| >The kind of content that performs best are strong opinions informed by actual expertise. So... mediocre posts that combine a strong opinion along with a perceived position of authority. No actual knowledge needed. >Unfortunately that's not the way marketing works [...] they are much more likely to trust you, and therefore buy from you, if they've seen your content 1,000x vs a couple of long reads. LinkedIn rewards mediocrity. > your LinkedIn profile should act as a funnel, moving people from newsfeed --> your profile --> the most important piece of content you want them to read. From there, you can capture their email to touch them on another channel (inbox), push them to your YouTube / Twitter / community, etc. LinkedIn. rewards. mediocrity. >Building in public Is the most mediocrity filled drivel that gets pushed out, somewhere between "blogspam" and "here's how i succeeded at leetcode". I can personally guarantee that 99% of what you've posted on LinkedIn has been boring, formatted, mediocre shit. And cool, it's made you money, I'm glad for you. Linkedin rewarded your mediocre posts. It's literally what you've written. That you've spammed people enough that they somehow associate you with a good thing. Not because they've read useful information from you: just because your name has popped up often. And for names to pop up often, it requires you to either be a "thought leader" (read: posting mediocre shit to linkedin every day), or be simple enough and short enough that the poepl that don't spend more than 3 minutes reading mediocre shit in LinkedIn will repost it. In good news, it's not just you! People like Eric Schmidt that are already a million times more renowned than you already post mediocre, stupid shit every day. |
What LinkedIn rewards are posts that get a lot of reactions and comments, which in theory sounds like a good metric. But when a metric becomes a target, it ceases to be a good metric, and that's quite visible with all the cringe "comment $keyword to get my free guide" posts.
Personally, I take the conscious hit on my business and don't play that game. But I'm pretty convinced that I would be more successful if I played it, and I'm still looking for a way to do it that doesn't feel wrong to me.
At the end of the day, marketing is not about reaching people just like myself. It's about reaching potential buyers. And the key question to me becomes what the "LinkedIn" in "LinkedIn rewards mediocrity" really is. Is it the platform with its algorithms? Or is it rather the audience itself?
We all gotta find buyers. Sometimes in the form of employers, sometimes in the form of clients, sometimes consumers. But whatever we have to offer, we need to find people interested in it. And while I have a good network that got me buyers throughout my career, not everybody gets lucky like that, so I try not to look down on them for using LinkedIn to that end.