The Rise of LinkedIn Buddies and the Dark Secret of Social Media

I am sharing 3 things with you today:

1: The rise of LinkedIn buddies

2: The dark secret of social media

3: Roundtable strategy for companies  

Let’s get into it.

The Rise of LinkedIn Buddies

The same number of reactions where I got 100k impressions around 8 months ago, people are getting 20K impressions for it.

This means one of three things:

1- LinkedIn targeting of organic posts have become incredibly more precise

2- LinkedIn is killing organic reach

3- LinkedIn is lying about impression numbers

All three cannot be right at the same time. Or can they? I’ll leave that for you to decide. But what I really want to talk about here is how people are responding to it.

I have quietly noticed this trend for a few weeks and now I feel I should write about it – the rise of buddies.

In other words, you engage on my content and I engage on yours. For the most part, it is an unspoken rule.

There are people who run this thing where they have tons of people in a group chat ready to engage on their post whenever it goes live. They call it engagement pods.

Several LinkedIn “influencers” use it. They have people in a group chat (perhaps on WhatsApp) that use their LinkedIn accounts to throttle the influencers’ post. They quickly go to react and comment on the post.

Not sure what LinkedIn is doing about such behaviors, but I have heard them speak against it. This is because it creates fake interactions and wrong perceptions.

However, this practice still continues today. And I don’t think it is ethical. I have definitely been approached to join one or two of those and I respectfully declined.

The more organic way this works is where there are no rules. It’s just people you know (and who know you) supporting your posts. And they don’t do it on every post. Just the ones that appeals to them.

This is mostly people who are your peers. Maybe you work in the same industry or there is some intersection between what you do and what they do.

There are a couple of people like that for me right now in my niche. I almost always engage on their post (because it is relevant to my niche). And they mostly do the same to my posts.

There is no agreement. There is no mandate. Just buddies helping out each other.

But remember, the rule here is that you have to be in the same niche or around the same niche. If not, you will confuse the algorithm and your posts will start getting sent to the wrong people.

As the LinkedIn organic reach wanes, the buddy system is on the rise (as an unspoken thing).

But the moment you try to force it and create a predictable system, it becomes an engagement pod. While such a pod may create some success in the short term, it will only create a catastrophe in the long term.

If you want long term success, stay away from engagement pods. But be a good buddy to people who are a good buddy to you.

The Dark Secret of Social Media

If your social media feed is just very good at showing you exactly what you want to see at all times, it only means one thing…

They are good at tracking you.

This is the dark secret of social media. They are tracking you like crazy. And your wildest guess would still underestimate how much you are being tracked.

But they are doing this to make your feed (and ads) relevant to you. That’s their excuse.

No matter how crazy your privacy settings are, you are still getting tracked in some way. These social media platforms need it. And LinkedIn is not an exception.

Your LinkedIn feed is based on your recent interests. This includes what the platforms tracks (you engaging with) on LinkedIn and off LinkedIn.

What does this mean for you?

Every time you react and engage with a post, you are telling the algorithm, “Show me more of this”.

This is why rage-bait content works on LinkedIn. I only engage with a rage-bait content when it is in my niche and I feel I can contribute something so significant that would make me stand out in the comment section.

If LinkedIn uses your recent interests to curate your feed, it would use it to curate other people’s feed too. You can use that to your advantage.

If there is something on the news that you are professionally positioned to comment on as an expert, don’t let it slide. Make that post and publish it as fast as you can.

Learn to jump on trending topics IN YOUR NICHE.

Roundtable Strategy for Companies

I have been studying Buffer in the last couple of days. And it is clear to me that they have the best LinkedIn presence of every company I have encountered thus far.

I recently made this post about them highlighting their strategy:

If you are running a company and you want to take your LinkedIn presence to the next level, take a page from Buffer’s playbook.

Their LinkedIn strategy is the best I have seen.

I rest my case.

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