Lists and career advice were the posts that attracted the largest readership on business social media site LinkedIn during 2014.
The most read article was “How successful people stay calm” by psychologist Dr Travis Bradberry.
His steadying influence was read more than 3 million times and over 100,000 people were impressed enough to share his advice.
Dr Bradberry is one of LinkedIn’s resource pool of writers – a 500-strong army of contributors including such global luminaries as Bill Gates, Richard Branson and even US President Barack Obama.
Calming influence
His inspiring words included the nuggets that successful people stay calm because they:
- Appreciate what they have
- Avoid asking “what if?”
- Stay positive
- Disconnect
- Limit their caffeine intake
- Sleep
- Squash their negative inner dialogue
- Reframe their perspective as their world changes
- Breathe
- Benefit from others offering support
Looking at the titles of the other top articles, it would seem LinkedIn members are desperately looking for success and look to role models for advice and example.
Many of the top posts are also about switching jobs and coping with interviews.
Top 14 LinkedIn posts for 2014
The top 14 LinkedIn influencer posts of 2014 were:
- How successful people stay calm
- Google’s HR chief: the biggest mistakes I see on resumes, and how to correct them
- 10 reasons you have to quit your job
- Ten stupid rules that drive great employees away
- Job interview: why only 3 questions really matter
- The 7 things successful people never say
- 8 qualities that make great bosses unforgettable
- The small things you do that make you look terrible in meetings
- 10 behaviours that could kill your career
- 5 reasons you may not want to work for Google
- The difference between successful and very successful people
- If you do this, your emails might be rude
- How this 32-year-old Twitter employee has a 21-year-old son
- Who has 1 billion users and is about to overtake Facebook?
However, LinkedIn networkers may soon look elsewhere for mentors and lifestyle advice as social networking giant Facebook has announced a direct competitor will open next year – Facebook for Business.
Although LinkedIn has been online for more than a decade and has racked up 300 million accounts, Facebook is almost five times as large and looks set to dominate the market that LinkedIn has filled almost single-handed for much of that time.