What’s the point of LinkedIn?

I love social media. I’m what fellow marketers would refer to as an “Early Adopter”. Or even maybe an innovator!? In spring 2007, when I first decided to close my business and uproot my entire life in Scotland, to move to the South East of England, in pursuit of a new direction in Dentistry with Dentsply in the UK, I joined “The” Facebook. 

I immediately saw it as a way to stay connected to my friends and family back in Scotland and also the ones that are spread across the planet. Back then, you had to say which university you belonged to, to join Facebook. I lied and said Cambridge. (if you’re going to re-start a make-believe academic career at 34 to join a social network, it should be a good one, right?). That joining step was a barrier then that I can only conclude that many of my friends and family probably saw as a reason not to join the network. It took about 3 years for enough of those people that I wanted to be in touch with to join and make it a connector to my life in Scotland.

Even in 2010, when I tried to get DENTSPLY UK on-board, baptising myself as @dentsplyguy on Facebook and Twitter, the corporate side of DENTSPLY didn’t like that one bit and after a year of trying, I eventually had to take down my profiles. I’m so happy to see all their Dentsply guys and gals are all talking via social.

Since then, social media has come to dominate our lives, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and Tik-tok are the dominant media channels for most of us in our daily lives to some degree or another… I confess, I am addicted at times!! 

However, with a child on the way, (keeping busy during lockdown) and the fact that the nefarious side of social media is ever more omni-present, I am seriously trying to break my relationship with smart phones and social media (So-Me for short). (check out this phone I had around 2005. https://www.amazon.co.uk/EXEC-SMART-PHONE-PDA-PHONE-LAPTOP/dp/B000M5F0LM My mates used ask me if I had my Nintendo with me when we went to the pub. They were all carrying micro Nokias at the time, Zoolander style. I guess I looked like Dom Joly in Trigger Happy TV to them)

So, you get it, I love tech and social media…

The point here though is, LinkedIn. I’ve never really got it as a “social” media. I know lots of people use it very effectively in business as a lead generation tool. (feel free to drop me a line with some basic hints on this) but where’s the social really? Glorified CV maybe, spam sales aggregator-imo, definitely yes… Connecter of friends and colleagues on a human level-I’m not so sure.

I am not saying that it isn’t, I just don’t personally feel that way about it most of the time…. But I am happy to be proved wrong.

This year has been...well… how do we put it, Absolutely Shit! (can you swear on LinkedIn? Hopefully you can because even in business, swearing is cathartic.)

In the UK, political economic uncertainty is looming with quite negative consequences for most, covid has pre-emptively eviscerated markets, industries and companies ahead of our exit from Europe. It’s meant a lot of people losing their jobs. 

A trickle have begun putting themselves out there on LinkedIn to hopefully get back on the payroll somewhere but I know from many private messages recently, that a flood of friends and colleagues, past and present will be doing the same very soon.

I’ve shared a few posts from friends here, who are now looking for work. The posts seem to get very little engagement. I don’t know if LinkedIn is anything other than a megaphone for the salesman at the moment or not? 

I want to help my friends who’ve lost livelihoods and jobs, who’s businesses are struggling, who’s staff are being made redundant. Who face economic struggles and even food poverty. I don’t feel like I’m being glib or facetious to mention food poverty as an issue in 2020 in a G8 country.

If you have watched the Netflix film, “A Life on Our Planet” ( if you haven’t, do so asap) with David Attenborough, you’ll know that he makes clear points about how to solve the global problems we face. They all require teamwork, connection, trust and co-operation and a realisation that keeping anyone in poverty is good for absolutely no-one. To be very clear, I am not comparing people being made redundant in the UK to people struggling with real, abject poverty in some parts of the underdeveloped/ under supported parts of the world, except to say, another’s problem is also our own. 

Maybe I’m wrong about LinkedIn. Feasibly I’m a LinkedIn Laggard? Possibly, I am talking to an empty auditorium with this Jerry McGuire-esque memo to humanity..? 

BUT! If I’m not shouting into the wind and If you’ve read it and you have some way of helping me find good work for my friends and colleagues on here- if LinkedIn as a community is about connecting us for something better ahead, rebuilding futures, working economies and leaving no-one behind, please get in touch or follow and comment on the posts I share from my friends who are looking for help. Or please point me to where we need to be

Friends! If you’re posting a job search, please tag me in!

Good luck everyone. X