As I sat in a networking meeting yesterday, my peer complained that LinkedIn was becoming too much like Facebook, where the quality of content was waning as business professionals stopped sharing high quality business information and instead were posting opinions and factoids not related to their work environment.
Awhile back there was an urge to use apps to automatically cross-post your tweets from twitter to LinkedIn to Facebook and more. Over time I like to think that most smart people figured out that not every bit of content was appropriate for every platform and started to throttle back on the automation urge and show some respect for their friends, co-workers and business associates. But with the recent remark of my compatriot, I was reminded that not all smart people do smart things.
To get folks back into line, LinkedIn is implementing a little crowd-sourcing — combined with artificial intelligence — to tailor and thereby narrow the flow of content ultimately reaching its users.
Enter the LinkedIn Spam-Fighting Strategy:
Courtesy of the LinkedIn Engineer Blog and with the idea from another blogger, I pulled this fairly easy to comprehend flow chart that basically says: 1. LinkedIn reviews and “scores” your content before it lets it flow and then 2. It continues to monitor engagement of your users with your content to determine whether it continues to flow.
How does that work? Initially LinkedIn shares your post with only a few readers (it’s not clear how few or how they determine which ones get your post) to see how or if they engage. Reports of spam obviously get you blocked but simply not interacting at all can have a similar effect of ultimately preventing what should be highly curated content from reaching your intended audience.
So, what’s a LinkedIn user to do? Follow the same courtesy guidelines we wish everyone did on social:
- Think carefully before you post.
- Consider your audience.
- Attempt to educate or at least contribute.
- Consider: Who cares? Is this helpful? Will it influence a future decision?
- Temper your desire to overly self-promote.
- Don’t share irrelevant content.
This post courtesy of Principal Consultant, Jennifer Koon