Love Your Lurkers

The not knowing is the deal...

Every now and again, someone talks to me about stuff I post, usually says something nice. Sometimes it’s clear that this has influenced a decision to hire or work with me, or kept me in mind for something, maybe for a decade or more.

Which is splendid.

But almost always I would have had no idea.

There were no signals, no likes, no comments, no sneaking into my DMs.

People like stuff, but they don’t like stuff.

The living LinkedIn embodiment of John Wanamaker’s famous quote "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half”, except of course, the ratio is not the same. The ratio of followers, impressions to likes/comments is clearly not 50/50.

I know 0.5% of my audience has read this article; I just don’t know which 0.5%.

They call it personal brand for a reason, a word that I hear is now almost verboten in many polite C-suite circles due to its ephemeral nature.

And it’s the same for all of us.

The temptation is, of course, to write content that gets a reaction.

I happened to make an observation about LinkedIn the other day that was the most engaged-with thing I’ve done for years.

I joked in the comments that

“…based on the popularity of this post, this shall now be my work... my calling... LinkedIn on Linkedin... I have to follow the data…”

But the lurkers are not here for that; nobody is going to hire me, think of me as credible in the thing I actually do if I pivot to become a snarky observer of LinkedIn, for the dopamine hits and to be slightly more popular.

We are told to share more about our personal lives, include flattering photos, etc etc.

The lurkers that give a shit about you, or will do in the future, expect you to be building a consistent you, not trying to play the algorithm that is subject to change.

And it might be the lurkers don’t actually read your content; they just see you are doing the work, reinforcing their view of you.

Or they see you cocking around for the algorithm.

Which do you prefer?

Of course, this is an easy thing to say.

If you don’t occasionally flutter your eyelashes at the algorithm, your content is a tree in the forest that no one hears fall, and our content is more important than that.

I can't say for sure any of this is true; your mileage may vary, as I opened with anecdotal data, and I’ve guessed that if I were to write popular posts about LinkedIn, it would harm my reputation.

Could be - but that’s the point. The deal is the not knowing.

When I started podcasting, my daughter called it shouting into the void, and it truly is, and we know the deal.

It's the same here: do the good stuff for the lurkers.