Cutting Through The Noise On LinkedIn

There are three big problems with content that I see on LinkedIn these days, and they are tied together.

1) Pods. For those of you not in the know, pods are groups of people that actively support each other’s content, by promising to like or comment on each other’s posts as soon as they come out. As this is artificially gaming the system, LinkedIn does not like it, and says that it breaks the user agreement.?

One of the problems for Pod participants is that it is so time consuming. Say you are in a Pod with Fred. He posts and you are expected to drop everything, come in and comment on his post, so you do so. You get back to work afterwards, and immediately get a notification that Pam just posted and you need to go comment on Pam’s post.?

2) Automation. The Pod idea has been a boon to the automation crowd. Now you can just sign up (for a fee) to be in a Pod and fresh comments, likes, or re-posts from real people are automatically delivered to your post after you publish. Problem solved. Sorta. The problem then becomes, well, what about the crappy quality of those canned comments? Easily fixed, because now we have:

3) Artificial Intelligence. Artificial Intelligence has been another boon to the Pod crowd. AI can look at your post and come up with a more relevant comment. The key word in that last sentence is “more” as a lot of the comments are awful. For example they consist of repeating chunks of the post and agreeing with it, adding no value whatsoever. Or, because they're just bots, the comments use awkward and out of place words. You know when someone is using AI for a comment when you post something innocuous and a commenter talks about the value you brought in this post being part of your legacy. My what?

So this evil combination of AI, Pods and Automation are taking over LinkedIn. They’re everywhere. And LinkedIn can’t seem to keep up. They have encouraged AI and they don’t seem to have the systems to properly detect its presence. There are times I wonder if they have just thrown in the towel and are ignoring it, at least for now.?

The ultimate expression of this is starting to show itself in Collaborative Articles: LinkedIn gets its AI to come up with a topic, then the AI selects people who might want to participate. But the participants are more and more using AI to respond, so we get these odd, stilted “conversations”. If your AI asks me a question and I get my AI to respond, did we have a conversation??

The bottom line is that if you have the money, you can have the superficial appearance of success on LinkedIn. Hundreds of thousands of followers…that were purchased. Participant badges from LinkedIn, that their AI earned. Hundreds of reposts, thousands of comments, a barrage of Likes…

So what can we do about it??

Stop judging anyone on LinkedIn based on quantity. Of anything: comments, connections, impressions, followers, reposts. If it can be counted on LinkedIn, it is being gamed on LinkedIn.?

Instead judge people based on the quality of their actions.?

• Of their content - is this content really good? Does it make me think? Does it help me solve my problems or at least see them in a different light? Would I like to read more from this person??
• Of their comments - has this person added to the discussion? Have they brought up a different viewpoint or idea? Have they brought up an aspect I hadn’t thought of?

The bots and automated programs have the ability to make anyone look good on a superficial level. Our job is to see past that and find the real people we want to engage with on LinkedIn.

Today’s newsletter is a shorter version of my email newsletter. I usually publish one of the four articles from my email Newsletter on LinkedIn, so next week’s LinkedIn Newsletter will be:?

• Reach Is Declining On LinkedIn: What You Can Do About It?

Next week’s email newsletter will include articles on?

• Reach Is Declining On LinkedIn: What You Can Do About It?
• The Five Strategies Of LinkedIn For Individuals - 5 - Publishing Content On LinkedIn?
• Is This A Fake LinkedIn Profile??
• Suggestions For Getting LinkedIn Premium Or Sales Navigator For Free (for a while anyway)

If you are interested in this much deeper weekly dive into Using LinkedIn Effectively, here’s a link to the signup page: https://www.practicalsmm.com/free-email-newsletter/

The obligatory disclaimer: I do not work for or have any business association with LinkedIn other than being a user who pays for a Sales Navigator subscription.?