’s figure out who to ask.” Luckily her university had a great social media manager who had contact information accessible on the university website. When they got back to the professor, she learned that the university would love for her to be on social media. I was delighted! Of course I wanted her to be on social media. But I don’t recommend anonymous social media profiles if you can help it because people just aren’t sure who you are. They want you to be yourself.
4. Nothing builds loyalty and friendship like opening up about yourself.
What really sets the good catfish apart from the catfish who get caught on The Circle is how they open up about themselves. Tip number 4 is that nothing builds loyalty and friendship like opening up about who you are and what you care about.
The season finale aired today. Yes! I watched it before recording this episode. I won’t tell you who won. At the end of the show everyone from the season, including eliminated players, return to meet in person in a luxurious lounge with host of The Circle, Michelle Buteau. Two of the players take a quick moment for an aside. Tom Haughton, a British comedian, thanks his fellow player, Chaz Lawry, a Los Angeles entrepreneur, by saying: “You were the 1st person to show me that being open is key to forming relationships.”
People get pretty deep on The Circle on Netflix. People have conversations about life defining moments, loss, trauma, family, and the values that matter most to them. The friendships that you make in The Circle determine how well you do in the game. The deeper your friendships are, the more likely you are to stay in the game.
When academics open up about their research, they can only help more people. When you share your story, you invite people to engage deeper. You invite people to care.
When you open up about yourself, and tell your friends and colleagues about yourself, it makes a big difference for your real life. This is because people will better know what you care about, how to help you, and how you can help others.
5. Your friends will stick up for you and go to bat to protect you.
That loyalty brings us to tip number 5. Your friends will stick up for you. They’ll go to bat to protect you. The deeper your relationship is with your friend, the more likely they are to protect you with everything they can. Spoiler alert.
On The Circle Netflix, contestants build alliances with each other to help their friends stay in the game. Sometimes, the game forces you to do something you might not otherwise. For instance on this season an O.G. player, Shubham Goel, AKA “Shooby,” who was a fan favorite from season 1, returned. Pretending to be a sexy young woman named Sasha, Shooby made the mistake of trying to start a “rebellion” of the newer players in The Circle.
His reasoning was that the players on The Circle who arrived on day one, had more opportunity to build loyalty with each other, over the newer players. So, the new players should bad together to ensure their spot at the final table.
Why did this backfire? When Shooby was first on The Circle, he was loved by all the players. He was so nice, open, and thoughtful, that people loved who he was. Even though he didn’t win his season of The Circle, Shooby is one of the most well-known personalities because of his authenticity. When Shooby asked to return to The Circle this season, the producers said yes, but he had to be a catfish. Not being able to be his authentic self hurt Shooby in the game. He didn’t have the social capital it takes, the loyalty needed for a rebellion.
You see, other people in the Rebellion Chat had already built up loyalty with their other friends in The Circle. People they met before Shooby’s fake profile, “Sasha” entered the game. This meant that by the time Shooby approached them for the rebellion these Circle contestants were no longer interested in turning on their friends.
Shooby thought that his Rebellion would create new loyalties based on shared goals to do everything it takes to win. But doing what would have worked best for these players in the game, joining the Rebellion of new players, didn’t happen because people felt loyal to their original alliances. Your friends will stick up for you and go to bat to protect you when given the opportunity.
This is true in real life too. You may have seen on Twitter that one of my tweets at the end of 2022 went viral. Let me tell you, people had a lot of opinions. And they shared their opinions with me. Many of their feelings were negative. People didn’t like what I had to say.
There’s a cute coffee mug from Social Media Tea that reads,” you can’t handle going viral, I promise.” That’s me. I couldn’t handle going viral. At least, I felt that way at the time. I was getting dozens of notifications every minute with people angry at me for speaking the truth. For sharing something that was important to me because of equity, which I value highly.
Here’s the thing, I could handle going viral. I could handle it because of my friends. I got more messages of support from people who care about me, from friends, from people who read The Social Academic, and clients whose lives I’ve transformed. In 2 days, I got more messages of support than I’ve ever gotten in my life. Even from strangers who saw my viral tweet and felt empowered to ask for equity in pay for their speaking engagements for the 1st time. The outpouring of love and support made going viral bearable. And, people were open that they were reporting some of the disgusting, racist tweets people said to me. Friends told me that what I do matters. That I’m helping the world. I could handle going viral, because of them. The support of people you care about means so much more than the anger of people you don’t know. At least, that’s how it was for me.
In the weeks following my viral tweet, I saw not one but five friends and former clients, people I truly admire, go viral in a negative way for something they shared. If this happens to you mute that conversation. Take care of yourself. And, ask your friends for help. People can only help if you open up to them.
On The Circle Netflix, your friends want to stick up for you and help however they can. If you ask for help, they’ll be better aware and will help if they are able.
For academics, making friends can help your career. For many of my featured interview guests here on The Social Academic, the people they’ve met through social media and having an online presence has quite literally been life changing.
6. Seeing what you create is fun (even when it’s not very good) – Think “Nailed it!”
There are fun games on The Circle. Some games are meant to help you learn more about your contestants, so you can make more informed decisions when ranking your fellow players. You see, the ranking determines who is an influencer that week. And it’s the influencers who decide who goes home.
I love that on The Circle one of the activities they get to do is crafting! In past years, contestants have decorated a cake and drawn portraits of each other. This year they got to design their own outfit on a mannequin. Their outfit was meant to express their personality. The judge for this design activity was Tan France from Queer Eye For The Straight Guy. And people had fun with it! During the judging the contestants had big smiles, thinking about the friends they’ve grown close to wearing some of the over-the-top outfits that fit their personalities to a T.
What you share about yourself doesn’t have to be a text-only post on social media. When you add a photo or video of something that you’re up to, especially something you create, people get really engaged.
People love seeing what you make, even if it’s not very good. You might have heard of another popular Netflix show called Nailed It! where contestants try and fail in incredibly hilarious ways to make impossible desert creations from Jacque Torres.
Seeing what you create is fun, especially when it’s not very good. I want you to apply this thought to social media. Stop trying to get the perfect selfie. Your video is never going to be perfect. People want to see your messy desk, your haphazard office bookshelf, not a picture perfect ‘magazine’ shot of your space. They want to see your struggles and failures if you’re willing to share them. They’ll relate to any post that is authentically you.
7. More people know about you / care about you than you might think.
On this new season of The Circle Netflix, Shooby returned as a catfish. And after the rebellion, it was no surprise that Shooby was voted out of The Circle. The influencers saw through him and felt that he didn’t make a convincing woman teacher named Sasha. They thought he was a catfish. And they were right.
When you’re eliminated from The Circle on Netflix, you get the opportunity to visit one other contestant in The Circle. You get to see the person behind the profile and have a candid conversation about the competition. Shooby thought hard about who he should visit before leaving The Circle. He chose to visit another player called Jennifer.
I’m telling you about this episode because I thought it was really cute. Shooby expected Jennifer to be a middle-aged blonde woman. Much to his surprise, Jennifer turned out to be not one, but two players staying in the same apartment and sharing the Jennifer profile. Shooby discovered that the two players pretending to be Jennifer had been the first to be eliminated from this season of The Circle, on Day 1. They were subject of a double elimination, and given the opportunity from The Circle to come back as a catfish, named Jennifer. Their real names behind the Jennifer profile are Brett and Xanthi.
You might know Brett Robinson if you’re a fan of the reality competition show, Big Brother. Earlier in this season of The Circle, Brett was talking with Xanthi about Shooby. He said, “Shooby can’t possibly be as nice as he seems in real life.”
If you haven’t watched Season 1 of The Circle, Shooby comes across as the sweetest person. He doesn’t like social media. If you look at his Instagram profile, he shares low resolution selfies and photos of his family. Even though he came in last in the rankings on Day 1, he made it to the end of the game being himself. So this season when Brett said, “Shooby can’t possibly be as nice as he seems,” it was because Shooby seemed SO NICE. Maybe even too nice. Like it was maybe too good to be true?
Well, they came face to face when Shooby chose to visit Jennifer before his exit from season 5 of The Circle. It was an interaction full of excitement and open admiration. Brett and Xanthi got super excited to see a player they were fans of. They enthusiastically shared their own journey in The Circle with Shooby.
Tip number 7 is that more people know about you and care about you than you think. When Shooby entered the apartment to meet Jennifer, he recognized the man standing in front of him and said, “Brett! I’m a fan.”
Brett’s face when he realized Shooby knew who he was – it was adorable! The recognition and admiration was real between the two. And when Shooby finally made his departure from The Circle, Brett jumped up and down and said, “He knew who I was! Shooby knew who I was, did you see that?” Brett and Shooby were reality stars on separate shows. And, they were fans of each other without knowing it.
More people know who you are than you might think. More people care about you, and your research, and what you share on social media than you know.
Don’t hesitate to reach out to the people you admire most. Tell them why you care about them. Tell them how they touched your life. Nothing bad can come from telling someone they matter to you.
One of my clients, an amazing professor, was catching up with me on Zoom. He said he’d just come home from an academic conference and more than one person introduced themselves to him. And they had read his bio, explored his website, and even read his research. He was literally recruited for a job at the conference because someone was able to learn about him and his research. They were excited to meet him. Your online presence invites more people to know about you, and to care about your research.
Wrap up
I could talk about The Circle all day. It was hard to narrow my list down to just 7 tips to share with you. I’m going to run through the full list for of tips for you now:
People don’t know anything about you when they come across your profile for the 1st time. Have photos on your profile that show your personality.
Remember things about the people you talk with to help you have deeper conversations.
People can tell when you’re not being yourself online.
Nothing builds loyalty and friendship like opening up about yourself.
Your friends will stick up for you and go to bat to protect you.
Seeing what you create is fun (even when it’s not very good) – Think “Nailed it!”
More people know about you / care about you than you might think.
The conversations you have online build real relationships with real people, people that can impact your life. People that can help you, people who you can help. The Circle is just a reality show on Netflix, but it can teach us so many things about creating deeper relationships on social media. And, in real life.
I hope that you watch an episode of The Circle. Or, binge watch the whole series! If you do, let me know. Maybe you’re a super fan like me! If you’ve watched The Circle before, but you didn’t pay close attention, go back and watch an episode to see what people say about the posts they read. I love seeing their reactions to what they see in the Circle Chat, and hearing what they think about what they’ll say in the chat, before they say it. What I noticed each season is that you can’t control what other people think about what you say. You can control what you say, when you say it, and how open you are with what you share.
I hope you love The Circle as much as me. Thanks for listening to this episode. If you’re ready to take control of your social media life, I would love to talk with you. My online presence services for professors are here to help you make greater impact with your research and teaching in efficient ways that fit into your busy life. I want you to feel confident when talking about yourself online. I want you to feel your authentic self is enough, that you are who people want to see.
I have so many amazing Ideas to share with you on The Social Academic podcast this year. So, please subscribe to the podcast, blog, or YouTube channel. If what I’m sharing resonates with you, please share it with a friend. And do reach out to me! I would love to hear from you. You can find me on social media @HigherEdPR.
What can we learn from watching reality tv? Well, quite a bit. Today I’m going to talk about 7 things you can learn from The Circle, a reality television show about social media on Netflix.
Hi there, I’m Jennifer van Alstyne. I help professors feel confident when showing up online. I empower them to build an online presence so they can help more people with their research and teaching. Welcome to The Social Academic, my podcast about your digital footprint as a professor in Higher Education.
Now, if you’re on my mailing list you may have seen my email about my application to be on The Circle Netflix. If you’re watching the new season, you already know that I did not make the cut. But I love this show, and learn so much from watching it. So, I’m excited to talk with you about The Circle today. I still have my fingers crossed that I’ll appear on a future season. Seriously, my goal is to be on a Netflix show in my lifetime.
What is your online presence? It’s what people can find about you when searching your name online. It’s what people can discover about your research and the work you most care about. I’d love to help you have the online presence you deserve in 2024. Let’s talk about working together on your website, social media, or bio writing.
First, let me tell you a little bit about The Circle because I know some of you may not have watched this show before. By the end of this episode of The Social Academic podcast, you’re going to go and watch The Circle. This is one of my favorite shows, and I hope you love it too.
The Circle Netflix is a competition reality show where strangers move into an apartment building where they can only communicate with each other through a closed social media network called The Circle. Each person gets their own Circle profile where they can share a bio and a profile photo. Here’s the thing, if you’re in The Circle there’s no way to tell if the other contestants you see there are real, or if they’re catfish. Some people enter The Circle as themselves. Other people enter The Circle with a fake profile they think will advance them further in the game. The winner of The Circle gets a cash prize and bragging rights.
I love reality television. I especially enjoy watching The Circle because contestants build real relationships through chat, interactive games, and virtual parties. Because contestants interact with The Circle by speaking their messages out loud (it’s a voice-activated social media network), we get to see their reaction to the Circle Chat when a new post is shared. They also verbalize their thinking before sharing their own messages in the chat.
This will be a fun episode of The Social Academic, so pop some popcorn, take a seat, and listen up. We’re about to dive into 7 things you can learn about social media and building relationships from watching The Circle on Netflix.
1. People don’t know anything about you when they come across your profile for the 1st time. Have photos on your profile that show your personality.
When you enter The Circle you don’t know anything about the other contestants. If you’re coming on the show, you’re aware that there are other people in the same apartment building you are. But, each of you walk into your own uniquely designed apartment. You get a few minutes to explore before The Circle sends you an Alert.
The 1st Alert invites contestants to set up their profile on The Circle. That way, other contestants in the building can learn a little bit about them when they engage in conversations in the Circle Chat.
Choosing what to include on your profile is so important. The people who are visiting your profile don’t know anything about you. The first thing that you can learn from watching The Circle on Netflix is that having photos on your profile that show your personality makes a big difference. Your photo is the first thing that people see about you on social media.
I love getting to hear contestants talk about which profile photo they’re choosing. When you’re looking at your photos trying to decide which one to use as your profile photo, think about which shows your personality best. What are you trying to communicate with your profile? Think about the outfit that you’re wearing, what kind of expression is on your face, and what’s in the background.
When you have a profile photo that shares your personality, people learn a little bit more about you instantly. Your profile photo leaves a lasting impression on social media.
For academics, sharing a photo of yourself on social media helps people recognize you. If you’re headed to a conference and tweet about your talk, you want your fellow conference attendees to be able to learn a bit about you. And it’s great if they can see a photo of your smiling face.
2. Remember things about the people you talk with to help you have deeper conversations.
The Circle on Netflix is a closed social media platform. You might compare it to Slack or MightyNetworks. You can only engage in conversations with people through the general Circle Chat and through direct messages, messages which can be with one or more people.
Having conversations with people in The Circle is the only way to build your relationships. And yes, this does advance you in the game. But it also deepens your relationships in real life. Whether these people, the other contestants in The Circle, are catfish or not, the conversations you have with them are real.
The only way that you can learn about the people in The Circle is by having conversations with them. My second tip is that remembering things about the people you talk with helps you have deeper conversations. What do I mean by deeper? Well, more meaningful, lasting, and relationship-building conversations.
For the competition in The Circle on Netflix, this makes a lot of sense. When people give you more information, they might slip up and let you know that they’re a catfish. They might let you know about who their friends are and who they are most loyal to. They also might share a story that you can relate to, something that tells you about who they are, what they care about, and why they are here. What you share with people in The Circle, can help the influencers each week decide if you should stay or be voted out of The Circle.
Whether you’re on a closed social media platform like Slack, or a public network like LinkedIn, Remembering the conversations you have will help you have deeper, more meaningful relationships. Networking is all in the details.
Academics, you have so much to remember, I get it. I’m not saying memorize what people tell you. One way to help you remember the details about the people you meet is to see if you can find 1 way you connect with them. One thing you have in common. Maybe it’s a shared research interest. Maybe you both like dogs. You’re more likely to remember something you share, something you have in common, so that’s my tip for you!
3. People can tell when you’re not being yourself online.
I realize I just mentioned catfish in The Circle and I didn’t quite explain what that is. A catfish is someone on social media who is pretending to be not themselves. Someone is “catfishing” when they have a profile on social media that does not reflect who they are in real life.
This is different from an anonymous account, where a person chooses not to share their real name. “Catfishing” is intentionally appearing as a different person. The term grew in popularity after the MTV show Catfish Began in 2008. The show is now on its 8th season where the show’s hosts uncover fake profiles of people in romantic relationships where one person is catfishing the other online. One thing I find notable about the show Catfish, is that many of the people who have fake profiles have real feelings. Even though the person is fake, oftentimes the relationship is based in real emotion.
On The Circle Netflix, being a catfish might help you make a lot of money if you make it to the end of the game. However, it can also hurt you to be a catfish. This is because of tip number 3. People can tell when you’re not being yourself online.
And yeah, okay, in real life this is a little bit easier now that we have video chat. But in The Circle on Netflix, you don’t have this option. You can’t see if someone’s real. You can’t even hear their voice. You can only go by what they share with you in the chat and on their profile.
At some point on every season of The Circle, some contestants hunt catfish. They’re looking for fake profiles. It’s an easy reason to vote someone off of the game. And may help you determine if you can trust someone to be loyal to you (or not). So if you are thinking about applying to be on The Circle you can totally be a catfish. You’ll probably have a fun time playing. Just know that it’s hard to convince people you’re someone you’re not. Authenticity shines through. People want to see you. And they get suspicious if they can’t tell who you are.
One of my professor clients wanted to know if they should have an anonymous account on social media. When I asked why, she said, “I’m not sure if I’m allowed to have a social media account. But I don’t want to miss out.” It’s not the 1st time I’ve heard this from an academic, so I said, “That’s probably not the case, but since you’re worried, let’s figure out who to ask.” Luckily her university had a great social media manager who had contact information accessible on the university website. When they got back to the professor, she learned that the university would love for her to be on social media. I was delighted! Of course I wanted her to be on social media. But I don’t recommend anonymous social media profiles if you can help it because people just aren’t sure who you are. They want you to be yourself.
4. Nothing builds loyalty and friendship like opening up about yourself.
What really sets the good catfish apart from the catfish who get caught on The Circle is how they open up about themselves. Tip number 4 is that nothing builds loyalty and friendship like opening up about who you are and what you care about.
The season finale aired today. Yes! I watched it before recording this episode. I won’t tell you who won. At the end of the show everyone from the season, including eliminated players, return to meet in person in a luxurious lounge with host of The Circle, Michelle Buteau. Two of the players take a quick moment for an aside. Tom Haughton, a British comedian, thanks his fellow player, Chaz Lawry, a Los Angeles entrepreneur, by saying: “You were the 1st person to show me that being open is key to forming relationships.”
People get pretty deep on The Circle on Netflix. People have conversations about life defining moments, loss, trauma, family, and the values that matter most to them. The friendships that you make in The Circle determine how well you do in the game. The deeper your friendships are, the more likely you are to stay in the game.
When academics open up about their research, they can only help more people. When you share your story, you invite people to engage deeper. You invite people to care.
When you open up about yourself, and tell your friends and colleagues about yourself, it makes a big difference for your real life. This is because people will better know what you care about, how to help you, and how you can help others.
5. Your friends will stick up for you and go to bat to protect you.
That loyalty brings us to tip number 5. Your friends will stick up for you. They’ll go to bat to protect you. The deeper your relationship is with your friend, the more likely they are to protect you with everything they can. Spoiler alert.
On The Circle Netflix, contestants build alliances with each other to help their friends stay in the game. Sometimes, the game forces you to do something you might not otherwise. For instance on this season an O.G. player, Shubham Goel, AKA “Shooby,” who was a fan favorite from season 1, returned. Pretending to be a sexy young woman named Sasha, Shooby made the mistake of trying to start a “rebellion” of the newer players in The Circle.
His reasoning was that the players on The Circle who arrived on day one, had more opportunity to build loyalty with each other, over the newer players. So, the new players should bad together to ensure their spot at the final table.
Why did this backfire? When Shooby was first on The Circle, he was loved by all the players. He was so nice, open, and thoughtful, that people loved who he was. Even though he didn’t win his season of The Circle, Shooby is one of the most well-known personalities because of his authenticity. When Shooby asked to return to The Circle this season, the producers said yes, but he had to be a catfish. Not being able to be his authentic self hurt Shooby in the game. He didn’t have the social capital it takes, the loyalty needed for a rebellion.
You see, other people in the Rebellion Chat had already built up loyalty with their other friends in The Circle. People they met before Shooby’s fake profile, “Sasha” entered the game. This meant that by the time Shooby approached them for the rebellion these Circle contestants were no longer interested in turning on their friends.
Shooby thought that his Rebellion would create new loyalties based on shared goals to do everything it takes to win. But doing what would have worked best for these players in the game, joining the Rebellion of new players, didn’t happen because people felt loyal to their original alliances. Your friends will stick up for you and go to bat to protect you when given the opportunity.
This is true in real life too. You may have seen on Twitter that one of my tweets at the end of 2022 went viral. Let me tell you, people had a lot of opinions. And they shared their opinions with me. Many of their feelings were negative. People didn’t like what I had to say.
There’s a cute coffee mug from Social Media Tea that reads,” you can’t handle going viral, I promise.” That’s me. I couldn’t handle going viral. At least, I felt that way at the time. I was getting dozens of notifications every minute with people angry at me for speaking the truth. For sharing something that was important to me because of equity, which I value highly.
Here’s the thing, I could handle going viral. I could handle it because of my friends. I got more messages of support from people who care about me, from friends, from people who read The Social Academic, and clients whose lives I’ve transformed. In 2 days, I got more messages of support than I’ve ever gotten in my life. Even from strangers who saw my viral tweet and felt empowered to ask for equity in pay for their speaking engagements for the 1st time. The outpouring of love and support made going viral bearable. And, people were open that they were reporting some of the disgusting, racist tweets people said to me. Friends told me that what I do matters. That I’m helping the world. I could handle going viral, because of them. The support of people you care about means so much more than the anger of people you don’t know. At least, that’s how it was for me.
In the weeks following my viral tweet, I saw not one but five friends and former clients, people I truly admire, go viral in a negative way for something they shared. If this happens to you mute that conversation. Take care of yourself. And, ask your friends for help. People can only help if you open up to them.
On The Circle Netflix, your friends want to stick up for you and help however they can. If you ask for help, they’ll be better aware and will help if they are able.
For academics, making friends can help your career. For many of my featured interview guests here on The Social Academic, the people they’ve met through social media and having an online presence has quite literally been life changing.
6. Seeing what you create is fun (even when it’s not very good) – Think “Nailed it!”
There are fun games on The Circle. Some games are meant to help you learn more about your contestants, so you can make more informed decisions when ranking your fellow players. You see, the ranking determines who is an influencer that week. And it’s the influencers who decide who goes home.
I love that on The Circle one of the activities they get to do is crafting! In past years, contestants have decorated a cake and drawn portraits of each other. This year they got to design their own outfit on a mannequin. Their outfit was meant to express their personality. The judge for this design activity was Tan France from Queer Eye For The Straight Guy. And people had fun with it! During the judging the contestants had big smiles, thinking about the friends they’ve grown close to wearing some of the over-the-top outfits that fit their personalities to a T.
What you share about yourself doesn’t have to be a text-only post on social media. When you add a photo or video of something that you’re up to, especially something you create, people get really engaged.
People love seeing what you make, even if it’s not very good. You might have heard of another popular Netflix show called Nailed It! where contestants try and fail in incredibly hilarious ways to make impossible desert creations from Jacque Torres.
Seeing what you create is fun, especially when it’s not very good. I want you to apply this thought to social media. Stop trying to get the perfect selfie. Your video is never going to be perfect. People want to see your messy desk, your haphazard office bookshelf, not a picture perfect ‘magazine’ shot of your space. They want to see your struggles and failures if you’re willing to share them. They’ll relate to any post that is authentically you.
7. More people know about you / care about you than you might think.
On this new season of The Circle Netflix, Shooby returned as a catfish. And after the rebellion, it was no surprise that Shooby was voted out of The Circle. The influencers saw through him and felt that he didn’t make a convincing woman teacher named Sasha. They thought he was a catfish. And they were right.
When you’re eliminated from The Circle on Netflix, you get the opportunity to visit one other contestant in The Circle. You get to see the person behind the profile and have a candid conversation about the competition. Shooby thought hard about who he should visit before leaving The Circle. He chose to visit another player called Jennifer.
I’m telling you about this episode because I thought it was really cute. Shooby expected Jennifer to be a middle-aged blonde woman. Much to his surprise, Jennifer turned out to be not one, but two players staying in the same apartment and sharing the Jennifer profile. Shooby discovered that the two players pretending to be Jennifer had been the first to be eliminated from this season of The Circle, on Day 1. They were subject of a double elimination, and given the opportunity from The Circle to come back as a catfish, named Jennifer. Their real names behind the Jennifer profile are Brett and Xanthi.
You might know Brett Robinson if you’re a fan of the reality competition show, Big Brother. Earlier in this season of The Circle, Brett was talking with Xanthi about Shooby. He said, “Shooby can’t possibly be as nice as he seems in real life.”
If you haven’t watched Season 1 of The Circle, Shooby comes across as the sweetest person. He doesn’t like social media. If you look at his Instagram profile, he shares low resolution selfies and photos of his family. Even though he came in last in the rankings on Day 1, he made it to the end of the game being himself. So this season when Brett said, “Shooby can’t possibly be as nice as he seems,” it was because Shooby seemed SO NICE. Maybe even too nice. Like it was maybe too good to be true?
Well, they came face to face when Shooby chose to visit Jennifer before his exit from season 5 of The Circle. It was an interaction full of excitement and open admiration. Brett and Xanthi got super excited to see a player they were fans of. They enthusiastically shared their own journey in The Circle with Shooby.
Tip number 7 is that more people know about you and care about you than you think. When Shooby entered the apartment to meet Jennifer, he recognized the man standing in front of him and said, “Brett! I’m a fan.”
Brett’s face when he realized Shooby knew who he was – it was adorable! The recognition and admiration was real between the two. And when Shooby finally made his departure from The Circle, Brett jumped up and down and said, “He knew who I was! Shooby knew who I was, did you see that?” Brett and Shooby were reality stars on separate shows. And, they were fans of each other without knowing it.
More people know who you are than you might think. More people care about you, and your research, and what you share on social media than you know.
Don’t hesitate to reach out to the people you admire most. Tell them why you care about them. Tell them how they touched your life. Nothing bad can come from telling someone they matter to you.
One of my clients, an amazing professor, was catching up with me on Zoom. He said he’d just come home from an academic conference and more than one person introduced themselves to him. And they had read his bio, explored his website, and even read his research. He was literally recruited for a job at the conference because someone was able to learn about him and his research. They were excited to meet him. Your online presence invites more people to know about you, and to care about your research.
I could talk about The Circle all day. It was hard to narrow my list down to just 7 tips to share with you. I’m going to run through the full list for of tips for you now:
People don’t know anything about you when they come across your profile for the 1st time. Have photos on your profile that show your personality.
Remember things about the people you talk with to help you have deeper conversations.
People can tell when you’re not being yourself online.
Nothing builds loyalty and friendship like opening up about yourself.
Your friends will stick up for you and go to bat to protect you.
Seeing what you create is fun (even when it’s not very good) – Think “Nailed it!”
More people know about you / care about you than you might think.
The conversations you have online build real relationships with real people, people that can impact your life. People that can help you, people who you can help. The Circle is just a reality show on Netflix, but it can teach us so many things about creating deeper relationships on social media. And, in real life.
I hope that you watch an episode of The Circle. Or, binge watch the whole series! If you do, let me know. Maybe you’re a super fan like me! If you’ve watched The Circle before, but you didn’t pay close attention, go back and watch an episode to see what people say about the posts they read. I love seeing their reactions to what they see in the Circle Chat, and hearing what they think about what they’ll say in the chat, before they say it. What I noticed each season is that you can’t control what other people think about what you say. You can control what you say, when you say it, and how open you are with what you share.
I hope you love The Circle as much as me. Thanks for listening to this episode. If you’re ready to take control of your social media life, I would love to talk with you. My online presence services for professors are here to help you make greater impact with your research and teaching in efficient ways that fit into your busy life. I want you to feel confident when talking about yourself online. I want you to feel your authentic self is enough, that you are who people want to see.
I have so many amazing Ideas to share with you on The Social Academic podcast this year. So, please subscribe to the podcast, blog, or YouTube channel. If what I’m sharing resonates with you, please share it with a friend. And do reach out to me! I would love to hear from you. You can find me on social media @HigherEdPR.
Dr. Cheyenne Seymour wrote the book on the real-life impacts of social media. The collection, Successes and Setbacks of Social Media (Wiley Blackwell 2020), brings together diverse narratives about how social media can influence the pursuit of Higher Education.
Cheyenne joins me for a featured interview about her social media research. She is an Assistant Professor of Communication, Arts, and Sciences at CUNY Bronx Community College. She was an amazing editor for my piece in the book, “Social Media: From Deleted to Private, Private to Public Profiles.” Be sure to get your copy today from Wiley.
Is it okay to not be on social media? Find out in this featured interview.
Jennifer: Hi everyone, this is Jennifer van Alstyne on The Social Academic. Welcome to the featured interview series. Today I’m talking with Dr. Cheyenne Seymour who is an author, a professor. We’re going to be talking about social media, online presence, and what it’s actually like to work on an edited collection about social media experiences in the academy.
Cheyenne, I’m so glad you’re here to talk with me today. Would you please introduce yourself?
Cheyenne: Absolutely, thank you so much for this opportunity, Jennifer.
As you mentioned, my name is Dr. Cheyenne Seymour. I am an Assistant Professor of Communication, Arts, and Sciences at Bronx Community College, which is part of the City University of New York.
I happen to teach various courses on communication including social media. I also teach courses on public speaking, as well as rhetoric. I’m very fortunate to have all of these interests within the communication discipline that I get a chance to explore and help students with.
What inspired your book about social media?
Jennifer: I love that. I work a lot with professors on social media, so it’s awesome to talk with someone who’s really in the classroom and working with students and seeing that kind of larger perspective.
One of the things that I really liked about your book is that it covers academic experiences from a lot of different perspectives from undergraduate students, graduate students, university administrators.
Tell me a little bit more about your book, Successes and Setbacks of Social Media: Impact on Academic Life. What inspired you to work on this collection?
Cheyenne: This is a wonderful, wonderful topic to explore. And I was delighted to have this opportunity. And one of the things that led me to an interest in social media was how it continued to come up in the classroom.
For example, when teaching classes on interpersonal communication, we were exploring the relationships between two people.
It was often interesting that students wanted to talk about mediated communication and how they were forming relationships because of social media, ending relationships because of social media as well.
And we were really thinking about the differences in terms of how people present themselves in person when chatting with someone on the street or in a classroom, in the workplace, versus how they were connecting online.
And there were some clear distinctions that were cropping up.
Jennifer: Wow.
Cheyenne: Also, when we were talking in classes like on public speaking, lots of students were saying, you know what, “I’m starting to go live. And I’m not only talking to people in a live setting, I’m actually talking to people in a virtual setting. And it feels different.” And we were kind of exploring those as well.
I found that social media was kind of like intersecting with so many areas of life that it just was like calling for a little bit more attention. [Jennifer and Cheyenne laugh.]
Jennifer: Oh, I think that’s amazing. It sounds like you were really impacted by your experiences in the classroom. And the conversations that you were having with people, that influenced the research that you were doing. And ultimately this collection that you put together, some of them are firsthand experiences, some of them are more research based.
And I love all of the little introductions to each section that you have that talk about this kind of greater understanding of what social media is and how it’s interactive with our society. That’s fascinating.
Can I ask about the book in terms of the process of releasing it? Is that something you talked about on social media?
Cheyenne: I didn’t really explore that so much on social media. But let’s dive into that a little bit.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Cheyenne: It’s really, really exciting when you get multiple perspectives. And as you’ve kind of described, it does just that. We’re getting student perspectives, we’re getting perspectives of educators and administrators, who are sometimes thinking about themselves when they were in the seats in the classroom. And then also sometimes thinking about themselves in the role.
And it’s really interesting how we see it impacting so many avenues of life. Like how social media was able to help some students, connect with others, understand course content, and meet their academic goals.
Where we had some who just were feeling a little defeated because perhaps they were spending too much time on social media and not using that time to complete their homework. Right?
We kinda see a little bit of a difference here. And it was really important to me to capture that not everyone is going to have this same cookie cutter experience on even the same platform.
It was really, really wonderful that we had various identities reflected, various professional roles reflected in the book. And I worked really hard to try to synthesize the current research on it.
As many of us know, social media is really a young subject, right? Although it has probably consumed a lot of our lives it hasn’t been around for quite so long. There’s so much to explore. But I wanted to take a look at some of the data on the more concrete assessments, the statistics that have been out on the topic. To share those and couple that with firsthand experiences to really paint more of a clear picture in terms of how it’s impacted us in the past and how people began to retool with it currently.
Jennifer: I love that. Can I ask it, was there something in particular that your research showed that you found surprising? That you were like, ‘Oh, I am so glad I can include that in the book.’ [Laughs.]
Cheyenne: That is an excellent question. I think there is a lot of shocking bits of info. But I guess as one who identifies as a woman, I was quite surprised. And then it kinda reflected experiences that I had had, or had heard from others.
I was quite surprised at just how much social media can have a negative impact on women.
Although there’s a lot of great things out there, a lot of women were worrying about self-esteem, about their parents. They were essentially having issues with romantic relationships. With platonic relationships.
Whereas the data was not quite showing that for men, people who identify as men.
We didn’t quite to be fair, assess non-binary. And maybe next time around, we’d love to include that particular demographic in the data.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Cheyenne: But ultimately a lot of researchers were kind of just like finding that anyone who identified as a woman…and I shouldn’t say anyone, but many who identified as a woman was definitely finding a lot more negative experiences.
Jennifer: Mm-hmm [Affirmative].
Cheyenne: That was important for me because we wanna enlighten individuals. And not just make them feel like, oh my gosh, I should log off right now.
No, we wanna empower them so that they can understand, ‘Okay, maybe I need to think about this differently. Maybe I need to limit how much time I’m using it.’ Just so they ensure they understand the full scope, right? Of the impact.
Jennifer: Oh, I think that’s so important. One of the questions that I always ask people when I’m working with them on social media is: how do you use social media now? And is it how you want to be using it?
Because most people have this idea or this preconception about how they should be or how they should appear on social media. And that’s not always gonna work for them. It’s not always something that’s gonna meet their goals, like why they joined Twitter or something in the first place.
Asking that kind of introspective question to people, I always find that the people I ask are surprised, cuz they’ve never really sat down and been like, ‘Okay, let me think about my social media life and like what I want from it. And like what I’m getting from it. And, maybe those two things aren’t the same.
I’m actually really glad that you brought that up because that introspection is something that all the people who were writing for your book, for that collection had to do, but it’s not really something that we do in general in our everyday lives.
Cheyenne: Yeah, that’s a really great point. And I’m glad you bring that up because when I teach social media, which is typically an introduction course, that’s one of the things that I encourage the students to explore.
I ask them to think about how they want to be perceived. Right? And whether or not their activity (their reposts, their posts), whether it’s leading to that perception.
Jennifer: Mm-hmm [Affirmative].
Cheyenne: And many of them find that there are some small changes that they can make that will help them better align with their social media goals.
And it’s something that I think most individuals don’t often think about, just jump right in. “Oh, I like that. I’ll unfollow this person or this organization.”
We just kind of move along. But if we think about our goals, and keep that in mind as we make those choices, it sometimes might even empower us a bit more on these platforms.
Jennifer: Ooh. I love that. I love that. Now, actually, I wanted to ask about your online presence. I mean, you wrote a book about social media. You teach social media. What does your online presence look like?
Cheyenne: That’s a great question, Jennifer. I’ll preface this by saying oftentimes some of my friends are like, why don’t you post more? [Jennifer laughs.]
I get that question a lot. When I think back to when I first joined social media, which was shortly after undergrad…I kind of was like one of those individuals would chat with friends. I would post my thoughts because that was during the time when Facebook asked you what you were thinking.
Jennifer: That’s right!
Cheyenne: Yeah. I was like sure, I’ll tell you what I’m thinking.
And I think now I’m a little more private, if you will, when it comes to things. I love to share content that connects to education, women’s empowerment, culture, politics. Things that kind of reflect my core values, the things that I find important.
But ultimately I try to not necessarily sort of put my personal life on display, if that makes sense.
Jennifer: Yeah, it does.
Cheyenne: And for me it kinda gives me a little bit of, I should say like a curtain. I don’t feel like I have to constantly live on display or perform.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Cheyenne: A lot of things on social media are performative.
That for me has been the difference, I think, as I’ve grown, as I’ve learned.
I decided, okay, I wanna use social media to stay connected with friends, to read about the issues, to make sure I’m current. But I try not to make it so that my entire life has to bleed on the platform. If that makes sense. [Laughs.]
Jennifer: I think it makes so much sense.
And I love that you talked about that distinction, how your specific goals played out in terms of the content that you actually do share. And why you share it because of your values and those things are important to you.
But it’s not the same as like sharing your thoughts with Facebook. I remember that prompt. That was when it was always like, “What is Jennifer thinking? What is Jennifer up to?” [Laughs.]
Thanks for sharing that with me. And I think that gave me a little bit more insight into kind of your motivations for everything. But I would like to hear more about your online presence. It sounds like you do have social media. Which platforms are you on?
Cheyenne: Primarily I tend to use Facebook.
Jennifer: Okay.
Cheyenne: That’s my go to. I know it’s kind of tried and true. I’ve been around for a long time, but I’m a big, big fan of Facebook in terms of its ability to kind of offer various modes of communication.
Meaning of course you can post. You can go live. You can add stories. You can make phone calls.
I think it does a really great job of offering lots of various avenues also. It’s kind of near and dear to my heart in the sense that that’s where I really fell in love with social media.
Jennifer: Me too.
Cheyenne: I continue to use it. And I’ll be frank and say, I really have very intentionally limited my consistent use of other platforms.
Because, not to say that I don’t think that they all have value or that they’re all great. I am definitely familiar with them. But I know that if I were to like really engage on all of those platforms, I would have very little time in the day. [Jennifer laughs.] I try to limit it.
I also utilize LinkedIn quite a bit. Great for networking. I always encourage students to start building their profiles as well. That’s a really good one. Students can add colleagues from their workplace, they can add classmates, professors and really just start to kind of build this wonderful professional catalog of all of the things they’ve done and all of the people they’ve interacted with. Those are the two that I use the most.
Jennifer: Oh, that’s great. Actually, I’m so glad that you brought that up about teaching your students that having that profile early on is really helpful for them on LinkedIn.
I get that question a lot from graduate students and even from early career researchers, like: ‘Should I be on LinkedIn? Is it the right time for me now?’
The answer is definitely yes.
Even if you’re thinking about academic jobs, if you’re thinking about staying in the academy, LinkedIn can still be beneficial because it has really powerful search capabilities.
And you can even ask for recommendations from like your professor, or your advisor, someone you work on a committee with…that helps more people understand kind of what’s important to you, what you’re working style is like. And this is great when you’re talking about research funders, or you’re trying to network with other people in your field from different universities.
I do encourage you as early as you can start a LinkedIn profile. I’m so glad that you brought that up.
Cheyenne: Yes, and I’ll add one more thing. Depending upon where users are in the world, there are different ages that they can start creating a LinkedIn page. But, primarily in the United States, it’s often recommended as early as high school. Right? So to start there, so great advice regarding LinkedIn.
Jennifer: I love that. It sounds like your social media, you share things that are about your values. You share things that are important to you. It’s not like a diary, but you do connect with people personally there, is that correct?
Cheyenne: Yeah, I would absolutely say so. While I may not share what I’m having for lunch on social media, and no shade to anyone who does [Jennifer laughs, holding her hand up] [Cheyenne aughs]…I will typically share things that are kind of a reflection of the current times. If there are topics that are highlighting a cause that really kind of gets me excited, ignited, those are the things that I often share.
I do often share pictures of my travel when I go to a new place, learn about a new culture. Perhaps self snap a pic, share something really interesting that I learned. It’s like, I can take the knowledge that I’ve come across in my travels and share that with those who are on my pages. Things of that nature: articles that are of interest, pictures that kind of represent my experiences.
And oftentimes I love to comment. To like photos. Or posts of jokes and other memes that my friends and family share.
Yeah, I try to stay pretty connected on social media. It’s a great way to feel like you haven’t missed anything. Even during the pandemic, right? We’ve been so far away what feels like from our friends, our colleagues, family. And this is a really nice way to stay close.
And so I love to see what my fellow followers are sharing.
Jennifer: You actually mentioned something that I wanted to talk about and I’m hoping you’re, you’re open to talking about it.
During the pandemic, I feel like social media use and online presence became more important to people who were social distancing, maybe traveling to conferences less to present with other professors and other researchers.
How have you noticed the kind of trends about social media changing over the past couple of years?
Cheyenne: Yeah, that’s a great question.
I think primarily there are two things that stood out to me: the good and the bad. Right? And that’s pretty general. Let me explain a little bit.
So the good: I noticed that there were lots of things that were bringing families together, like the TikTok dances and trends. Those were really, really phenomenal at getting people excited to kind of share content, learn new dances. Even just like something as simple as that. It was a really nice way…And what we saw were multi-generational families doing these things, public figures. It was like a really nice way for us to all say, ‘Okay, you know what? We’re far apart, but let’s grow together.’ Not to mention TikTok had a huge boost in their numbers during the platform in terms of their enrollment, if you will, on their site.
But ultimately then we kind of saw a lot of heavy things. I found out about the loss of some friends through social media who had unfortunately lost their lives to COVID-19. And so it was really heavy. It was like a heavy time to kind of log in, see what’s going on. Lots of people were posting about their illness or their sadness. Or just sort of some of the difficulties that they were dealing with in isolation or just kind of struggling through the unknown.
It was like it was one of those situations where you weren’t really short where you were gonna scroll upon whether it was gonna be something that made you smile or perhaps something that brought some tears to your face.
I think as a result of that, that really shows just how much social media can reflect the times.
Jennifer: Right.
Cheyenne: It’s like a great reflector of what’s going on in our lives in our communities. And sometimes it’s great. And sometimes it’s challenging.
Jennifer: That’s really interesting. When you think about that kind of really early on Facebook prompt that’s like, “What are you thinking?”
And I remember at that time, most people would share like 1 sentence, maybe 2, about what was going on. And a kind of trend that I’ve been seeing more recently is that opening up. These kind of longer posts where people are getting personal and sharing more about the good and the bad.
And people can really connect with that, but they can also be affected by it emotionally. It’s really interesting that you brought that up.
Cheyenne: Yeah, that’s a really great point. I love that connection with that initial question, like the original Facebook question.
Hashtag activism and what your students care about
Jennifer: Now I also wanted to talk about hashtag activism, which is something that you mentioned in the Looking Ahead section of your book at the end, when you’re talking about these bigger trends in social media.
I know that social media can really bring groups together. It can help people share their voices and even be heard, in some cases by universities, even having to address issues that they were experiencing on campus.
What are your feelings about hashtag activism and what are you seeing in those trends?
Cheyenne: Yeah, hashtag activism is something that is really, really widespread. Sometimes, I think students don’t even consider it in terms of that title. They just feel like ‘I’m just sharing hashtags that are passionate.’ Or I should say, that reflect their passions rather.
They’re excited about these topics. They wanna get them out there. And a lot of them really don’t think about it as activism from my experience, talking to college students. They primarily just see it as like a way of life.
But it is a really, really great way for students to have a voice. To learn about getting their thoughts out not only within their college communities, but really across the nation.
It’s a really fast way for lots of trends to start kind of cropping up in areas where there’s a lot of need for change. So I’m noticing that.
I think what’s really great about it though, is that this is also an opportunity for colleges to recognize the needs of their students. If advisors, faculty, staff, administrators are able to really be in tune with what students on their campuses are sharing about, are posting about what’s the hashtag that’s currently trending. It will allow them to say, ‘Okay, you know what? Maybe we need to provide some resources in this area. Or perhaps let’s, let’s arrange an event on this particular topic so we can invite panel speakers to offer some insights.’ Or perhaps it’s even a situation where students are in need of an outlet, right? And maybe they want to bring in more outside resources like counselors or specialists who can help students to essentially address their concerns. There are a lot of ways for students to kind of speak out and for faculty, staff, administrators to respond.
I also think there’s a really great opportunity for employers to intersect as well. Because if you think about college, of course, many of the goals lead to professional goals, professional aspirations. If we can also start to work in a way for businesses, organizations to kind of recognize what students are interested in because those are essentially their employees in the future…They can too start to make sure that their policies, that their procedures are in alignment with what’s going to attract qualified, skilled, thoughtful citizens.
And it’s really a great way to kind of start connecting with not too much effort required, to be honest.
Jennifer: Very cool. Now if I’m listening to this and I’m like a university administrator and I’m all the sudden like, ‘I need to figure out what my students are saying on social media.’ Like, what can they do? I mean, there’s social listening out there, but that can be expensive.
What is something that maybe a college administrator can do to start hearing more of that conversation, to seeing more of it, and actually seeking it out?
Cheyenne: Yeah, that’s a wonderful question. Many colleges and universities happen to have social media teams. Oftentimes, they are the ones who are posting content, inviting students to engage. You might of course start there and ask the team to kind of perhaps start noticing the comments that students are actually posting. To notice that there are hashtags that are trending. And sometimes even just to kind of look at the trending topics, even regionally. That will kind of provide some insight.
If you are following, for example, students on your own pages, or perhaps even students who are using your institution’s hashtag, there’s a lot of popular ones. Sometimes it’s the nickname or the acronym for the school. Again, that will kind of start to open up those trends.
And one might even think about offering some platforms for students to kind of freely do so. It might be like another version of “What are you thinking?” What are our students thinking? What’s important to you?
When I talk to students right now, there are a couple of topics that are really national, topics that are in the forefront. Of course we’ve got things like the right to seek an abortion, social justice, voting rights. These are topics that students are really getting worked up on. Even when it comes to the cost of education or student loans. These are things that are super important to students.
And also it’s a great way for the individuals who are running these institutions, who are teaching at them, to really figure out what the students need. Because sometimes the needs are not only in the classroom. They are outside of the classroom when they’re at home, when they’re in the dorm, when they’re at work. And we wanna make sure that we’re producing well-rounded students.
And so just starting with, again, the staff that you have managing social media platforms. And perhaps even using hashtags that reflect your school to see what is out there’s a great way to open that door to a productive conversation.
Jennifer: Ooh. I love that advice. I think that’s gonna be so helpful for some of the people who are listening.
Jennifer: Now, I know we definitely have some listeners that are like really anxious about social media. Like they’re watching this video on YouTube, or maybe reading it on the blog. But they’re not on Twitter. They’re not on Facebook and they really are trying to find out, is it okay to not be on social media? I mean, you teach social media. You wrote the book on it. [Cheyenne laughs.]
What do you think, do you have to be on social media these days?
Cheyenne: That’s a great question. And I think that individuals can lead themselves to these decisions. In other words, you don’t have to feel like you’re compelled to be on social media.
I know some individuals who have made the choice to stay away. And we actually had a really great contributor in the book who actually wrote about her decision not to engage on social media. And she talks about that in relation to teaching high school students and how that kind of has informed her life, and her decisions.
I don’t think we all have to be on it, but I do think it’s important to be aware of the platforms that exist. And perhaps even you might decide later that there’s a particular platform that suits your needs. Some individuals, for example, like Twitter, because it primarily focuses on short messages. And they don’t have that overwhelming visual content. Whereas some of the younger college aged students love the visuals and that’s really what pulls them in.
It’s okay to not be on social media.
But I don’t think we should ignore it in total. But perhaps just kind of be aware of the ways that it’s reflecting modern society. And perhaps even think about what type of social media you might want to see or use in case one introduces itself. And then, you’re excited to join.
Jennifer: Ah, I love that. What a great response. I think that so many people will feel relieved after hearing that, you know? ‘Okay, well, I don’t have to join. I can really think about what I need and what will make sense for me. And it’s okay. If that changes over time, maybe I’ll wanna join social media later. Gotta be open to it, but I don’t have to do it now.’ So I love that.
Is there anything else you’d like to add? I have had so much fun with this conversation.
Cheyenne: Well, there’s one other thing that I have been doing, and I’d love to just kind of encourage others to maybe even consider this. One of the things that I’ve been doing, Jennifer, is I’ve been using my cell phone to monitor how much time I am on the phone, how much time I’m on certain apps, like social media apps.
And I’ll be honest, [laughs] when I was looking at my time, I thought, “Wow, I’ve been devoting a lot of weekly time to social media.”
In my case, I was like, okay, if I dial this back just a bit, if I spend even 30 minutes less, what could I do with that time? For me, it’s spent going outside, taking walks, hobbies, things of that nature. Just kind of reclaiming that time a little bit.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Cheyenne: And I’ve also invited some younger individuals in my family to do the same. They’ve identified things they’d like to do. One said she wants to spend more time working out. And the other ones said that she wants to spend a little bit more time working on her jewelry hobby. It’s a really nice way to kind of think about how we’re spending our time.
On the flip side, though, you might have someone who says, ‘Gee, I don’t think I’m connecting enough and I really wanna have more of a presence.’
Then maybe you might think about how you can efficiently use maybe another half an hour or so. Maybe there’s a new platform you wanna check out. Or, for perhaps you wanna use that time to create some content.
It doesn’t mean that the time has to be good or bad, but it’s all about the individual in terms of how you interpret it. I think that’s a really helpful tool. All phones are a little different. You might have to play around with your settings to get how much time you’re spending on social media each week. But once you do, most people find it’s kind of mind blowing. You might wanna check that out.
Jennifer: Oh, that’s great. I’ve checked this stats myself and been slightly embarrassed about how much time I was spending. And I really have to break it down and like look at the platforms.
And I realized that even though I was saying Instagram was my favorite platform, I spent way more time on Facebook and I had to admit, [laughs] I liked Facebook more than I thought I did.
It really gave me insight into what I was doing. I wasn’t folk focused on what I was doing at the time. But when you see it all in the data. And you’re like, okay, well that took more hours than I expected it to…that can really help you make better decisions for yourself.
I really liked that. It’s all about that time, what you wanna do with it. And it’s okay if you wanna put more energy into social media. It’s also okay if you wanna put more energy into your hobbies or things that you enjoy doing, or that you need to get done too. Both of those choices are great. And it’s really up to the individual.
Cheyenne: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. It’s a great point.
Jennifer: Wow. Well, Cheyenne, thank you so much for talking with me. It was so great to feature you for this interview. And if you’re listening, be sure to check out Cheyenne’s book, Successes and Setbacks of Social Media: Impact on Academic Life from Wiley. I’m gonna drop that link in the video Cheyenne Seymour, EdD joins me to talk about her book Successes and Setbacks of Social Media: Impact on Academic Life. below.
Like and subscribe to The Social Academic on YouTube. We’ll see you next time for the next featured interview.
Dr. Cheyenne Seymour aims to instill in her students that carefully crafting messages can increase interest and aid in understanding. Her areas of research include social media, rhetoric, and public speaking. Dr. Seymour is an experienced television news producer with a passion for sharing information that can positively impact individuals and communities.
She has earned a Doctorate of Education from New England College, a Master of Arts in English from Trinity College, and a dual Bachelor of Arts in Journalism and Media Arts from Long Island University. Dr. Seymour enjoys traveling and experiencing new cultures.
Yes! I am excited! We are getting back into the training and development mode with the Texas Social Media Research Institute (and the Rural Communication Institute)! Are you looking for a FREE conference focused on social media and rural communication? Check out our conference schedule!
Tuesday, November 2nd
5pm – Journal Club (Discussing “Reality check: How adolescents use
TikTok as a digital backchanneling medium to speak back against
Audio from a podcast interview that I did with the Efficiency Exchange back in April at Jisc‘s DigiFest event. I had a cold, hence the reason why my voice is a bit off. Hope you enjoy this quick clip.
