Is LinkedIn Relevant in 2022? 3 Reasons I’m #LinkedOut
If you’re a regular here, you know that I’m sceptical about the power of social media for marketing in 2022, at least for small business. First, I became disillusioned with Facebook. Now, I’m wondering: is LinkedIn relevant in 2022? I have growing doubts.
I’m not saying to stop using LinkedIn. No, not at all. It’s important to have a smart LinkedIn profile aligned with your branding in 2022.
For example, say you meet someone but don’t exchange business cards at the time. The person will most likely look you up on LinkedIn. You want your profile to be the best referral you can get; fully filled out including reviews. I made a tool for getting reviews, BTW.
But in order to create content that actually appears in your audience’s feed, you have an uphill battle that takes a ton of time. Do you have a ton of time? No? Me neither.
Here’s the problem with LinkedIn these days.
READ THIS LATER: If you don’t have time to read this article right now, you can download the PDF version to your phone or computer and read it when you have time later.
Is LinkedIn Relevant in 2022?
LinkedIn has become oversaturated. As a result, it takes more time to stand out than most small business owners have to spare.
See, this is what bugs me about marketing companies, the ones that DONT cater to small business. They demonstrate ways to light up your social media so it generates a ton of engagement. But they neglect to point out that so many of their ideas for getting engagement take a ton of time.
People say time is money, but I disagree. Time does have a monetary value, yes. But unlike money, you can’t make more.
Here’s why I think LinkedIn has jumped the shark:
- It takes too much work to stand out.
- InMail is over.
- It doesn’t have enough traffic.
#1 – Too much work to stand out
Take this example from Hootsuite. I love Hootsuite’s blog. They have this article about making LinkedIn relevant in 2022 where they use Shopify as an example.
Hey look, all Shopify had to do is create a cool animation and their post gets a ton of engagement. Easy, right?
Sure, it’s easy. If you or someone on your team has the skills to make a cool animation and an entire day to kill.
It’s Okay to be Casual
Generating LinkedIn engagement is doable, but only if you’re passionate about the work it takes to get there. If you are, if you love logging in multiple times a day, if you love replying to every comment, if you love banter with your network, then why are you still reading this? Get out there and start posting! You’re one of the ones for whom LinkedIn influencing is made.
For the rest of us, it’s frankly just not worth it. If you aren’t going to commit to engaging with everyone who comments or likes your post…then don’t. Seriously, just don’t.
It’s okay to do the bare minimum when it comes to social media. I repeat: this is an area where it’s perfectly okay to slack. You can casually share content to your profile so people who specifically seek you out get a sense of what you’re all about, and then dip.
#2 – InMail is Dead.
Have you received any LinkedIn direct messages/ InMail that you found helpful and relevant lately? I have not. At least, I haven’t found any that are helpful and relevant, possibly because anything valuable would be lost among the five million cold sales messages I got since the last time I logged in.
Why are we all suddenly carpet bombed with unsolicited pitches? Because LinkedIn is promoting social selling. Social selling is a woefully optimistic term for trying to prospect for new business on LinkedIn.
Now, I might dislike social selling more than is rational. I’m sensitive to the idea of cold messaging people on social media, as I think most of my fellow 40-something moms are. For the last decade, women we barely know have been sliding into our DMs with a chipper “Heyyy Girrrrrl!!!!!” trying to get us to “join their team” as a fitness coach, lipstick hawker or essential oil purveyor.
“Social selling,” no matter how good its intentions, is firmly the domain of MLMs. I’m not trashing MLMs, I’m just saying if you’re a small business, you don’t want anyone to mistake you for one. That’s why for me, InMail is out.
#3 – Too Much Content, Not Enough Traffic
When I take a gander through my LinkedIn feed, I see posts from politicians, famous journalists, and Ryan Reynolds. (Note: I do not object to seeing posts from Ryan Reynolds.) I don’t see my own colleagues posts, my friends’ posts or even my husband’s posts. The newsfeed is bloated, tedious and largely irrelevant. (Unlike Ryan Reynolds.)
The most recent stats on keeping LinkedIn relevant in 2022 promote the fact that that around 20% of users log in every day. Wow! Except that means around 80% of people DON’T log in every day. They log in once a week, or a couple times a month, or never.
In other words, the vast majority of your network isn’t going to see your posts in their newsfeed, because they aren’t on the site when you post. LinkedIn tries to help you game the system by telling you the best time to post, but if everyone is following that advice, then all you’re doing is creating a drop in the content tsunami.
Nothing but love for LinkedIn, really. It has its place in your marketing strategy. But for these reasons, when it comes to pouring my time into posting, I’m LinkedOut.
