Recent conversations: social media edition
I’ve spent a ton of time catching up with people over the past few weeks—no agendas, just chatting about the State of the Union in marketing, job hunting, social media, trends, and whatever else is going on.
Usually there’s coffee involved, or, if we’re lucky, cocktails.
Sometimes, I wish I could record these conversations—I know some wildly brilliant people, and there’s rarely a time that I walk away from a meetup without learning something.
That being said, why keep it all to myself? I figured it would be a fun post to share some of my favorite highlights from the best chats.
Buckle in tight, my voyeur friends, and take a backseat to my recent conversations.
LinkedIn feels like a professional thirst trap (but it doesn’t have to be).
I think I wrote the thirst trap line in a recent newsletter, but I’m not the one who said it—it was a copywriter friend-slash-colleague of mine (of course, the best lines come from copywriters).
I can’t help but feel he really nailed it on the head with that one, though.
Look, I loooove LinkedIn—and this is kind of a new-to-me love—but I’m not a fan of all of it.
Like the melodramatic posts that usually end with some kind of career lesson or accomplishment. You can feel the try-hard in them.
Or the formulaic posts from the course-pushers. You know the type—always talking about how much money they’ve made and you could to if only you bought this system. Every post is built to manipulate you and make you feel like you’re missing out on something.
But here’s what I love: I’ll find some of the most useful insights from real people, things that feel conversational, sharing, helpful—they don’t have an agenda behind them (at least not overtly) and they feel so HUMAN.
Once you find at least one smart human, it opens you up to an entire network of smart humans. Somehow, they’ve all found each other and they’re so happy to introduce you to their smart human friends.
It has been one of the THE most exciting social media movements I’ve been a part of. (And if you’d like to be part of my Smart Human Tribe, come find me.)
LinkedIn doesn’t have to feel like a place to only spout accomplishments or talk about your team or projects. Using it as a professional journal of sorts—spilling things you’re wondering about or excited about, without agenda—can help you uncover a community that you didn’t know existed.
Posting for other people sucks, but it’s fun to do it for yourself.
I’ve said several times that one of the first things business owners want to do is offload marketing and social media management. I get it! It feels like an exercise that takes forever to pay off, and you have so many other things screaming at you.
But I’ve felt for a long time that there’s a step down in quality when someone who isn’t part of your organization takes over posting. If they’re not immersed in your day to day, they’re missing the heart and soul of your business. They’re missing the everyday observations that make for good social content. They’re detached from the human side of your business.
But when you ARE part of the business? It’s so much fun to make content for it. Almost magical.
The caveat/difference? When you find a business that you’re super passionate about and aligns with your interests as a social media manager. Or on the other side, you find a social media manager with a system that engages you and pulls value out of you without overloading you.
It brings a level of excitement to content that’s hard to replicate.
These days, I refuse to even consider social media work or consulting for industries I don’t feel passionate about. For me, my “oh yes please” buckets are fitness, food, money management/finance, skin care, home improvement, and leadership. A weird mix? Sure. But as humans, aren’t we all just a weird mix?
You can feel inauthentic content from a mile away.
This goes so hand-in-hand with the first two bits of conversation.
If you’re posting on LinkedIn from a ‘look at me’ or ‘buy from me’ position, you can feel it.
If you’re hiring out your social management to someone who just sees it as more content to pump out in their endless task list, you can feel it.
The content gives you the ick—or, worse, you don’t even read it. You just scroll on by.
In a lot of cases, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly why you feel this way. But it’s likely because you have someone who doesn’t know how to hit the human points behind the keyboard.
There’s such a thing as LinkedIn pods.
Okay, so maybe this is a symptom of me not really being part of the LinkedIn everyday until very, very recently, but I recently learned that LinkedIn pods exist.
I know these are an Instagram thing, but the fact that they exist on LinkedIn feels so much more cringeworthy.
Basically: a group of people who are trying to look much more important have an assistant who writes their content and releases it out to The Pod, who will share and like immediately. I think some of these people comment, too, but like on Instagram, a lot of it will be vague or low-value (think three emojis or a simple comment like ‘Great insight!!’).
These are meant to raise the profile of the user, but what it ends up doing is adding to the useless noise.
It stops you from making good content that people actually want to interact with. It removes that insightful human touch—the one that I’ve actually started to crave since spending more time on the platform as a user.
I want to hear about REAL experiences—gritty, messy ones. Business-building ones. Role-learning ones. I don’t want fake nonsense for the sake of visibility. I don’t want constant sales.
Down with the pods, y’all.
Want to meet up and chat? I love connecting with people, both virtually and in person. It’s been so much fun learning from all the smart humans in my life, and I’d love for you to be another 🫶
