An Idiot's Guide to LinkedIn Pulse Posts

I love LinkedIn. Or at least I used to.

It used to be an ideal way of sharing insights with other experts, keeping in touch with clients and improving your business’ visibility. Nowadays, not so much.

Here’s a genuine LinkedIn post from my feed.

What sort of sub-Facebook nonsense is this?

The crappy updates are only the tip of the LinkedIn shiteberg though. The real issue with LinkedIn in 2017 is Pulse posts. Cookie cutter nonsense in which dull people link arms and tell each other they’re so brilliant and insightful.

If you have nothing to say and 500 words in which to say it, one of these Pulse posts can be a great way of getting adulation from other pillocks. So here’s a quick idiot’s guide to writing a rubbish Pulse post:

Step One: Think of Something Obvious

This needs mass appeal, so it needs to be really obvious. Something literally everyone who reads it will have already thought of.

That might seem counter-intuitive, but think it through. A crap Pulse post is about getting people to comment “Agree!” and “Like!” and “u r a genius!” – and that means you need to make people think that they’re smart too. So tell them what they already know. Water is wet. Popes are Catholic. Clients like it when you spell their names right in emails.

If you have to think about the subject of your post for more than a minute, it’s too niche and insightful for mass appeal with the LinkedIn charlatan crowds. It might even be – horror of horrors – useful content that the rest of us would appreciate.

And you don’t want that.

Step Two: Pretend the Obvious is Insightful

Now we need to wrap the obvious in a comforting blanket of delusion.

It’s not enough to tell people what they already know. You need to make them believe that they’re insanely clever for knowing it. So dive into the big book of business-speak and craft a cliched title. You want buzzwords that mean nothing – words like “thought leader” and “business pioneer” and any portmanteau ending in “-preneur.”

Here are a few examples:

“Only thought leaders understand this important fact about hydrology”

“Pioneering analysts share secrets about the Holy Father – only the top 1% of people know this!”

“If you’re already doing this in your emails, you could be an emailpreneur mastermind.”

Wowsers trousers! I know water is wet! I must be a thought leader! I need to let the clever thought leader who wrote this that I am also a clever thought leader.

Ugh.

Step Three: Spam the Ever-Loving Effluent out of your Pulse Post

Start posting updates about your Pulse post. You need to post at least three updates to your feed about it within the first 20 minutes, in case the remnant of sensible LinkedIn users who you follow think that you’re not a complete muppet.

#then #you #need #to #hashtag #everything #as #if #you #were #an #attention-seeking #instagram #narcissist

#it #wont #help #but #it #makes #you #seem #web #literate

Now you’ve spammed your circle and thrown some hashtag chum in the water for the sharks who search via hashtags, it’s time to hit your groups.

LinkedIn groups ONLY exist for you to spam Pulse posts. They used to be for discussion and debate, but now they’re for Pulse posts. Which is great, because everyone who spams on groups keeps up the pretence that they’re not a broadcast only medium by posting comments saying “like” and “agree” and “you are a clever thought leader.”

And isn’t that the goal? Because the goal certainly can’t be to raise your profile, engender trust, or contribute to the sum total of human knowledge, can it?

If you want to see how LinkedIn posts should be done, how they need to have something to say and show genuine personality, look here and here.

But if you want idiots to pat you on the bottom and tell you you’re a special genius, just follow the instructions above. And don’t tag me in the post. #nothanks