ResearchGoddess

These spotlights are opportunities for you to get to know some individuals who were recommended to me for the article I wrote for Mashable, 4 Essential Traits for Social Media Success in Your Career. The purpose of my project, detailed here, is to profile some social media professionals to keep an eye on in the coming year.

Spotlight: Ruth Sylte
Title: Social Media Director
Employer: GoAbroad
Who paid it forward: Bryan Person

What Bryan had to say about Ruth: “Ruth and I first crossed paths about 10 years ago, when I was in my first job out of college at a study abroad office in Central New York. Ruth ran workshops at the conferences I attended about using the web and technology in the field of international education, and as I look back, I recognize the personal impact she had on me to follow down the path of online communications. Ruth is absolutely a pioneer in the profession; I admire her vision and her passion.

“Ruth has dipped in and out of international education over the past several years, but we managed to reconnect through Twitter nearly two years ago…she certainly understands how online communications can be used to drive business and bring people together (particularly in a cross-cultural context)…I’d love to see her get some more recognition!”

Ruth lives in a college town along Minnesota’s Cannon River, south of Minneapolis and Saint Paul and northwest of Rochester. She earned a BA from St. Olaf College in Political Science and Religion. She was studying political philosophy and church history. She says that Political Science is the study of how people relate to each other in a community, which she attributes partially to her love of working with social media today. Her work has been in higher education, specifically with international education exchange, or study abroad programs. She cites Joseph Campbell’s idea that you should follow your bliss, and how this will lead you to opportunities that will take advantage of your skills and abilities. Having studied what she loved in college, this is how she views her work today.

Ruth has actually been involved with social technology for quite a few years, and she runs a consultancy called Manitou Heights through which she works with international educational groups and small businesses. Her work with GoAbroad.com as their Social Media Director is focused on positioning and integrating the resources they’ve already set up as the largest directory of abroad experiences, and she is working with them toward taking this into social media. Ruth is also currently in an MA program for Strategic Communications Management through Concordia University in St Paul.

Why Ruth feels social media has a place in higher education: International education could really benefit from using social media, but it has been very slow in adopting and adapting to it. In the educational field, she says “We’re always a couple of years behind business. It always takes longer for things to trickle down into education.” Most of her colleagues are not even on LinkedIn, and most of them are scared of Facebook; they see it as a ‘plaything’ for the young. Her advice to these colleagues is that the students are already there, and  if you are not there, you will lose them. She would like to see international education become more involved in social media, and she hopes to be one of those people who are instrumental in getting it there.

Some of Ruth’s thoughts on the progression of social media and technology tools: To Ruth, social media is the next step on a long road from how people have always been communicating with each other. You could argue that email was a beginning form of social media. These days, she uses her iPhone as an example:  ”This is our modern-day equivalent of the cuneiform tablet.” She says that social media is the next step in our path of different communication methods. Those who say that it’s just a fad don’t really get it, yet those who say that it’s the panacea of everything don’t really understand either. These things are all tools – and we forget this quite often. They are things we use to communicate with each other. People and industries alike are developing preferences, so no matter the tool you use, it still needs to be able to interface with other tools in order to be effective.

Connect with Ruth on:

• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Blog

photo credit: © Tania Larson Legvold, 2009. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

This post is especially geared toward students, but I think it’s important for people of all ages. Mentors are a vital part of life. You absolutely cannot make it through life successfully without input from other human beings, in my opinion. That’s why I think people, especially young people, need to put much more thought into mentor selection than a lot of them do.

Tell me if any of these scenarios happened to you:

• Scenario 1: Your sophomore or junior year in high school, you went to your school counselor to ask about what colleges to apply to. Your counselor referred to you by the wrong name, or mispronounced your name, and hardly looked up from his or her desk while reeling off the names of some local or in-state universities.
• Scenario 2: You ask your parents what you should study in college. Your mother or father suggests that you do either the same thing or something similar to what they’ve pursued professionally, even though you’ve never expressed interest in it.
• Scenario 3: You’ve gotten yourself a job after completing school. While sitting in your cube, one of your older co-workers starts chatting with you about the fact that it’s a buyer’s market right now and it would be a good investment for you to buy a house right now.

Guaranteed that at least one of these has happened to all of you, if not all of them. While people can have good intentions with the guidance they give you, remember that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. When considering your life, you need to be very selective about who you go to for guidance. And students especially listen up here: it doesn’t always have to be your parents.

Before anyone gets offended by this statement, I want you to take some things into consideration:

1. With the area of life in which you are seeking guidance, does the person you currently go to have ‘fruit on the tree’?
2. Do you go to different people for mentorship for different areas of your life?

If you answered no to either one of these questions, I would suggest you rethink your mentorship situation. Let me share some of my own situations with you:

• My parents are divorced. I would not go to them for marriage advice. Instead, I look to several couples in my life who have great marriages – including my brother and his wife, and a couple of family friends who’ve been blissfully married for almost 15 years. When I get married someday, I have great examples to model.
• Though I wouldn’t go to my mom for marriage advice, I most certainly will ask her for parenting advice when I decide to have kids. She was an awesome mom.
• I take fitness and health advice from my personal trainer. He knows what my body is capable of currently, and he knows what goals I have for myself and thus what needs to be done in order for me to accomplish them.
• Over the last several years, I have taken financial advice from my friend Jeff, who is a successful independent sales consultant, public speaker, and business owner. Because of his thoughtful advice, I own my vehicle outright and was able to pay off 4 credit cards that had amassed over $15k (obviously I made some bad choices early in life!). I also know, through counsel with Jeff, that it’s not the right time in my life to purchase a house, even though many others around me did. I see many of those people struggling to make home payments today.
• I have three or four people I go to for career advice. Some work in my industry, and some do not. But each has a niche area of expertise from which I want to learn. Some are excellent public speakers, some are fantastic managers, and some are brilliant industry leaders.
• For spiritual mentorship, I lean on my church and a couple of friends who truly walk the walk and aren’t simply Sunday morning pew-warmers.

Please don’t misunderstand – I have advice given to me by lots of people, just like everyone does. But there is a big difference between getting advice from a friend or family member, and seeking out a mentor relationship. One is typically offered without being requested, and the other is a relationship you deliberately seek out. Also, advice can often be given by someone who doesn’t know the whole story. When you are in a mentoring relationship, your mentor typically knows about external factors that may come into play with regards to the things they suggest for you. Make sure your mentor has all the information necessary to guide you on a path toward achieving your goals.

So make sure you check for fruit on the tree before entering into a mentoring relationship with anyone, Make sure that person has your best interest at heart and has actually found success in the area in which you seek guidance, because, as the saying goes, if you take financial advice from your neighbor, chances are they’ll be your neighbor for a long time.