Why LinkedIn isn’t fun for many people

Find Your Superpower newsletter 062

Read time: 5 minutes     

Topics covered: LinkedIn content marketing, analytics, bootcamp

I’ve been having a busy few weeks on school vacation with my family at Club Med Maldives (more to come in next week’s newsletter), and preparing for a 100-pax STEM leadership summit next week which I am the organizer of.

I usually prefer to write newsletters that give us something to aspire to, to walk towards. Today’s newsletter is unique as I discuss what we should avoid instead.

In my flagship six-week Find Your Superpower LinkedIn bootcamps, I teach my bootcampers the technical aspects of writing a successful post. Believe it or not, in many cases I can turn around a poorly performing account (5-10 likes per post) in a couple of weeks.

But what is much harder to do is to change mindsets and shift beliefs around content creation on LinkedIn. And if I don’t fix that in six weeks, the beautiful new habit of posting weekly on LinkedIn which we had painstakingly created together will simply not last the test of time.

So I guess the following points also describe my biggest nightmare for what my clients could possibly do.

Ladies and gentlemen, here are three reasons why LinkedIn has ceased to be fun and enjoyable for many LinkedIn content creators:

1/ We lose our authenticity on LinkedIn in an attempt to pander to our audience

I once had a client tell me that they couldn’t post on LinkedIn until they figured out what their audience wants from them.

This was my reply: “Your audience wants from you what you want to tell them. When you show us who you really are, your audience will naturally find you.”

Remember, a great LinkedIn post is magnetic: it will both attract our ideal audience, which I also refer to as our tribe or community, and repel those who do not belong in our tribe.

People pleasing and writing trendy topics to pander to our audience is not a great strategy for creating a differentiated and blue-ocean brand.

Not only will our audience feel that the content we put out isn’t genuine, they will also not be able to distinguish us from everyone else doing the same.

Instead of writing for a nameless and faceless audience, why not share authentic stories with positive intent that are also highly professional and work-relevant. You will be surprised how quickly your tribe rallies around you.

2/ We believe that post virality on LinkedIn is a bellwether for success

I’ve done a thought exercise with clients where I ask them to pick the more successful post: a post with 50 likes versus a post with 500 likes.

They mostly think I am messing around with them on this one.

“Obviously the post with 500 likes… d-oh!” they say.

My reply may sound like a cop out, but it really depends.

The most important rule that all LinkedIn creators must understand is, “Likes on LinkedIn do NOT pay the bills.”

A post with 500 likes may also be a post filled with negative intent, a rant, a pity-me post, or something generally irrelevant. Sure, it’ll fetch you eyeballs but also leave you with a hole in your pocket.

Conversely, a post with 50 likes may only attract a very narrow and defined audience, but it could lead to a DM in your inbox that leads to a new retainer client signing you on for a five-digit sales contract. Or an investor approaching you for an M&A opportunity.

Again, nothing wrong with virality, but that alone cannot be the measure of success.

PS: the 50-like scenario has happened to me. And if done correctly, it could happen to you too.

3/ We overanalyze our post analytics, making LinkedIn tedious and transactional

As a biomedical scientist with a PhD degree, I believe it is a fair statement to make that I am trained to analyze deep data.

And yet, I advise people who pay me good money for a six-week bootcamp not to overanalyze their LinkedIn posts. Fortunately, in most cases, they listen to me.

The reason is that we are all built differently, and some of us would likely have obsessive tendencies. The moment we fixate on the data, LinkedIn ceases to be a place of joy and giving.

I am not opposed to the idea of creating a target for each LinkedIn post in terms of engagement, but for many of you, it will completely change the tenor and objective of your writing.

Instead of unlocking your vast and deep industry experience, sharing your abundance with everyone, and networking to find new lifelong industry mates, you begin seeing everyone and everything in terms of numbers.

Every LinkedIn post turns transactional.

Quid pro quo.

Plus it becomes a huge source of anxiety and stress.

I’ve seen some content creators get really fixated on why a post gets 10% less likes than another post, despite it being a completely different post with a completely different picture and a completely different message.

If we choose to instead find our North Star and follow it, we will see the energy in our posts shift, and our audience will also start to notice it and appreciate us better.

Harnessing energy is more powerful than harnessing analytics. Please believe me on that.

ASSEMBLING MY DREAM TEAM

We are enrolling for Cohorts 3 and 4 of our six-week Find Your Superpower LinkedIn bootcamp, where highly curated groups of mid-career professionals level up on their LinkedIn game together.

➡️ Cohort 3 bootcamp dates: 3 August to 14 September (90% FULL)

➡️ Cohort 4 bootcamp dates: 5 October to 16 November (15% FULL)

Cohort 3 of the bootcamp starts after the summer holidays, which is the perfect moment for you to execute on the dreams that you made for yourself in 2024.

Since February this year, we have trained more than 80 individuals in past bootcamps and you can read many of their testimonials here.

I am glad to work with my dream team, consisting of my co-facilitator Amanda Cua, as well as two LinkedIn Top Voice guest speakers: James Cheo, CFA, CAIA, FRM and Chris Do.

During this six-week bootcamp, you will receive:

• Six on-demand video lectures

• Six writing prompts and writing gyms

• Live Q&A sessions with Top Voice instructors

• Fireside chats with top LinkedIn creators and LinkedIn Top Voices

• Access to our community circles for peer feedback and learning

• Accountability and support from peers and two LinkedIn Top Voice instructors

REGISTER NOW!

REGISTER NOW!

REGISTER NOW!

Thanks for reading issue 062 of my weekly Find Your Superpower newsletter.

For those of you who are new to my newsletter, Find Your Superpower is subscribed to by 38,000+ people, and discusses the following three goals: (1) Making a career transition, (2) Professional branding on LinkedIn, and (3) Reinventing ourselves for the future of work.