The Toxic World of Content Creation on LinkedIn
Things no one talks about posting on Social media sites
Social media is a Weird Beast.
Weird because you have to feed it continuously with your content for it to offer its undying loyalty to you.
Such content can be cringy, unprofessional, and even sometimes should not be shared at all.
This beast is moody, wild, unloyal, doesn’t have character, and is a friend to no one. You’ll never know what it likes.
My idea of social media is a place where people can interact with their micro-communities and create a healthy atmosphere for discussions.
Not the dumb place where people are asked to comment “Interested” to get a useless Excel sheet or a job opportunity.
Rush of Dopamine — That first high
That first LinkedIn post that gets a lot of likes will keep you longing for more.
The email notifications sent by LinkedIn will keep reminding you that people like what they are seeing and would want to hear more from you.
The thing is neither of them is true, in real life people don’t care one bit about what you do and what you achieve in your career.
It doesn’t matter if you started a new job or got a new certificate, people congratulating you doesn’t mean or do anything for you. It’s that first rush of dopamine that gets you and you crave more & more attention.
Suddenly you will be spending days thinking about when you should post your next update on Linkedin.
There will be days when you’ll feel like you’re on top of the world. Acting almost like a zombie, always thinking/checking about how the last post did and what’s the next thing I should post about?
I came to this realization after spending a lot of time on this platform, the reality is that unless you are in a good position (in terms of money, prestige, power) or at a position where people aspire to be, people won’t support you.
Even worse if you sell school or college students fake dreams like “Do this course to get that amazing job offer?” with a cute pic of yourself sitting in front of a monitor with your company name on it, the algorithm seems to like it, Sadly.
Creating useless content just because it gets Views
This will certainly lead to LinkedIn’s downfall. I think the platform is becoming cringier day by day.
People posting about their marriage life, breakups, personal lives, posting their pics, etc. just makes you wonder if you are on Instagram or Facebook instead of Linkedin.
I think that’s a common problem across social media platforms, what form of content to promote and which content to subside?
The platform that currently wastes a lot of my time and I’m sure it is for many of us is Youtube.
In YouTube, the algorithm keeps recommending stupid videos one after the other because it thinks this will certainly get the user to click however unhelpful the content might be. Short form / Tik-Tok-like videos are a mess, after 10 videos I feel like my brain has degraded.
Why I don’t believe in creating content that gets reach
The whole advice that you should create content that people want and that gets a lot of likes is totally bonkers.
My whole philosophy behind creating articles is that ultimately it is for me to look back on.
If Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motors had asked people in the 1900s what they would’ve wanted to reduce their travel time between cities, people would’ve said they want faster horses, not Cars.
Most times people don’t know what they want and need, you’ve got to experiment a lot of time to find your footing.
I truly don’t bother about what my audience wants, If I want to write a good article I need to know the topics that I like, and things that inspire me, and keep me motivated to finish the article.
Yes, along the way people do join in as they like your way of writing & type of articles and that is just part of the process.
If you bother about what your audience wants you’ll never be able to figure out your style because there will always be bulk loads of people who create stupid content just to get the likes and views. It is one of the main reasons why social media is a dumpster fire.
Continuous posting on Linkedin != Good job at a Great Company
For any beginners who join the platform thinking that they’ll get a good job just by posting memes on LinkedIn, then boy you’ve got something coming for you!
If you don’t plan on being a social media personality or are willing to live in a zombie-like mode every day 24/7 when you wake up, trust me it is truly not worth it.
The best way of getting a job is by going out and applying for it, not by listening to a random LinkedIn post talking about how great their company is and how to ace it.
Few people have jobs that require them to post on social media often, these include Developer Relations, Social media managers, Marketing guys, YouTube influencers (massive cringe), Event Managers, etc.
If you’re not in either don’t spend so much time on social media.
Most successful people I know don’t even have a LinkedIn account and cannot be found on WhatsApp, Instagram, or even Twitter.
At the end of the day, these things are truly superficial.
Who cares what someone posts on them?
