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Shameless Work Influencers Are the Bane of LinkedIn

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Re: Shameless Work Influencers Are the Bane of LinkedIn

#31

Post by throwaway894345 »

k__ wrote: post #24
truth_ wrote: post #22

I find LinkedIn really cringy. And I haven't seen ONE post there that actually added value to my life. It is also toxic as hell. But I know people who got employment offers from LinkedIn. So it adds value in that sense. I just mute and block those influencers. And check LinkedIn maybe twice a week. One of the things I cannot find any excuse for is how fake people are. They are behaving in a fake manner even when they…

Guess, it's like Twitter. If you follow the right people you get good content. The only thing bothering me on LinkedIn are the recruiters and that got much better in the last years. Most of the time I use it to stay in touch with old co-workers and to syndicate my articles, which sometimes (2-5 times a year) leads to new clients.

You can indeed curate, but I definitely get the vibe that cringe is the default mode on LinkedIn (which is still strictly better than Twitter’s default mode, toxicity).

Re: Shameless Work Influencers Are the Bane of LinkedIn

#33

Post by k__ »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #31
k__ wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guess, it's like Twitter. If you follow the right people you get good content. The only thing bothering me on LinkedIn are the recruiters and that got much better in the last years. Most of the time I use it to stay in touch with old co-workers and to syndicate my articles, which sometimes (2-5 times a year) leads to new clients.

You can indeed curate, but I definitely get the vibe that cringe is the default mode on LinkedIn (which is still strictly better than Twitter’s default mode, toxicity).

Maybe, social media curation is a skill that not many people posess.

Re: Shameless Work Influencers Are the Bane of LinkedIn

#34

Post by abhishekbasu »

I often wonder if LI is trying to do too many things at once. At this point it hard not to come to the conclusion that it promotes certain types of behaviors. The problem is that if left laissez-faire, the feed will not attract folks who abhor work influencers. So, perhaps they need to ask who they are really targeting?

For generic work-banter, an app like Blind seems to cut it better. Given the anonymity, it is able to (anecdotally) elicit truer depictions of one's workplace, and this helps folks get real value through what are in essence (unaggregated) reviews of companies and job roles.

By using real profiles and establishing a set up of "professionalism", LI absolutely cuts/reduces the possibility of deriving real value for the layman (read non work influencer and non CXO). Apart from connecting with old colleagues and looking for a new job, why should the layman even bother logging into the platform on a fairly regular basis?

Having said that, LI is great for some things even for the layman. It has been great for looking for new jobs as the article states. But it seems to have a crisis of identity, and it needs to figure out their core audience or differentiate product offerings before it deteriorates into a job board for the laymen like me, in which case it will be possible for a new and trendy job board to come along and replace it.

Re: Shameless Work Influencers Are the Bane of LinkedIn

#35

Post by rcarmo »

Makes perfect sense. In one of my previous roles, we used to keep track of SSI (Social Selling Index), and we would be gently nudged into posting about a few things (events, launches, etc.)

I decided to game the system and shot up to the top of the rankings by simply posting actual useful stuff (pretty much the same commentary I would post on my personal link blog, but with some bearing on work topics).

I quit doing it after a while because I thought I had made my point, but not before I had reached the top three in our cohort.

Going past #10 took some doing, though. By that time I had a JavaScript scraper and a Jupyter notebook to predict the best hashtags, and if the LinkedIn API was actually usable I’d probably have fully automated the whole thing.

Re: Shameless Work Influencers Are the Bane of LinkedIn

#36

Post by Inhibit »

truth_ wrote: post #19
Inhibit wrote: post #3

Linkedin is a marketing platform where you are the product. Use it as a tool if you need to but try not to forget that. If you feel something's horrible there it's likely by design and within that context. (edit: you're to you are)

> where you are the product Isn't this true for all major social media platforms?

Mostly. But it still seems (to me) that people have the expectation that it provides utility of some sort first and marketing second.

I'm unsure how other platforms being identical in that regard moderates the statement. I still feel a reminder is helpful.

Re: Shameless Work Influencers Are the Bane of LinkedIn

#37

Post by Inhibit »

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #17

Why would you even want to use it? Seriously, the only time people are using it is when they are looking for a new job, and this is usually a relatively a short time. After that you just turn off all notifications and basically mute the site for the next few years. I have to admit I created an inbox rule for automatically archiving all LI mails without reading as they were using all dirty tricks to send mails even af…

Likewise. I've black-holed all the linked in e-mails to their own folder. And are there ever a lot when I glance in there (currently).

Re: Shameless Work Influencers Are the Bane of LinkedIn

#38

Post by lordnacho »

It's the faux-thentic trope pieces on LinkedIn that annoy me. "I was working so hard I forgot to be me" or "after years of constant success my daughter showed me what success really means". Apparently it means getting likes from strangers.

And then there's the business tall tales: "I hired a guy with no qualifications other than a big heart and now he's running a multinational". "I made 10k job applications and landed my dream job. You can too".

I think the reason is alluded to in the article: it's not polite to call out BS, and if you do the work involved is OOM larger than creating it.

Re: Shameless Work Influencers Are the Bane of LinkedIn

#39

Post by mirekrusin »

simonswords82 wrote: post #5

As with all things in life humans are programmed to work out how things work and then abuse them to maximise their upside. LinkedIn is the same as any social media. It can be gamed and if that's to the advantage of certain people then they will game it.

Exactly. At some point ie. reviews were great until they became (black?) market themselves.

Re: Shameless Work Influencers Are the Bane of LinkedIn

#40

Post by MattGaiser »

truth_ wrote: post #26
MattGaiser wrote: post #2

One thing I have noticed from influencers is shameless copy and pasting of what other influencers have said, or even more shamelessly, some influencers going around after seeing some trite bit of wisdom and claiming they were the original source and demanding credit. So they turn into sharks fighting over scraps.

A shamelessly copied and posted post was circulating LinkedIn a few days ago, and someone shared screengrabs how these bottom-feeders are copying and posting content. The content of the post makes matter worse. A bunch of recruiters posted like this- "generic name was a recent college grad he/she was really talented. they asked for X amount of money. But I gave them Y (Y quite > X). This is the time for human solidar…

> How low can these people stoop?

For 15 minutes of fame and potential fortune? Planck Length.

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