Joel Lalgee started posting on LinkedIn about three years ago. He works in recruiting, so naturally he spent a lot of time on sites where people list their work history and job seekers look for their next job. But he didn’t just write about his work. He wrote about his private life. It’s about the mental health issues he faced during his teenage years and his life since then. “I thought being able to share my story was a way to connect with people and show them you weren’t alone,” he said.
Something else happened. “After six months, engagement, followers and inbound leads to her business started to increase significantly,” said Lalgee, 35, of her girlfriend. She now has over 140,000 followers on LinkedIn, up from 9,000 before she started posting.
“The way it goes viral is to be really vulnerable,” he said, adding, “Old school LinkedIn was definitely not like this.
Launched in 2003, LinkedIn was primarily known as a place to share resumes and connect with colleagues. After that, we added a news feed and introduced a way for users to post text and videos. This site currently has 830 million users We generate about 8 million posts and comments every day.
Since the pandemic began, many have turned to LinkedIn to make up for what they’ve lost as office workers have missed out on in-person interactions with their colleagues. They started talking about more than work. The line between office and home life has become more blurred than ever. As personal situations streamed into their work days, people bravely shared them with their work colleagues to find interested audiences inside and outside their networks.
Users, including those who had left Facebook or felt guilty about using Facebook at work, found scrolling through LinkedIn still felt like they were working. . And for those looking to grab attention and grow their audience, LinkedIn has proven to be a better place to get noticed than oversaturated sites. Karen Shafrir Vladeck, a recruiter in Austin, Texas and a frequent LinkedIn poster, says LinkedIn is an “easy achievement” compared to crowded platforms like TikTok and Instagram.
During the pandemic, many people wanted to post on social justice topics. This was a far cry from the site’s historically stable fare, but it did have an impact on my work life.In 2020, Black LinkedIn took off with a post about systemic racism.”George “After Floyd was murdered, a lot of people, I know this is a rare story on LinkedIn, talk about race,” said Lily Chen, a consultant for diversity, equity and inclusion. Earlier this summer, some women posted their own posts after the Supreme Court ruled on abortion. abortion story.
Now, users usually find that between their job listings and their “I’m happy to announce” posts, there are viral selfies of crying people, announcements about weddings, and lengthy musings about overcoming illness. Not everyone is happy with change. Others have found that they cannot use the site in the same way. Newsfeeds chock-full of personal posts can distract from the information they’re looking for on LinkedIn, they said.
LinkedIn Vice President and Editor-in-Chief Daniel Roth said: He said he noticed people posting about mental health, burnout and stress. .
It wasn’t “this amount” that LinkedIn started watching in the spring of 2020 and continued watching for the next two years, Ross said.
LinkedIn does not encourage or discourage intimate postings. “I wouldn’t say we got too involved in it when it comes to personal content,” Roth said. However, it does encourage influencers to join the site in hopes of posting on topics such as leadership. It’s a fine line to try to promote. According to Roth, posts about skills and work accomplishments (more classic paperwork) have seen an increase in engagement over the past year.
A survey of nearly 2,000 employed adults conducted by LinkedIn earlier this year found that 60% said their definition of “professional” had changed since the start of the pandemic.
“LinkedIn’s existing purpose is changing,” says Mx. Zheng using they/them pronouns.
Just like at work, sharing personal information on LinkedIn increases a sense of belonging, but it can also lead to regrets. Max. On LinkedIn, Zheng, who has more than 100,000 followers, said companies are asking: It’s not an answer that exists yet. “
“There is tension here. On the one hand, we want to support workers’ self-expression and self-disclosure,” said Mx. But at the same time, he added, employees should be free to maintain boundaries between their personal lives and work, including on LinkedIn.
For the past two years, LinkedIn has tried to encourage content that keeps users on the site. Last year, LinkedIn Creator Accelerator Program We are looking for influencers. Suzi Owens, a LinkedIn spokeswoman, said he was rolling out a new service. tool The format for posting is similar. In the past, LinkedIn influencers have often been “leaders of sorts,” like business pundits and executives posting advice to their millions of followers.More recently, content creators on TikTok and YouTube, including stars such as Mr Beast is also on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is looking for influencers, but Ross said, “There shouldn’t be that much content going viral.” He added that most posts should only reach people’s own networks.
A full-time content creator participating in LinkedIn’s Creator Accelerator program recently posted something far beyond his network.
“There was a post that went completely viral on LinkedIn,” said an influencer who uses the name Natalie Rose in her work. post, crying selfie Captions about anxiety and the reality of being an influencer have received over 2.7 million impressions. “That led to some business opportunities with things like anxiety apps,” she said. “I chose to be vulnerable in my posts, so I got a lot of connections and followers from there.”
Rose, 26, says she used to think of LinkedIn as her online resume. “My understanding was that it was like being used to an old man,” she said. “Now she sees it as a 100 percent social media platform.” She added that she felt the commenters were more positive and mature than the audience. tick tockshe has 2.7 million followers.
Roth said he doesn’t see LinkedIn as a social media platform like TikTok or Facebook. They often gruffly comment on personal LinkedIn posts, saying, “This is not Facebook.”
Sofía Martín Jiménez, 30, was a LinkedIn power user. She uses it all the time in her previous recruiter job, scrolling through her newsfeed for her book recommendations and checking out articles about her field. was
Since the start of the pandemic, Jiménez’s feed, who lives in Madrid, has been filled with highly personal updates from people, such as coping with the death of a loved one or overcoming illness, while his professional work He said it was almost unusable. “Now food is in the way,” she said. “I had to change the way I work at LinkedIn.” She now uses keywords to directly search people’s profiles and avoid the homepage.
Last year, Mr. Lalzi, who works in the recruitment industry, began to feel uneasy about the attention her personal posts received. He wondered if the desire to reach a broader audience was leading people to share more than necessary or post emotional stories to grab their attention. It creates an almost false sense of vulnerability,” he said. “And it makes it very difficult to tell if this person is real or if they’re just doing it to go viral.”
LinkedIn’s Owens said he plans to continue rolling out product changes to ensure people see relevant content in their feeds. “The unique thing about LinkedIn is that we don’t create for entertainment, we create for economic opportunity,” she said.
For those who want to see their life updates reach a wider audience, there is a cottage industry of consultants and even parodies. Viral LinkedIn Post Generator – in order to help. John Nemo, a consultant who specializes in generating business leads for his clients on LinkedIn, says he coaches people to follow the formula “personal story + business he is lesson = content.”
He showed his expression in news about the death of a fictional dog named Ralph.
“My personal story is that Ralph passed away,” he said. “What’s the business lesson from this?”
He suggested starting the post with the latest information.
Next, add observations about your trades.
Tie it to your dog.
Sprinkle in some business advice. You have to find your own legitimacy and self-respect from your religion, whether it’s your loved ones or your pets. “
Finally, encourage your followers to “Share a picture of your dog in the comments.”
“As long as there is inspiration and lessons, the more personal it is, the more dramatic it is,” Nemo said.