By Steve Moran

A few weeks ago I posted this on LinkedIn as an experiment. It was inspired by an article about how Google has culturally lost its way. That at one point you could ask Google employees what they do and the response would be some form of “helping the customer” or “making the world a better place.” But that today if you asked a Googler what they do, they are more likely to talk about some process:

  • “I’m responsible for reviewing privacy design.”
  • “I’m responsible for some technology.”
  • “I serve some VP.”
  • “I am a code readability expert.”

It got me to wondering how people in senior living see their jobs. The post above was looked at more than 8,000 times and received 67 comments (including some back-and-forth) and interestingly only 22 likes (more about this unintended lesson below).

What Do People Do?

Here is what I discovered, and it warmed my heart:

  • 27 of you talked about making a difference in people’s lives.
  • Another eight talked about both the tasks and making a difference in people’s lives.
  • 11 talked mostly about tasks.

What the experiment told me is powerful, wonderful, and not hugely surprising. We are a group of people who really care about other people. We really want the world to be better for older people, for team members, and for family members.

Social Media Lessons

This did not start out as a LinkedIn social media experiment but kind of turned into one a couple days after it was posted. The one thing I did do in the original post was tag a bunch of people because I did want a good response. I picked mostly people I know personally and who are active on LinkedIn.

After a couple days there were about 2,500 views on the post and around 25 comments. I decided to see if I could boost the impact, so I reached out via direct message to everyone who had responded and to those who had liked the post and asked them to reshare it on their feed. Nearly everyone did, resulting in 20 reposts. That more than doubled the views to, at the time this is written, 8,600 impressions.

I have a big following, so naturally my numbers will be high, but tagging people and asking them to reshare your content is a great way to boost it.