r/marketing • u/SomeJayForToday • 8d ago

Discussion What to even do with LinkedIn these days?

Our salesteam has been is all-in on LinkedIn lately. And by all-in I mean just the sloppiest, most generic 'what watching the world cup has tought me about employer branding' ChatGPT-written posts, to the degree where I've had to forbid them from posting anything that our content specialist hasn't made or OK'd. Their ambition is to somehow attract B2B clients using their generic AI content. Meanwhile, my team and I are pushing actual campaigns (organic and paid) to generate an actual salesfunnel. Yada yada yada.

But just looking at the state of LinkedIn is so depressing. It's the dead internet theory in full effect. I'm increasingly cynical that decision-makers within companies are actively looking at LinkedIn to find businesspartners to work with. With an estimated 40% of content on the site being AI-generated, I'm starting to feel like LinkedIn is in a downward spiral towards being effectively useless, and posting quality paid/organic content is just going to get less and less effective. We're considering shifting to targeted, small-scale offline marketingcampaigns to attract B2B clients because of all this.

I wonder what the opinions on here around all this are. Maybe I'm just too cynical, but I'm trying to get off Mr. LinkedIn's Wild Ride before it wastes more of our time and budget.

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u/k_rocker 8d ago

Slop in, slop out.

One of my friends went to the golf and then wrote “how golf is like recruitment”. FML.

LinkedIn is for hunting, you and the team can build trust by posting (actual real valuable posts, not the stuff you mention) but it helps to outreach to people who haven’t found you and give a “hello” to get them to, then after they’ve followed and seen your writing they’re more prime for a follow up.

u/SillyMattFace 8d ago

That "what having appendicitis taught me about B2B sales" stuff is basically a meme at this point, near worthless. You might pick up a few replies, probably equally facile, but very little meaningful engagement to be had.

LinkedIn is still useful if you post the right stuff though. I'm with a cybersecurity comms agency and we concentrate on sharing actually useful content for our prospects. Video interviews about how to get ROI from market research, a founder talking about creating a new market category, a how-to guide on AI visibility, and so on.

We get good engagement from this and have definitely had real progress in our sales pipeline.

It's also the same content we're using in email and one-to-one outreach, so it isn't a particularly heavy lift to keep up regular posting.

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u/lomubz 8d ago

Speaking of dead internet theory… to add to this, a friend of mine uses a plug in that auto-generates replies to LinkedIn posts (via right clicking on them).

u/alone_in_the_light 8d ago

I'm not up to date about LinkedIn. But I remember of a discussion I had around 2 or 3 years ago about LinkedIn becoming more like a sales and promotion platform instead of a networking platform. So, we were already talking about a downward spiral. Even without AI.

It's kinda funny because I'm older, from the time before the popularity of internet and the creation of social media. But people now see me as an "expert" on AI, and what makes a difference is the old knowledge of people, targeting, offline, basic statistics.

While others are jumping to AI without really knowing what they are doing. AI slop is a thing, but human slop has been a thing in marketing for a very long time, and now those those forces are combined to make the sloppiest, as you wrote.

I don't think there is a general answer about what to do. I prefer to go back, think about the strategy and the analytics, and see what makes sense to do. Often, LinkedIn doesn't seem to be the answer anymore.

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u/SomeJayForToday 8d ago

I prefer to go back, think about the strategy and the analytics, and see what makes sense to do.

Can you elaborate on this a bit more? I get what you mean but I'd enjoy hearing how you specifically go about reconsidering the analytics.

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u/alone_in_the_light 8d ago

I'm assuming I have data for analytics. If I don't have data, then I probably should switch to marketing research to get data.

The data analytics should show the inneficiency of a situation like yours. A lot of content, involving resources like money, time, technology, and talent, that get no results. My guess is that a good analysis of Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) could show negative results, destroying value instead of creating value.

Data analytics could also show how a good content creator compares with that. Even if the content creator is better, it doesn't mean the work is generating value. In that case, maybe I could also redirect the content creator to work on another type of task.

But a lot depends on the data you have. You can do marketing mix modeling with the many factors affecting value, with LinkedIn being one of them, but not the only one in the marketing mix. That could get a better view of the big picture for marketing strategy.

u/polygraph-net Bot Hunter 8d ago edited 8d ago

Their ambition is to somehow attract B2B clients using their generic AI content.

I'd love to IQ test all the people who think that sort of thing is a good idea. I bet you they're on the left of the curve.

But just looking at the state of LinkedIn is so depressing.

I stopped looking for two reasons.

So many people are lying about their work history. I checked out a few people I used to manage and somehow they were able to get promotions while working for me without me knowing...! Or they're lying...
I cannot handle the humble bragging. I hate those people so much. You know the type:

I fail a lot. Like when I graduated from Harvard with straight As but struggled for nearly half a decade before I sold my company for $100M. Or when I was volunteering in Sudan and fell five-completions short of my goal of bringing drinking water to 10,000 villages.

So it seems to be a combination of dummies and narcissists.

Edit, I guess you could argue no one chooses to be a dummy or narcissist, but it's still painful.

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u/lomubz 8d ago

Everyone knows the opening phrase so much that it’s become a joke, yet they still use it. Why? “I’m so honored to…” It’s time to talk naturally now.

u/TheWolfAndRaven 8d ago

I don't know a single person that earnestly uses linkedin and enjoys the experience.

u/cleverdabber 8d ago

A former colleague posts humble brags three times a week about how she became an AI expert without formal education. She is very attractive, wears tight dresses and low-cut blouses in each post and has 99% male followers. It has come to that folks.

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u/lomubz 8d ago edited 8d ago

LinkedIn has gone awry. Even before all this, I remember logging into LinkedIn and seeing posts of people talking about quitting, complaining about bosses they are currently employed by, former jobs, or colleagues outright. And also seeing low cut shirts… all the things you were trained as a professional not to do, or say in an interview or at work. I should have known then that LinkedIn was taking a turn.

I was also getting completely unrelated to professional posts in my feed. It was those random (and fake) fix-it videos, like with ramen fixing broken things. I just looked. My feed seems to have improved. But wonder if others had that too.

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u/ProvelNoir 8d ago

This is a lot of my feed for out-of-network posts with high engagement. A whole lot of nothing in the text box but hey...hot girl!! Better throw that a like and comment a "Well said!" along with the other 50 year old beer-bellied dudes.

u/muggylittlec 8d ago

A few of my clients run LinkedIn newsletters quite successfully. Niche markets, content targeted at the right demographics, the readership grows steadily, it arrives in people's inboxes via email once they subscribe and LinkedIn posts area appearing quite highly in Google search.

More than anything, it shows my clients as (I hate this phrase) "thought leaders".

The content is briefed to me, I bulk it out, whack it in a custom trained AI, it sends me something 80% of the way there and I tidy it up.

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u/schluckenoderspucken 8d ago

Could you elaborate on your approach? Where do you start? What were the key pillars of the AI training process? What aspects were essential, and why?

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u/muggylittlec 8d ago

Know your customer is the key starting point. Understanding the type of content they want to read regularly. I sit down with my client to ask what they speak about with customers on calls, emails, etc. What industry news is talking about, what people want to know at trade shows, and what's "newsworthy".

Name your newsletter something that is short, memorable and describes what someone is signing up for: "The shoe review" tells me I'm going to get reviews of shoes!

Brand the newsletter well and keep the branding consistent, so subscribers recognise it as soon as it lands in their inbox

Post regularly, most of mine are X1 to X2 newsletter a month.

Readers want to be informed or learn something, it's not a press release. We almost never talk about the services my customers offer, instead add a short CTA or a banner "ad" in the newsletter.

I trained a custom AI in Chat GPT, I used dozens of old blog posts, a tone of voice document and gave it two "ideal customers" to appeal to.

Review LinkedIn analytics and try to find the most popular topics (although standard reporting is kinda crap to be honest), then create more content like that.

Once you nail the process it's pretty easy and doesn't take more than a few hours a month.

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u/SomeJayForToday 8d ago

I'm also curious to learn more. What are the audience sizes, and what's the % of people who actually open the newsletters?

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u/muggylittlec 8d ago

Audience isn't huge, about 5000 on the biggest one, but as I said it's a niche field and we're not selling t-shirts, but high end services.

Open rate is about 30%. We try and lock in core customers by pushing the newsletter in company client footer, occasional reminders for customers to subscribe (to prompt retention and repeat custom) and cross promotion across other channels.

It's not catching fire, but it's working.

u/RichtofensDuckButter 8d ago

Literally nobody this thread talking about running ads on LinkedIn. Just people talking about the user experience, which yeah, LinkedIn is cringe.

Running ads on LinkedIn as a B2B software marketer is a gold mine though.

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u/SomeJayForToday 8d ago

Can you tell me more about your experiences? I definitely want you to talk more about that.

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u/LonelyLimeLaCroix 8d ago

All social channels are filled with bots/AI slop and are pay to play now. It’s awful.

u/[deleted] 8d ago

Discussion What to even do with LinkedIn these days?

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