Hi Reader,

Taylor has been placed on newsletter probation.

​Last week he staged what can only be described as a hostile takeover of this newsletter while I was in Dublin.

Annoyingly, it was good, because now I either have to fire him or let him keep doing things like that.

For this week though, I've taken the newsletter keys back.

To the topic at hand. LinkedIn.

​I saw a post from Zayd, founder of Valley, about his LinkedIn reach being horrible and him going deep on the data.

There are posts like these every other week because social networks like LinkedIn are constantly tweaking their algos. Their end goal is always to increase time on site and the variable that has the biggest impact on this is their algorithm.

So what’s my takeaway from all of this?

The bit we can control

We can't control the algorithm. We can't control whether LinkedIn shows our post to 30 people or 30,000 people. We can't control whether a serious buyer reads something, says nothing, disappears, and then emails you to book a call 6 months later.

What we can control is showing up consistently and writing about things we actually know.

Not things we think will perform. Not things we saw someone else post about. Not another “proud to announce” post stretched into a life lesson that would make a motivational speaker blush.

And to be clear, I'm not saying don't post about wins. Landed a new client? Great. Got a certificate? Cool. Went to an event? Lovely. Post about it if it matters.

But maybe we can all calm down a little.

Not every client win needs to be framed like you just returned from war. Not every conference needs a 9-paragraph reflection on “the power of human connection”. Not every certificate needs to become a story about resilience, leadership, and believing in yourself.

Sometimes it's just a nice thing that happened.

And that's fine.

The stupid post that worked

I recently posted a tongue-in-cheek joke about LinkedIn needing an eye-roll reaction. No attempt to prove I understand the deepest mysteries of B2B marketing.

Just a joke.

It’s now my best performing post this year. FML.

There is probably a lesson in there, but I don't think the lesson is “post more LinkedIn jokes”.

The lesson is just go with whatever is on your mind. Some posts can be useful. Some can be thoughtful. Some can be practical. Some can just be a little fun.

That feels much healthier than treating every post like it needs to be optimised to within an inch of its life.

The boring strategy

Taylor has spoken about this strategy before and we use it with a few of our clients, and it works.

Post about your area of expertise, in a way that interests you first, and just keep at it. Don’t overthink it. Just write, read it out loud, reduce (Always remove words. That’s the real writing skill) and post. Or get us to do it. Hint hint.

(This guy and his strategies. Maybe I should keep him around)

One thing we’re all guilty of (me included!) is turning stuff we’re doing into a LinkedIn therapy session. Polishing the life out of every thought. Pretending every ordinary business update is a transformational moment. Lastly, acting like every minor inconvenience (like that pigeon landing on your balcony) taught us a profound lesson about leadership.

Sometimes the post can just be, “we did a thing, it went well, here’s what we learned,” and everyone will survive.

That's probably a better strategy than chasing whatever the algorithm is doing this week.

So keep showing up. Talk about what you know. Try things. Have a bit of fun.

Then do it again.

--

See you in 2 weeks. I’ll have an update on Taylor’s probation by then. Pray for the man.

Jason

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