A few times a week I make the mistake of scrolling through LinkedIn, and every single time I find myself screenshotting something absurd so a friend can share in the lunacy with me. What used to be a website dedicated to developing a professional network has evolved into a performative circus populated by top shelf clowns. LinkedIn has become an absolute disaster.
It wasn’t always like this. If memory serves only a few years ago LinkedIn was a semi-serious place where you listed your resume and added your coworkers and college friends and never really looked at. Maybe you’d get endorsed for a few really obvious skills like eating apples or operating a computer. Yet somewhere along the way its original purpose was completely bastardized. LinkedIn has morphed into an unholy amalgamation of attention seekers and aspiring influencers and micro sales gurus, all locked in a superficial dance with the ultimate goal of getting reactions.
It wasn’t until I found myself in sales that I learned the true purpose of LinkedIn is to sell your information to sales organizations so people like me can figure out who to chase down at any given company. It makes you realize that every action LinkedIn takes or every behavior they encourage is possibly because it drives more information into their database. If that’s the case and the system is working as intended then I say kudos to them. However, I’d like to think at least some of this self-aggrandizing behavior has people at LinkedIn headquarters wondering where it all went wrong. Let’s dive in.
The one sentence paragraph writers
I don’t know what conditions in the universe allowed the one line paragraph format of LinkedIn writing to become the standard for aspiring personalities. Not a day goes by that I don’t see someone tell a story in two dozen separate lines that could have been contained in two or three paragraphs. This is usually done in a way to cast the writer in a noble light and half the time ends with them pitching their product. Not familiar?
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I went down to the cheese store today.
Normally I wouldn’t allow such an indulgence, but today was an extra special one.
My youngest son just achieved an irrelevant accomplishment, and I felt we should celebrate with a wheel of cheese for the family.
But something struck me.
Even though I was there at what should be the busiest hour, I was the only person in the store.
“Anthony, what gives?” I asked the storekeeper.
I learned that day that business at the cheese store was slow. People were buying cheese, but not in quantities large enough to justify an entire shop for it.
Anthony had never even given thought to diversifying his offerings.
He and I had a long talk that evening where we talked about the importance of giving customers multiple reasons to come back. This is the concept I preach to customers every day at Diversifi.io, and it saved this man’s livelihood.
Diversify like your business depends on it. Because it does.
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LinkedIn is flooded with these types of stories, and I partially understand it. Many of us want to be writers; I include myself in that number. But what is it about LinkedIn that lends itself to this one line method? In general, I’m not a fan of one sentence paragraphs. I believe they’re overused in an effort to falsely impart gravitas onto a statement. A person’s writing should carry enough weight to where you don’t need to artificially emphasize sentences that frequently. This LinkedIn style of writing is the extreme logical conclusion of this lack of confidence in writing.
What baffles me the most is the desired outcome. What is the point of writing these things on LinkedIn? Is it simply to boost your profile? Are people seeking out the dopamine hit of getting positive engagement? I have to wonder if a salesperson is out there getting tons of leads by writing what amounts to modern capitalist poetry. If that’s the case I’m starting this tomorrow.
The sales gurus
I work in sales, so a lot of my connections are salespeople. Or enough people follow LinkedIn influencers who write a lot about sales that they pop in my feed. I generally dislike the posts made by these people. I’d say I dislike the people but I know some of them well and they’re solid individuals, but maybe fell into a bit of a trap of seeking validation.
The most common trope of the LinkedIn sales gurus are to take completely inane stories from one’s daily life, possibly fabricated but certainly exaggerated, and then add a sales lesson at the end. If they’re really feeling themselves there might also be a product pitch added at the end. A frequent method to try and appear more grounded and wholehearted is to learn that sales lesson from an unlikely source that highlights the humility oozing out of the writer. Think janitor, plumber, landscaper; people who do actual work. If a LinkedIn sales guru has a conversation with one of these professions you can bet they’re going to post about it.
Why does this bother me? For one, I can’t imagine an existence in which you go through life and experience every moment with a lens of “wow, this would make a great LinkedIn post.” Second, I’ve read enough sales books in my career to where I could go three more lifetimes and never run out of generic sales advice. Yet I guarantee next week I’ll read about someone who was inspired by the busboy to tidy up his CRM just as efficiently, and do so using Cleenr (Note: I thought this was a made up company but I did a quick double check and it’s actually a makeup removal tool).
I get it. I’d love to be a sales guru also. If you get influential enough you can do lots of things. Start a podcast (please don’t), become a sales trainer (dream job but not really), or write a sales book to make sure everyone adopts your methodology. And I guess the first step to becoming a sales guru is getting a following of people who fawn over your very generic advice on the importance of grit at the end of a quarter. I’m actually talking myself into this now.
The oversharers
From 2007 to 2016 I was a pretty avid Facebook user. I was certainly caught up in the era of writing funny Facebook statuses to garner 37 likes and pat myself on the back. In that nine year run I never once bothered to share any actual personal news, even though that was decidedly the place for them. Since then I’ve gone back and deleted 90% of what I wrote on Facebook simply because I couldn’t believe I ever thought people needed to know my stream of consciousness.
I thought the phenomenon of announcing extremely personal news to a network of relative strangers was firmly Facebook territory, but lately I’m on LinkedIn more and every fifth post is about something that seems very out of place for the setting. Marriages, divorces, illnesses, deaths, births, vacations– it’s all there. The one thing I’ve seen relatively little of – and I am endlessly grateful for this – is political opinion. I imagine because it’s one of the most divisive things that can uttered and it’s a very quick way to find yourself ostracized in some settings.
Where does this stop? Is it possible to draw a line? I was about to write that I go to LinkedIn to stay up to date on my professional network, but I honestly don’t think that’s even the case anymore. Who knows why I go. I think I just log on to see what kind of insane shit people are going to write that day.
Honorable mention
These aren’t as egregious as the ones above, but more personal pet peeves.
Humble and overt braggers: I am genuinely curious about the “humbled and thrilled to announce a new position at ___________” posts. I do not understand the point. It’s my understanding that LinkedIn notifies your network of your job changes unless you specifically ask it not to. Seemed like a perfectly functional feature. Most of us aren’t in a position where connections need to know you’ve changed jobs instantaneously so they can rush to make use of your new role.
Please note that I have no problem with the idea of celebrating a new job. I simply don’t think LinkedIn is the place for an over the top announcement. LinkedIn networks are very different from other social media type networks. Facebook, Instagram– those people are purportedly your friends. LinkedIn connections aren’t usually your friends. Keep it simple.
Half-hearted marketing content: I could be extremely misplaced here, but I wonder a lot about the efficacy of writing hyper specific company content and then asking your front line employees to share it to their network. I’m not in marketing so don’t have any information on conversions, but I’ve got to think that unless your company is an industry leader with content that’s actually going to impact someone’s environment, no one is reading your small blog post. I can say that part with confidence as someone who writes a blog that no one reads.
I’ve worked for both small and large companies that felt some obligation to keep a blog. Maybe it’s because the largest, most successful companies keep a rather compelling stream of information for their customers so leaders falsely equate frequent blog posting to success. Instead what I often see is largely irrelevant content shared without context from a few low level employees that ends up with three likes, all of those from employees of that same company.
What’s the goal of this? If you know, email me– [email protected]
Where does it end?
This is the question with any trend that veers into absurdity. We’ve seen time and again where social networks outgrow their original purpose and mutate into a monstrosity beyond recognition (see: Akira). MySpace turned into a place for music and irrelevance. Facebook turned into a political battleground and cemetery. Snapchat has become a tool for philanderers. Twitter is a brigade of lunacy.
With each of those though, there has always been a replacement growing and waiting in the wings that people will migrate to as the original service becomes too far gone. To my knowledge there is no such professional network to which people can escape. As it stands, we’re all trapped in LinkedIn’s grotesque web. I assume we’re no more than three years out from the LinkedIn Farmville era. Someone save me.
