You shouldn't automate everything.

Back in June, I decided to "up my game" on LinkedIn, I was already using LinkedIn a lot, but thought that I could be doing more on the platform. I also wanted to see if I could make it easier on myself (shortcut the system) for a number of reasons; content is hard, I am super busy, and insert other excuses. I did some looking around for how to automate things; I already loved Buffer (you should join their slack community) and found a content curating engine.

I set up my buffer account and linked it to the content curation engine and picked some topics that are relevant to my industry and hit go. Then I sat back and propped my feet up on my co-space desk like a boss (until I got funny looks from the other members) and waited for something to happen.

Then...crickets. Nothing happened! On average my posts were getting a lot of views, but nothing was happening from it. I decided to give it more time, I needed more information and a bigger sample size.

I heard comments from people saying that I was at the top of their feeds every time that they refreshed. They were coming up to see how I was doing it; someone asked me how I was able to get anything else done.

The bad news was that they were the people who were on LinkedIn all the time; they were using it for networking and prospecting. I wasn't reaching new people or potential customers at all.

On average my curated content posts were getting 40 views, 5 likes, and 0 comments (I know because I build a spreadsheet). All that non-effort for nothing! It was jarring when someone actually liked or commented on one of the articles, because I had to go and look at the article topic since I wasn't even reading the articles.

LinkedIn, like every social platform, wants people to stay on the site, so why would they actively put content with blatant links to go off-site in front of people who are occasional users who are just browsing their news feed? 

I saw that it actually had the opposite effect when I posted something that was mine. I posted a pulse article that I thought was pretty decent, talking about how to analyze your website and not just start over when you think it could be better.  I thought for sure this would get some interactions, it got eight clicks.

What worked best was when I created a post that had some thought behind it, or if I posted a success story. Those were getting a lot of views, likes and some comments. Bonus points if I tagged someone in the post. 

My new goal is to post articles that are interesting and some thought about why. Interact with influencers on their posts that have a lot of comments. Create articles that bring value to people in the hopes that they want to talk about the topic.

A lot of people have the wrong idea about social media, it isn't just about getting likes. Knowing what the ROI is on your social media is important, if you are going to hire someone to do it, you need to spend some time to figure out what you want and let them tell you how they are going to get to those results.

As of today, I am closing down the curating engine. You won't be seeing me at the top of your feed as often. When you do see me in the future, it will be content that I found insightful, an opinion about a topic or article, or a success story. I hope if you read it, you'll be moved to comment and let's have a conversation about the topic.