Upgrading Your Digital Presence to Presents

The Rewards of Managing Your Social Media Reputation

I have often wondered what a life with known direction and path, one with the clarity and simplicity of a straight line, would be like. In this alternative life, my career trajectory would be so much easier to explain. In such a world, I would have no difficulty explaining my resume to interviewers and investors.

Yet this is not the life that I have lived. When I glance over this sheet, this summary of my professional life, I see the ever fickle nature of my dreams, the pursuit of which has led me to seek five different degrees, spread academically across five institutions and geographically across five cities. Far from linear, my path would best be described as circuitous, perhaps even labyrinthine.

Hari Srinivasan, VP of Product Management at LinkedIn

Explaining this narrative in a convincing, succinct way is something with which I still struggle.

So when Hari Srinivasan, the VP of Product Management at LinkedIn, told us that this type of career path is becoming more and more common — and that there are assets and tools through which to tell this story effectively, I took a closer listen.

Working at LinkedIn, Hari understands just how important their service is. In today’s work environment, the site is a primary way that people find you and give you opportunities. In many cases, it has taken over the resume as the source of career information. Gone are the days where you didn’t need a LinkedIn — if your profile can’t be found, people will question why.

For Hari, however, LinkedIn is more than just a place to list your career facts. It is a place — maybe the place — to take control of and tell your story and craft your reputation.

Storytelling

“There’s only a few ways you can actually own and control the storyline.”

There’s only a few ways you can actually own and control the storyline. If you’re not the narrator of your own story, then others will create a storyline for you. It may not be the story you want. As such, knowing, understanding, and constantly getting better at using the tools that enable you to tell your story are essential to managing your digital reputation.

Fortunately, Hari provided concrete steps for anyone to take control of their narrative, starting first with optimizing your LinkedIn profile. Hari’s advice was the following:

1. Add a professional photo
2. Detail your work experience
3. Add examples of your work in photos, presentations, & videos
4. Be direct
5. Keep learning and validating skills

Since that class, I’ve reflected on how I plan to craft my own story. I realize that the story I want to tell is one not just focusing on what I’ve done in the past and who I am in the present, but also highlighting my potential and my vision for where I plan to be in the future. The narrative I plan to tell no longer includes “despite my background”; rather, it is “because of my background” that I am uniquely qualified to be a biotech entrepreneur, one who will combine my clinical, scientific, and business knowledge and experience to create lasting change in healthcare.

With story in hand, I somehow have more questions than before. When I look at other biotech entrepreneurs that I admire, they all have optimal LinkedIn profiles. They all have meticulously crafted stories. For them, these are table stakes. What I wanted to know now was: How could I take advantage of and maximize my digital presence?

Curating

The 1% rule states that only 1% of internet users create content to add to an internet community while the remaining 99% consume. When I learned this rule of thumb, I wondered whether that made the barrier to posting content on the internet even higher and scarier — that with fewer people, you expose yourself to more criticism, more judgment.

Kudzi Chikumbu, Director of Creator Community at TikTok

Kudzi Chikumbu, the Director of Creator Community at TikTok, would view this as an opportunity. As an expert on and in social media, both in his personal and professional lives, Kudzi knows more than a little something about building an effective platform for yourself on social media.

“Identity will be the most valuable commodity for citizens in the future, and it will exist primarily online.”
-Eric Schmidt, The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations, and Business

Kudzi loves this quote because while it’s scary, it’s also true. If an online identity will be the most important commodity, then content and content creation will be the currency that provides social capital, that elevates you beyond just owning your past and your present story. The value in content creation is the curation of your future.

To do this, Kudzi recommended the following:

1. Do not be afraid to go against the grain
2. Use your authentic voice
3. Show your full self. People like real people.
4. The secret sauce: being of service to others is the best thing you can do for reputation in the long term and the results will reach far beyond you.

• And do the above consistently over a long period of time EVEN when you’re scared!

Whereas before I already had established a LinkedIn profile, I had yet to follow this advice about consistency and authenticity. What particularly resonated with me was his point about being of service to others: much like an online version of karma, helping others will serve to help yourself and your reputation.

While I don’t have TikTok (yet!), I was recently invited to host a Clubhouse session on biotech to share my journey and my experiences. After listening to Kudzi’s advice, I feel much more prepared to share my truth, both the ups and downs of my journey in the life sciences, in the hopes of helping those who wish to join me on a similar track in biotech entrepreneurship.

Reflecting on and synthesizing the lessons from both Hari’s and Kudzi’s sessions, I made the following diagram of the social media reputation spectrum:

The social media reputation spectrum, as related to actions, outputs, and outcomes. Created by Joshua Yang.

To maximize the potential benefits of my digital presence, I need to move beyond merely managing my profile to, instead, curating and creating the content that will not only establish my expertise and niche, but also help others who are on the same path as me. As I finish this chapter of my life at the Stanford GSB, I’m looking forward to writing my own story by both owning my past and crafting my future, digitally.