The Art Of Being Excellent To Each Other In A Less Than Excellent World

I am always amazed at how the more things seems to change in social and business media, the more they stay the same. I originally posted this in Pulse in May of 2016. Is is still relevant? You tell me.

This is a post for everybody out there who blogs on LinkedIn Pulse.

Unless you are an almighty and exalted “INfluencer”, replete with a little blue IN box beside your name, you are probably getting screwed.

You’re getting screwed because because you are not being given access to a wide enough audience on LinkedIn, despite what you might believe.

You’re getting screwed because your post is only being posted on your status and the only people who know that you have posted are a few first degree connections, your fans, and those who happen to see it before it moves down the endless chain and into the basement of your computer.

You’re getting screwed because you’re working your ass of to create something meaningful, informative and potentially useful to a lot of people. But you’re only being allowed to reach a few.

You’re being screwed because you think that this is a good way to build your business, and you are still waiting for that to happen.

The 80/20 Differential states that 80% of you could care less about all of this screwing.

You don’t understand why you’re even doing this in the first place. And therefore you have no frame of reference to even suspect that you are getting screwed, let alone the degree to which it is happening.

My primary concern is for the rest of us.

You Don’t Have To Take This Lying Down

LinkedIn is a big place. There are (allegedly) 500 million card carrying members. A bunch of them are dead. Another bunch of them are inactive. Another bunch are scammers and trolls. Yet another big bunch are job seekers, employers and head hunters.

To most of the active bloggers on Linkedin, outside of the “INfluencers” these people don’t mean squat.

A relatively small number are entrepreneurs, larger business owners, marketers, consultants, creative people, coaches, educators and even bloggers.

Even if that number comprises just 10% of LI’s membership, that’s still 50 million people. That’s way more people than there are in my country by about 5 million. (Canada)

This is not a number to be sneezed at. And it is possible for all of us to be reaching more of them by doing a few simple things. (Remember this is my opinion as one of you).

1. Stop listening to what digital marketers tell you about blogging. Most of these people are full of shit. And their agenda is to create lots of meaningless activity that they can charge for managing.

2. Write from the heart. The best posts I have read since Pulse started have been, to a greater or lesser extent, personal. They have been stories and parables and anecdotes and relayed experiences. They have been sincere. They have been honest. They have been passionate. And they have been true.

3. Disseminate your work. Most good groups on LinkedIn now allow you to post your work directly to them. This is a great way to extend your reach. Also take the extra time to create a WordPress blog site, and repost your blog on other sites on like bebee.com, Facebook Medium, and Google +.

4. Ask people to like comment and share your post if they like it. Some of the best bloggers I know do this as a matter of course.

5. Conversely, get into the habit of sharing the posts that you like, either in your groups and on your home page. This lets people know that you are one of the good guys and will make them favorably disposed to sharing your work.

6. Be polite and appreciative. Always thank the people who do stuff for you.

7. Make sure that everybody who reads your posts can easily access more of your work, by having a link to your Pulse page or blog site or whatever at the end of every post.

8. Have a picture of yourself at the end of every post, so that people can put a face to the name. You would be surprised at how effective this is in terms of getting people to visualize your writing.

9. Don’t worry about being perfect. Nobody’s perfect. And this is a world wide group. So a lot of people’s posts will have bits and piece of awkwardness in them. Don’t read to find glitches, read to experience the story.

10. Give your opinion. This is social media after all, and your comments mean a lot to the writers, both in terms of feeling good about what they are doing and understanding what they could be doing better.

I’m sure that many of you will have other things that you think are important about blogging here, and making the experience better for everyone concerned.

So I’d appreciate if you would post that advice in the comments and I will incorporate it as we go.

For Better Or Worse LinkedIn Is What It Is

When I started finding out about how badly we were all being screwed by the wart covered LinkedIn algorithm, I got really pissed off.

But I’m not pissed anymore because there is really no sense in being pissed at things you can’t control. And LinkedIn is one of those things.

And despite all the bullshit that has transpired, and probably will continue, LinkedIn is still the best game in town for bloggers.

For the moment. But there is a lot of activity brewing out there in the ether. There always is. And maybe even sooner than everybody things, there will be a completely viable alternative or two. And LinkedIn will have to put on it’s big boy pants and play some competitive ball.

And this will be good for everyone.

So in the immortal words of Ted ‘Theodore' Logan….Be Excellent To Each Other.

It’s a hell of a lot easier than you might think. And it will really help to solidify the community that exists here. For you…for me…and even for Phil ‘Grumpy’ Friedman, who gave me the idea for this post.

Jim Murray is a highly experienced  and moderately opinionated advertising and marketing professional.

He is a communication strategist, op/ed blogger, writer,
art director and broadcast producer.

He is also a partner at Bullet Proof Consulting. www.bulletproofconsulting.ca.

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