Self-Portrait Posts

You wake up at 5am, reach out of bed, grab your phone and take a selfie. Would you post that image on LinkedIn?

Not many of us would but here’s the weird thing…it would probably do really well as a post!

That’s an extreme example but the reality is that people respond well to self portraits on LinkedIn yet we have all kinds of reservations about posting them. This week I chatted with Lynnaire Johnston about her recent posting experiment and the challenges she faced in overcoming the barrier of being brave enough to post self-portraits.

This article has also been recorded as a podcast;

Linkedinformed on Google podcasts?/?Linkedinformed on Apple podcasts

More of that later but to start with…

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week

LinkedIn have launched a new series of blog posts and other LinkedIn content under the title “Mythbusting the Feed” which was announced in this blog post from Sabry Tozin.

Initially they have posted two short videos, one is about the sort of conversations they welcome which is pretty useless…basically they encourage posts about WFH and mental health! Nothing new there but the other video is more enlightening (see below)

This is the first time I have seen LinkedIn publicly state, or at least give a big hint, that they are happy with people posting content of a more personal nature. This is encouraging…not that we need their approval for our content but it’s good to know that they are in sync with their members.

New Features

A few people have contacted me to report that they have seen Livestreams in their feed! This is new and not something I’ve noticed yet but it does make me wonder if they are struggling to attract the numbers to make Livestreams attractive, after all we get a variety of notifications already and it shows in the presenters profile cover image. As I originally predicted when the feature first came out, Live events and LinkedIn (busy people at their work desk) are not the best partners!

A new ‘mobile app reverse engineer’ has come to the fore on Twitter (the 3rd so far from memory) called Nima Owji who has recently posted some screenshots of forthcoming features being tested on the app.

Both of these are interesting in different ways. The starred message feature will be really useful, I get so many DM’s these days and my inbox can become a bit of a nightmare resulting in failing to reply to some messages, so I’m excited to see this one. The laughing emoji (weird colour!) is less exciting but another demonstration of LinkedIn’s changing attitude towards less ‘professional’ content.

The CAP (Creator Accelerator Program) is coming to Brazil and the UK!

Andrei Santalo announced this recently here

If you are a Creator and you want to benefit from support and help from LinkedIn, join a community of others on the program and get a nice goody bag (at the start and end of the program) plus a very handy financial payment, then you can apply here;

UK application

Brazil Application

On the subject of Creators, LinkedIn have recently provided more information on the criteria required for being provided with support from a Creator Manager (this is separate from the CAP). Thanks to Matt Navarra for the heads up on this;

• Post original content at least twice a week for at least two consecutive weeks
• Have Creator mode enabled
• Engage (react or comment) on other members posts on a regular basis.

A birdie (not Matt) also told me that it massively helps if you are referred by someone who already has a Creator manager.

This is something I would welcome but I know I’ve already been referred and have heard nothing ??…I’m still waiting!

Self-Portrait Image posts

I’ve always wondered why people feel the need to add their portrait image onto their posts, I assumed it was rather egotistical and somewhat ‘needy’ to do so but I had noticed that some people who I respect and know be neither of those things were doing it, which puzzled me…and then I saw this post from Lynnaire;

I really admire Lynnaire’s bravery in pushing herself out of her comfort zone and trying this out so I asked her to come on the podcast to chat about it. As is always the case with interviews, you really need to listen to our conversation to fully appreciate all the points discussed but I will attempt to summarise them below.

Lynnaire has been on the podcast before when she shared her experience with LinkedIn pods in episode 217

Inspired by her findings I tried the technique myself and was impressed with the results;

As you can see, I felt I needed to make my headshot relevant to the message of the post. I’m not saying that is essential but for me, it was a baby step to test out the efficacy.

Lynnaire had previously had very poor results from image posts so she was keen to try out using her image on posts (despite being uncomfortable with it) to see if it would make a difference…and it did! Both the above image post and a subsequent doc post with images both performed better than average.

So what is happening here?

We know that image posts can be very effective at stopping the scroll but that is no guarantee of engagement. It would appear that using a self-portrait not only pauses the scroll but also motivates the viewer to engage - why is this? One theory is that it seems more authentic and creates a feeling of trustworthiness.

Another theory is that during a quick scroll, the small circular thumbnail version of your face is not enough to inform the reader that the content is from a respected source, the larger image overcomes this. This is simply (personal) brand recognition in action.

In the thread of Lynnaires post Moumita Das Roy states her reasons for using this technique as;

1) to create familiarity in a new geography

2) to create acceptance and question stereotypes

3) to establish my voice

Moumita is a great exponent of this technique, when I hear her name mentioned, I instantly visualise her face and short hair on a bright yellow background!

The authenticity leading to trust and credibility are strong arguments for a self-portrait but I have also noticed that people tend to get better results from image posts when they are clearly their own images, not images of them but images they have clearly taken, Sarah Johnston is a great exponent of this, she rarely posts self-portraits but commonly uses images taken on her phone of things she observes or things that have happened and relates that to a highly relevant topic for her audience.

Stock images are a disaster, possibly because they are disregarded as adverting/promotional and this can also be the case for overproduced, glamorous type portraits. The more professionally posed, the less likely it is to be seen as authentic.

Does Gender play a role in this? Lynnaire believes that women find it harder to do this yet they seem to do it more…My perspective is different, women definitely do it more but I feel that both men and women find it equally awkward to do. Some women are clearly very comfortable using their portrait and believe in using their strengths to their advantage but then there are many other, very photogenic women who see this as potentially sexualizing their content and they want nothing to do with it.

In addition some women who want to do this find using their portrait attracts lots of the wrong kind of attention. This post from the, very talented and clearly frustrated Amy Elliot, sums it up brilliantly.

This is a sad situation although I’m not sure her beef should be with LinkedIn so much as with her followers or the LinkedIn community, or a small but loud and creepy subsection of the LinkedIn community! It’s disappointing that using portraits doesn’t seem to work effectively for Amy and other photogenic females, I’m not sure what the answer to that is but for the vast majority of LinkedIn authors, self-portraits do seem to have a positive impact on engagement.

The irony here is that those that are comfortable posting their face seem to get a negative outcome whereas those of us that feel uncomfortable showing our portrait get a better outcome!

It’s also notable that the more authentic and vulnerable the image, the more engagement it attracts. The extreme example of taking a selfie in bed at 5am and posting it, demonstrates this point (not that I’m advocating doing that). I guess the lesson is that, the more uncomfortable it feels, the more likely it is to work!

What happens here is that we feel that others are going to study our picture, the reality is that the viewer just sees it briefly and then reads the text, the image merely gives them a feeling of comfort / trust / credibility, stops the scroll and makes them want to explore what the post is about.

One of the best exponents of this technique in my feed is Andrew Richards. Take a look at his posts and you will see plenty of self-images combined with authentic, often vulnerable yet always credible posts.

So are you convinced? Maybe you can see the benefits but that’s not enough to get you to start posting your face all over LinkedIn!

I get that, maybe we need to accept that we need to take baby steps here. Try adding a highly relevant selfie next to the text of a post, a bit like my first attempt above…see what happens and take it from there.

Post Of The Week

As I missed a week last week, I’m going to allow myself two in this edition! This is mainly because I can’t not have the brilliant following post not be a winner!

89,000 reactions and 9500 comments suggest most of you would have seen this belter already but just in case you didn’t, I wanted to highlight it because it’s such an important message and one close to my heart (excuse the pun!). It’s also a self-portrait and probably worse than one taken in bed at 5am! I’m sure Emma doesn’t give a ‘monkeys’ though, given what she has been through!

Well done to Emma for a phenomenal post of the week for the week before last.

This weeks winner is from one of my favourite creators and it’s also a document post with a humorous but ‘on point’ message.

It’s also done very well for a doc post with over 500 reactions and 230+ comments. It’s not viral like Emma’s post but those numbers are not to be sniffed at.

What I love about Dave’s posts is that he always manages to combine entertainment with the promotion of his work (not the T-shirts!).

That’s all for this week, I will be back again soon.

In the meantime have fun posting your amazing faces!

This article has also been recorded as a podcast;

Linkedinformed on Google podcasts?/?Linkedinformed on Apple podcasts