I apologise for adding to your digital noise

The reason I centre my work on unscripted interview journalism is that I believe in the power of genuine, insightful conversation.

I ask people leading questions to elicit responses associated with the strategy and business goals we define.

These conversations are unscripted and have an outcome in mind, yet what we will discuss and where we will go are unknowns and happen in the moment.

I base the majority of my work on it, whether that’s research with stakeholders, looking for product-market fit with potential customers, or capturing the insights of business leaders so that my team and I can craft them into useful tools in their investor relations.

At the same time, I do so within an ever and rapidly evolving technology landscape, delivering these unscripted conversations through software, public and private social networks and directly between my clients and their clients.

How we can get these conversations to scale, how they interface with SEO (Search Engine Optimisation, lifting yourself higher in search results, which takes months and years to achieve), SEM (Search Engine Marketing, pay-per-click instant get your credit card out advertising), public relations and traditional press engagement, and how we leverage communities to engage is a constant part of my professional work.

Back in 2011 I launched ‘Learn Football’ on behalf of ex-Socceroo Con Boutsianis, where we filmed 36 techniques, made an iPhone app and launched it to the number 1 position in the New and Noteworthy section of the app store within a few hours.

How? Coordinating a group of fans and collaborators to pile in at launch time, buy the app, leave reviews and generally kick up a fuss.

I did the same thing again as the Campaign Director for various successful crowdfunding campaigns like building new dance floor infrastructure at Burning Man in 2017 and the 13 Moons Menstrual Charting Calendar in 2018.

So ‘group-pile-in’ is not new.. it’s organising tribes..

When I came across a group promising that if you join a LinkedIn ‘pod’, and coordinate having a ‘post-party’ - this group dynamic can be applied to LinkedIn in a systemised way, to spike its algorithm - I was intrigued.

The essence of the LinkedIn algorithm is that the more likes and comments something gets in the first hour, with a particular weighting to anyone tagged in it, the broader it will spread in the network.

There is more to it and you can look up some great summaries if you’re interested.

So I signed up for a post-party, added my freshly minted LinkedIn post at the relevant time, then got a list of other LinkedIn posts to interact with within the hour, as our collective ‘pod’ went about generating some traction.

What’s wrong with that? Well they also have their own Chrome plugin with an AI suggest feature, which reads whatever has been posted and allows the user to copy and paste a response.. uggggghhhhhhhh.

Guess who ended up with a wall of sh*t? Yup. It was awful. ‘We agree.. we think.. yes the <three words I said in my post> are useful for <subject I was talking about>’.

It grated against everything I hold dear and work towards, which is that our digital commons need to be protected, that we are all drowning in noise, and that it’s our duty to increase the signal strength by being mindful of what we do and say.

I asked the business owners why couldn’t we flag a pod for genuine responses only, and all take a few minutes to respond as independent professionals.

‘We don’t have that functionality yet’ was the answer I got.

So I apologise. I apologise for adding garbage to our digital comments and increasing the noise of your digital signal.

I deleted the majority of comments, closed down the system and removed myself from it. And for those interested in the numbers, it got fewer impressions that the normal posts I do, even with 3x and 4x the likes and comments.

Said another way;

Smarter Impact Shorts

I’ve started a new series on LinkedIn, likely coming out on Tuesdays, where I’ll be riffing away on many elements related to what aggregates into your ‘Impact Story Engine’ - these will include short videos on strategy, marketing, investor relations and impact investing.

You can watch the first 1 here , which is about the psychological hill you need to climb as a busy executive of a world-leading business or impact fund if you plan to lead from the front;

Thanks for reading. I appreciate knowing you are out there and not a robot, so if you feel called, leave a comment and hit the like button. Because it.. helps.. with the algorithm.. omg