LinkedIn can be an unusual place. Indeed, as Business Insider journalist Rob Price puts it, it can be downright ‘weird’.
What started out as the boring member of the social media family – a ‘repository for resumes’– has become a professional networking powerhouse:
- Almost one billion users
- 16% of whom visit daily
- 48% visit at least monthly
In line with massive growth (when other platforms, such as ‘X’ and Facebook are stagnating), activity on LinkedIn has also seen remarkable growth, with the number of posts increasing by 41% between 2021 and 2023.
But while the growth in both the membership and activity on the platform is a positive, especially for those using LinkedIn as a marketing platform, it’s evolving nature of those posts that has caught the eye – and raised the ire – of many observers.
To the extent that LinkedIn is a place to showcase yourself as a skilled and successful professional, a certain amount of braggadocio is to be expected.
This takes many forms, from being creative with one’s job title (‘Conversation Architect’, ‘Waste Management Consultant’, ‘Dream Alchemist’) through to bigging up any of your most recent achievements/awards. In fact, the MO is to generally portray a shiny persona of success, where your job is exciting, your life is full, and yet you still get time to read a business strategy book every week, as well as running half-marathons and volunteering at a local charity.
If self-promotion grates on you, you can just learn to filter it out – just like those connection requests you get from people who you just know are itching to sell you something.
Some people of course try and circumvent your filters by using an enticing image unrelated to their post, or by even structuring their post in a certain way (a few years ago, a format called ‘broetry’ was all the rage), but generally you can be on your guard and ignore accordingly.
But then Covid changed everything.
Just as work and home collided physically, so too did they on LinkedIn. Suddenly, ‘authenticity’ was everywhere, as users invoked ‘Brene Brownian’ language about vulnerability, truth, and courage, and revealed their struggles and their failures. That in itself isn’t bad, after all, failure is real, it’s something we all experience, and we can often learn more from failure than from success. But then this morphed into posts which became incredibly personal and had little to do with one’s professional capabilities or persona. Posts about family life, political views, and health challenges were suddenly everywhere.
LinkedIn had become a ‘social’ platform.
Now, whether this is a problem depends on your own perspective of course.
There is no doubt that recruiters regularly use LinkedIn activity to build an overall candidate picture (even though they are loathe to admit it). So that might be problematic if you are looking for a new gig and you have ‘overshared’.
LinkedIn themselves also thought it was a problem – concerned that this type of content was inconsistent with the original purpose of the platform, for professionals to connect, learn and share. They even changed their algorithms to ensure more genuine professional content gets prioritised in people’s feeds.
But perhaps most problematic of all is that it has attuned us to unreality (in much the same way every Louis Vuitton bag is assumed to be a fake). We end up assuming the authenticity on LinkedIn is actually quite inauthentic. Rather, we assume it is curated authenticity – much in the same way that if we are asked in an interview about our weaknesses, we mention a weakness that we can then spin as a strength (I’m a perfectionist, sometimes I work too hard, etc). Talking about how we are run down at work, or struggling for creative inspiration is an excuse to talk about training for a half marathon or rising at 5am to do yoga. Talking about stepping outside our comfort zone and conquering our fears is an excuse to post photos of our trek to Everest Base Camp.
As speechwriter and author Lucinda Holdforth recently put it:
“When people on LinkedIn say coyly that they are struggling to overcome the curse of “imposter syndrome”, I often suspect the reason they feel like imposters is because, in fact, they are”.
The perfect life, the perfect broem.
Ensombl is a safe space for advisors to find solutions to problems
The Ensombl platform now has around 9,000 users and around 6,000 advisers – around four in ten advisers across the market – and I have no doubt that one of the factors underpinning this phenomenal growth is that the platform is seen as a ‘safe space’ where users can be genuinely vulnerable.
Seeking a solution to your problem or challenge means admitting you have one in the first place. Users feel comfortable doing it within Ensombl because they feel safe, they know they will find solutions – not judgement – from their advice peers, within a collaborative, collegiate spirit.
The fact that users are prepared to admit knowledge gaps actually helps lift overall knowledge and standards across the profession, whilst also making fund managers and tech providers aware of common pain points, which they in turn can feed into their own product development processes.
These are conversations that simply wouldn’t take place on LinkedIn, where users feel pressure to ‘know it all’ and be an absolute master of their craft.
To get a flavour of what real authenticity and vulnerability looks like – and the opportunity this presents to our corporate partners – check out our latest ‘What Advisors Want’ Report, or reach out to me or any of the Ensombl team.
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