Be inspiring. Be Real.

As I mentioned I‘ve always had doubt to build and manage my personal presence on social media — I know some of my friends they are not who they really are on social media platforms. It is too easy to build a “social” personal profile that we wish to become. I don’t want to be one of those, and even Sheryl Sandberg does not seem authentic to me now. So how can I be the real me on social media while at the same time achieving my goal — inspiring people and friends around me to make the world better?

I had chance to meet with I-Cheng Liu, who was my senior classmate in college and graduated from the Wharton School when I organized MIT Asia Business Conference earlier this year. I followed his facebook and tried to know who he is before the conference. When I finally met him in person on the day of conference, he is exactly the same person on his facebook! He has 3,000 followers on his own facebook account and around 4,500 friends. Average “Likes” of his every post is around 200, and people often respond and share his posts. Compared to other popular celebrities or public figures, the result seems nothing. I do admire his authenticity of his social profile.

Lessons Learned

There are three things I learn from I-Cheng Liu and I believe I can apply to myself:

• Share “moments of awesome” when you travel.

People love traveling and seeing beautiful photos. They also like to engage when they have been to the place or it is somewhere they want to go in the future. Sharing photos is not enough, but share the stories or what inspires you when you see the views in front of you. These posts are “infotainment”. Maybe because of business, I-Cheng Liu travels a lot and shares photos wherever he goes.

• Keep up with trends — news or your own industry — and share your opinions.

Social media becomes one of the major channels for news and knowledge. People are not only interested in knowing where you are eating with whom or funny videos on youtube. They also look for information that help them grow personally or professionally. There are too many articles or sources on the internet now. If you can become an expert of the industry and share the articles or news that you believe are worth reading, people read and engage. I-cheng Liu often shares news about Fintech or his view towards financial industry as he is working in financial sector. People who are interested in this industry follow and engage whenever he posts.

• Be you. You are still their friends.

It is impossible for a person to think about career or personal goals all the time in his/her life. You have to be a real person too. You eat. You go out with friends. Or you do something stupid. I-Cheng Liu is a huge baseball fans, and he checks in when he is in the stadium seeing games or shares(shows off) his photos with players with a few lines of humor. No matter how many followers or how successful he is, he is still the person we know.

After last week’s exercise with my partner, I’ve started to review my social profile and develop a content system. I believe it is still possible to balance authenticity and inspiring, being an influential person yet still a friend of others.