Your LinkedIn posts are boring. Here’s why...

Engagement is a big deal on LinkedIn.

Getting (and giving) engagement, by way of reacting to and commenting on posts, is arguably the lifeblood of this platform.

It’s what makes all those hours spent planning your content worthwhile and what helps to translate all that good LinkedIn visibility ‘stuff’ into profitability for your business.

But what if you’re regularly getting little to no engagement on your posts?

What if you’re more used to the sound of crickets on your content than you’d care to admit publicly?

What really causes low engagement on LinkedIn and how can you fix it for your own posts?

Blame it on the algorithm

Well, you might have heard the words “algorithm” and “posting times” bandied around in the discussion around low engagement on LinkedIn and while yes, it is possible that the LinkedIn algorithm could be rearing its ugly side to limit visibility to your posts;

...and yes, the timing off your posts could be off (you’re posting mid afternoon, for example, when your audience have already been logged on and waiting since morning);

...there could also be another explanation for your low engagement, one that you might not want to hear, and that’s this - your LinkedIn posts are boring!

I’m sorry to be the one to break it to you but boring posts may account for some of the low engagement you've experienced on LinkedIn.

The good news is, if your LinkedIn posts are currently boring, it doesn’t have to stay this way! Read on for the eight common types of boring posts and how to fix them.

8 common types of boring LinkedIn posts (and the remedy)

Boring post #1: Sharing other people’s content

This can be sharing posts from people you like, sharing news articles, or sharing the latest viral post from TikTok.

There’s nothing wrong with sharing other people’s content on LinkedIn, in principle, but if that’s the ONLY thing you do, that’s a major turn off for most people - it’s boring!

Besides, you can’t build a personal brand off other people’s content - you need to find (and own) your own voice.

Remedy: Start sharing your own original content

Boring post #2: Sharing the obvious

Every industry has things that are obvious, even to the most novice of beginners.

Let’s take public speaking for example: there are some obvious things about being a good speaker that we hear time and time again - make eye contact, practice beforehand, watch your body language, blah blah blah.

Your audience will quickly get bored of your content if you only share what’s obvious in your field. Why do they need you when they can get better results on the same topics from Google?

Remedy: Dig deeper and find content that’s useful to your audience but not well-known and talked about by everyone and their dog.

Boring post #3: Using stock images

If you’re going to use a stock image to accompany your posts (and I don’t particularly recommend you do this - much better to create your own images), please don’t go searching on Google and downloading the first image you see.

Two reasons for this: 1) You’re likely breaking copyright laws; 2) You’ll end up with a bog standard stock image that everyone uses or have seen before - that will make your post boring.

Remedy: Search out alternative sites that do good quality stock images (one of my favourites is blackillustrations.com - I like to use their diverse images on my LinkedIn articles, like on this one).

You may have to pay a small fee for good quality images but if you’re serious about using LinkedIn to build your brand and grow your business, it’s a small investment that’s worth making.

Boring post #4: Imitating Yellow Pages

In case you’re not familiar with Yellow Pages, this was a big yellow ‘book’ that we used to get through the post here in the UK.

This book had nothing in it but adverts. Adverts for all sorts of businesses ranging from carpenters and gardeners to lawyers and accountants.

Unless you were specifically looking for a service represented in the ads, Yellow Pages had very little value and ours often went straight from the doormat into the bin.

Some people’s content on LinkedIn are essentially the online equivalent of Yellow Pages - promotion after promotion after promotion!

If all you do with your content is promote your business, you deliver very little value to your audience and as a result people will throw your posts in the bin, metaphorically speaking.

Promotional content is an important part of your content mix on LinkedIn (see my article on 3 Types of Content You Should Be Posting on LinkedIn) but it should definitely not be the whole piece.

Remedy: Limit the promotional posts to 20% of your content and concentrate on serving your audience with interesting value-adding content the rest of the time.

Boring post #5: Not varying your content form

It’s easy to get stuck in a rut with the form of content you put out. Text posts might be your comfort zone, or maybe even video, but if you keep serving the same type of content day in and day out, it gets a little boring for your audience.

Remedy: Vary the form of content on your posts to maintain interest from your audience. You can use polls, document posts, videos, images, GIFs even...the possibilities are many! Just don’t go getting stuck in a rut.

Boring post #6: Adopting a professional voice - aka “code switching”

Code switching is common in the workplace. It’s essentially the practice of adopting a different voice, tone, language or posture in order to better fit in to the environment you’re in.

Lots of people code switch on LinkedIn by adopting a “professional” voice that’s nothing like their real selves.

When you code switch, your audience will never get to know the real you, so not only will this becoming boring in the long run (and hard for you to maintain), you will find it very difficult to build that ‘know me, like me, trust me’ factor that’s the bedrock of social selling on LinkedIn.

Remedy: Lose the act. Let’s get to know the real you on LinkedIn!

Boring post #7: Taking yourself too seriously

When it comes to avoiding boredom in your posts, don’t listen to the “LinkedIn is a professional platform, this is not Facebook” brigade. Taking yourself too seriously is a surefire way to lose your audience over time.

Every now and again, you need to let your hair down and show people that underneath that “professional” persona you have, there’s a real multi-dimensional human being!

Remedy: Add some personal posts to your content mix to avoid taking yourself too seriously (this is also covered in the Content article mentioned above)

Boring post #8: Addressing ALL of LinkedIn, instead of the individual

This one’s a personal bugbear. When I see those “hey LinkedIn” or “hi all” posts, I literally cringe.

Not addressing your audience as individuals is a great way to bore them from the get-go.

Have you noticed how much more attention you pay to someone when you feel like they’re speaking to you directly? The opposite is true of generic ‘talk to everyone’ openings - you lose the attention, and interest, of your audience.

Remedy: Stop trying to talk to everyone on LinkedIn. Focus instead on that one person in your target audience who needs to hear what you have to say today.

So there you have it - 8 types of boring posts to avoid doing on LinkedIn if you want your target audience to engage with your posts.

? ? Which of these types of boring posts have you been guilty of in the past? Let me know in the comments!

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