Incoming: your weekly dive into the LinkedIn zeitgeist. For better or worse, richer or poorer, the world’s networking marriage with LinkedIn shows increasing signs of complication.
To be clear, we aren’t haters. We admire LinkedIn. And yet, we also want to build a strong network of better business allies. Is LinkedIn the place to do that?
Probably depends on how you use it. Nevertheless, here’s the scuttlebutt:
Disclaimer: Reddit tends to emphasize those among us at the end of our patience or without fuses altogether. That said, we found a valid complaint that shall be the focus of this week’s analysis:
Strong words, to be sure. But the underlying point has validity (and we’re suckers for a Dune reference).
It’s hard to determine whether folks practice what they preach individually, but posturing seems to be at an all-time high.
Instead of getting to know people (networking), we only see what people put out there. It’s a sort of “I-am-what-I-want-you-to-think-I-am” thing rather than real, meaningful connections.
Sure, real relationships can start on LinkedIn. But personally speaking (and from many unscientific anecdotes from people in my sphere), they’re few and far between.
One user identified post frequency as a problem. With 53 upvotes as of this writing, folks seemed to resonate.
It’s not clear to us that posting is the problem, though. Posts either get traction and popularity on their merits or they don’t. **shrugs**
Those posts (and reach/engagement) are their own data points, really. They are what they are.
It says more about the folks who spend time on LinkedIn than anything else. Did it bring you value as an audience? Did it bring you value as a poster? **shrugs again**
For sure, you can grow your audience, following, list, scope of influence, etc. on the platform. We don’t scoff at that. But we repeat, is it networking? We all think of it as networking, but is it?
Here’s a perceptive zinger from a particularly perturbed user:
Yeah, there’s a lot of look-at-me or check-out-how-sad/joyful/humbled this is. But again, in the most charitable way we can say it, it’s just another place people say stuff now. For their own purposes, goals, and gains, people hang out there…consuming and producing content accordingly.
As a good friend of ours says: “It’s what it’s.” Powerful.
We found this comment very practical, like cooperating with the mob in 1963 New Jersey:
If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. LinkedIn is a great place to push out your virtual resume, for sure.
This week’s most comedic and/or clever quip goes to:
Harsh, but probably has a point.
For one comment, we couldn’t help ourselves. Reddit has a weird way of sucking you in if you have thoughts. Note: we’re willing to be wrong about this, but we don’t think we are.
Fair? Unfair? Let us know.
In the spirit of LinkedIn, we are honored, humbled, overjoyed, thrilled, etc. to help you with your networking. As long as you know something, who you know is way better than what you know. We’d like to invite you to the only platform that brings people together one-on-one and in person for real networking.
If you want to grow your network and get to know someone in the business world, soon you’ll just be able to ask them. On Tripally, everyone expects to meet in person to build their network the real way.
Join the waitlist. It’s free!
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