LinkedIn says STOP doing this

What’s up, errbuddy?

Sorry I missed a few weeks there. I was not, in fact, arrested on Halloween as I tongue-in-cheekly feared in the last issue.

After Halloween, I simply decided to take the week off.

And then the next week, the universe decided I should take the week off. 

And to encourage me, it gave me a debilitating course of COVID.

Needless to say, I spent most of the week horizontal, like this:

Anyway, this week we’re going to do something a bit different.

Some news came over the transom that I want to make sure you get.

Because if you’re posting on LinkedIn (and let’s face it, why would you be a subscriber otherwise), this is news you should know.

“Yikes, what could be so important?”

LinkedIn recently dropped some “advice” on how to use your brand and content to grow on LinkedIn.

While it looks like a perfectly innocent, helpful little guide, looks can be deceiving.

If you put your thinking cap on, you’ll quickly realize that this guide isn’t really saying, “Here are some helpful tips you can try!”

It’s more saying, “Do what we say, or your profile is gonna get it!”

So!

We’ll go over the guide, and I’ll give you some practical tips so you can win more on LinkedIn and avoid being downranked into algo oblivion.

But first!

For my new subscribers:

I’m Dusten, and I co-run a personal branding agency called Zenpost.

This is Cool Story, where I summon my decade+ of content expertise to teach you how to write great content on LinkedIn.

Each week, I tear down a post from one of LinkedIn’s biggest personal brands, show you how it’s done, and give you a content template you can stick in your swipe file.

Let’s get to it!

LinkedIn’s guide to content (that won’t get penalized)

First up, you can read the entire guide here, and I recommend you do so (including all the little “learn more” buttons).

I hate to assign homework, but it’ll only take you 5 minutes.

You’ll probably notice that a lot of the advice in here is… pretty generic.

But there are a few things I want to zoom in on.

Based on how the information here is organized (read: prioritized) and some of the very specific language they’ve used, there are a couple of big things that I think LinkedIn is screaming at us.

Starting with…

“Use our tools — they’re here to help you, idiot!”

Right up top, LinkedIn makes a pretty strong plea to start using the platform’s analytics to measure your content performance.

LinkedIn’s metrics are pretty good, actually.

And while impressions, likes, and shares aren’t dollar bills, they are signals. And if you post a lot of content over time, looking back to see what’s resonating can help inform future content.

Some of the other tools they push are their collaborative articles (even though they recently removed your only incentive to do so, the Top Voice badge, which, let’s be honest, a lot of people didn’t really deserve, but still, it was a carrot, and how long has this tangent been going, now?) and their new video platform.

Take it from me, you want to figure out how to do some video ASAP.

Next up…

“Please, stop with the spam”

A running theme in these guidelines can be summarized thusly: begging you not to spam the platform.

What counts as spam?

Turns out, a lot!

So it’s worth itemizing a few things to avoid while you’re “being original.”

The content recommendations can be read here, but here’s a decent summary:

• No shameless self-promo

• No comments that add nothing new

• No engagement bait

• Don’t copy people’s content

• Don’t reshare without adding your own spin

• Don’t be a jerk

• Stop swearing (damn, that one hurts me especially)

• Stop making fun of people on LinkedIn

• No porn (duh)

Who should be worried about these guidelines?

• The kinds of “gurus” who regularly land on LinkedIn Lunatics

• The anti-gurus (Stephen Watson, Hope Horner, et al, as much as I have a soft spot for them, and let’s be honest, they absolutely will not care)

• People doing threadbare rewrites of popular posts, or copying viral posts almost verbatim

• People writing hundreds of comments a day because some guru told them to, but the comments are generic or worse, AI-written

• Porn stars. Take it to OnlyFans! (is this even a problem?)

And finally…

“For the love of God, interact more”

This is probably the most important piece of the puzzle, and I would strongly urge you to read LinkedIn’s short article about it.

LinkedIn doesn't want you to just post and run. It wants you to use your posts as a jumping-off point for conversations.

Let’s pretend you’re the social media manager of your personal brand, and you have some kind of weird, disembodied boss to report to.

The metric that boss cares about isn’t the number of posts you published this week, or impressions, or likes, or anything of the sort.

It’s conversations.

That’s your north star from now on. How many conversations did you participate in.

LinkedIn wants you to create relationships.

So what do we do with all this?

3 things you should do

Here are a few small pieces of advice based on what we learned today. They’re super simple to put into place, so don’t waste any time.

• Add relevant connections, and talk to them

I’m a huge proponent of proactively building your audience. You can’t just wait for dates to show up — you have to get out there and flirt.

And LinkedIn has tons of hidden rewards for doing this!

Did you know that DMing with new connections boosts your content on their timeline? That’s just one of many ways positive interactions help you grow your profile.

Talk to people. Seriously.

• Use templates as loose frameworks

This is a templates newsletter! But if you’ve been paying attention, you know that I am not advocating you just copy/paste a barely rewritten template and hit “publish.”

Now more than ever, the Cool Story approach is the way to go. And that approach goes like this:

A template is just a loose framework for organizing information. Don’t follow them verbatim, or ask ChatGPT to write your content for you.

Adjust content to your tone, and rewrite as much as possible. Use templates for ideation. Don’t follow them to the line or the letter.

• If you have nothing to say, don’t say it

LinkedIn is full of generic posts and AI comments. Gurus tell people to write dozens of comments a day, and engagement pods have made it look like generic Alex Hormozi wannabes are the only people who can succeed on LinkedIn.

Those people are about to FAFO.

Here’s where to start. Set aside an hour a day for social.

If you have a post idea, write a post.

If not, go find some stuff to comment on instead.

If you have nothing interesting to say, then add some people to your network and start DMing with them.

It is impossible to waste this hour. There is always something you can do.

Treat that hour more organically. Spontaneously. Do something that’s real. Not a bunch of generic nothing.

Cool Story is FREE, but I do have a BIG ask…

Can you think of ONE person in your network who would like Cool Story? Please forward it to them.

TWO more QUICK things:

• Let’s make sure we’re connected on LinkedIn, where I share tons of content creation tips and tactics. Hit the bell to never miss a post.

• If you’re a founder, fractional, or consultant, and you want to use your personal brand to grow your business, Zenpost can help. Let’s find a time to chat.