Does your LinkedIn suck?!

You've done everything right. Superstar profile. Networked everything. Written engaging posts. But your LinkedIn sucks?

Political discussions everywhere. Climate change deniers left and right. "Interested" posts. Stolen posts from other users that add no value. And of course the "feel good" posts by prominent HR posters that garner reactions and comments with the job-seeking community. LinkedIn is easily gamed. It always was and always will be. Anyone remember the puzzle images folks used to post a couple years back?

My LinkedIn sucked too. I'm a content creator and scientist. I want people to see what I write, watch the videos I produce and cite the papers I put out. Naturally, I make popular posts on this platform and engage with interesting posts myself. I found some ways to make LinkedIn work again. I don't see anything about US politics, rare climate change deniers and almost no "interested" posts. These are the steps I took:

Cleaning Up

Posting Hygiene

We all know "the Algorithm". Your LinkedIn feed is curated by a machine learning algorithm. It will show you the things you engage with. If you are highly engaged with political posts, you will see more political posts. Probably the kind that gets your blood boiling too. It's all about those reactions and comments.

Rule #1: Do not engage with posts you want to see less of.

Social media is not made for discussion. Research shows:

You will not sway anyone with facts, the contrary may be true due to the backfire effect. [1]

This has been known for a decade now, but today we need it more than ever. Interestingly, early in my life when I wasn't even on LinkedIn yet, some preliminary research indicated that Facebook may change the way we behave [2]. That dopamine when you get 10,000 views on a post is a serious drug and you get more views on controversial topics.

If you react or comment on a post, it WILL get shown to your network. Do you really want to extend the reach of opinions you find controversial?

Curate Your Feed

LinkedIn is funny in a way. It has connections (2-way) and followers (1-way). You can follow Bill Gates, but he might not accept your connection request. However, and this is less intuitive, you can be connected to a person but unfollow them.

I have some topics on a list that I will unfollow with extreme prejudice. My feed used to be riddled with Petroleum engineers that posted unsavoury memes of a then 16-year old climate activist. As a professional adult, I don't think this is the conduct I allow into my life. Engaging in a discussion would further the spreading of this content but resolving the connection might hurt me professionally. Unfollowing is a non-combative way to decrease the reach of this, but of course, that means you will not see anything of that person anymore. In this case a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

Rule #2: When in doubt unfollow offenders.

You can unfollow directly on the post as seen in the above image (just an example. Actually liked that post.). I tend to be liberal with my unfollowing if someone turns around and starts posting extremely valuable work here, I'm sure another connection will reshare the work. My information diet is rather minimalist.

The Nuclear Option

Some content creators really rub me the wrong way. They unironically call themselves thought leaders in Data Science, AI or HR. And they post highly engaging content that will pop up in you feed due to many people reacting to it. Here, the problem is that perfectly fine people that I'd like to still follow do not follow Rule #1 but I don't want to unfollow them.

LinkedIn has no real way to mute a person you are not connected to without going the offensive route. These highly engaging creators will pop up in your feed again and again and there's only one way to disengage.

Rule #3: Block unconnected creators that you absolutely do not want in your feed.

While I realize that this may be the cause of me landing on some blocklists, that's fine. I would assume this disagreement is mutual. There's some people that just steal content and use drama or "I am smarter than you" posts to drive engagement, not my cup of tea. Remember you won't change their opinion on social media.

Switch To Follow Mode

I believe in inclusivity and I usually accept connection requests, as I like to help people as much as I can. Unfortunately, there seems to be an epidemic of quiet followers. I've put effort into my profile and ask people to write a small message when connecting. People do not read your profile. If these people cannot be bothered to introduce themselves, it is questionable, whether their connection will actually add value to your feed (and your life).

Recruiter contact me through InMail and most people with an actual interest in my work or in my work, will write a small introductory message. I used to get 5+ connection requests per day and unfortunately, it seemed these new connections would dilute my feed on questionable "Interested" content mostly these days (which used to be the puzzle content). Uninteresting content and equally the engagement on my posts was rather uninterested and uninteresting too. I love engaging with folks, but that was not it.

There is a way to fix these bot connection requests, which is switch to Follow-First mode. Go to your LinkedIn settings in Privacy. Scroll down and:

This will switch out the main button on your profile from "Connect" to "Follow". I still get a few connections every week, but most write a short message and usually have something interesting to say or even work for me! This does not affect Recruiters contacting you through InMail (as of writing).

Add Value

Follow Interesting Things

Follow hashtags, people and companies you're interested in. Increasing these will increase the enjoyability of your feed and subsequently the value you get from LinkedIn.

Post Interesting Valuable Content

You may be tempted to make your own posts about controversial topics. But do these actually increase your business influx? Do not contribute to the problem. Make interesting posts that share work-related insights.

Personal note: Be liberal in giving credit. Never steal posts. Don't troll. Don't post political things. Do not be part of the problem. Use appropriate hashtags

The Dark Side

Flirting

Listening to your colleagues, there are usually two types of experiences. Those annoyed to be sold to and those annoyed to be seen as a sexual object, usually separated by gender.

There's an easy test I use in deciding if I want to flirt with someone on LinkedIn:

Am I married to that person?

If you're not, do not flirt with them. You're not the exception and regardless of how charming you are, you will be one in a sea of many that are trying to be charming. There's no secret code and your status doesn't matter. You are disrespecting someone on a professional platform. This rule works equally well in professional spaces, like meetups and conferences.

There's another really good trick to avoid sexual harassment:

Treat all women as you would treat Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson [3]

Obviously I do not have that problem on LinkedIn, but boy am I unimpressed when sales reps get all touchy. That is the diet version of the larger problem. Be a part of the solution, act like a professional.

While this is obviously a behavioural problem, I have three tips to avoid flirting from the receiving end (this part feels icky, but then again I do also run anti-virus. I apologize for the 'splaining).

1. Use follow-first mode. Most flirtatious people treat it as a numbers game like the aforementioned bot-connecters, this is a first barrier of defense.
2. Opt-out of "other people also viewed" tab. Once again go to settings - Privacy Tab - How others see your profile and network information - Viewers of this profile also viewed (see below). It is an open secret that if you go to the profile of a young-ish woman, you will get recommendations of mostly young-ish women that have at best a marginal connection. This is due to the recommender system learning from these "flirt-crawlers". Turning it off is a good idea for many, I certainly did.
3. Turn off image [Here be dragons!]. I have connected with several "standard icons" that magically turned into people after I accepted the connection. If you use LinkedIn heavily for networking, this may not be a good choice for you. But it will deflect most flirters around.

LinkedIn Engagement Pods to Game the System

You should be good at this point. But let's play some inside baseball. There are ways to game the algorithm. If you get a lot of engagement on a post in a short time after publishing a post, that is the strongest signal to the current implementation of the algorithm that your post should be widely syndicated.

You see where this is going right?

Some LinkedIn influencers will create something called LinkedIn Pods. Groups that will be activated right after posting to create artificial engagement on a post. These can be private message groups and some have entrance fees of several thousands of dollars. They game the system to get posts in front of your eyes that would normally not get a lot of engagement. These tend to be quite uninteresting and an easy way to notice them is a long list of people tagged at the end of posts. Realistically, the more professional / clandistine Pod members will only post the link to the private group without any outside evidence.

There's only one way to find spot these, which is by seeing repeated high engagement on posts of a person that are genuinely uninteresting and mediocre. As of writing this I have 2000 followers and exactly one post ever made it beyond 700 likes and 100 comments. That was my PhD thesis. Just to put things in perspective.

I suggest steering clear of these people as they pollute your feed with mediocre content. Proof from the Internet:

Here's a good podcast about it, but it contains some language not necessarily appropriate for work:

Conclusion

Teach "the Algorithm" what you really want. Curate relentlessly what you want to see and create great posts that are engaging and give value to you and your network. Consider going follow-first mode, if you get a lot of bot requests. Then you may find that LinkedIn can be really useful for you too.