What The Influencers Are Getting Wrong
With a great following comes great responsibility
Happy Monday, dear reader!
An unconventional LinkedIn greeting, no? Don't worry, I'll hit you right over the head with 10 tips on how to grow your audience from 0 to 5 million in just a second.
I wanted to talk about AI today - the hot topic of the year. It'll probably be People's sexiest man alive this year and Pantone's color of the year for 2024. "AI Blue".
AI dramatically affects my industry - it can write this post in a way that's easier for you to consume than I can.
It's also not as black and white as people are breaking it down to be.
Between the copyright question that's being raised -is using other people's writing to train a large language model ethical or even legal?- and the strike of Hollywood writers and actors, I thought it was an appropriate time to discuss the topic that truly no one can seem to put down.
However, I pivoted. Let me set the scene for you.
It's 11:16 am on this Monday morning, and I log on to LinkedIn to write this newsletter, a newsletter about asking difficult questions when it comes to the industries of writing, branding, marketing, and existing as a creator in the age of easy access info.
When, to what do my wondering eyes should appear? Two posts by two successful entrepreneurs that are exactly the kind of recycled, run-of-the-mill crap that makes me want to get on here and scream my head right off.
The first one gives me 10 ways this 7-figure earning business woman went from 0 figures to 7 figures in 12 months. Worked on a shoestring budget, shared the whole journey on LinkedIn... typical stuff. I keep scrolling, right into another one about how to grow your audience on LinkedIn.
That's what it's about on the surface, anyways. What it's really about is how being anything but a nice little white man who works too much is a failure of character. We have a few phrases like "I was 28 kg overweight a year ago" and "this is how I make my LinkedIn carousels in 15 minutes" and that is all lovely. Truly.
The thing is, I don't want to hate on these people or their lives. They have every right to live their lives however they would like to. Would you like to lose some weight? Lovely, but how on Earth does that tie in to your success as a LinkedIn influencer bro?
I am truly baffled at how the health and wellness sphere has pervaded LinkedIn. I get it - people get personal on here now. I probably share more of my personal opinions than any of you ever wanted to hear.
While I think a lot of us can agree that how much we work and our relationship to work can greatly affect our wellness, there is a fine line between talking about those themes and saying, "I did A, B, and C and I got results 1, 2, and 3 on my content creator entrepreneurial journey." The first opens space for a dialogue. The second is prescriptive and over generalizes. It toes the line of trying to influence how others live their lives and it grossly underestimates the amount of influence we have over others that may look up to us.
Even on LinkedIn, a great following comes with great responsibility. Perhaps a responsibility to question why so much of the influencer-sphere is female dominated, except on LinkedIn? Perhaps a responsibility to think critically about what constitutes an "influencer"? (Just because you aren't taking pictures of your food doesn't mean you aren't having an influence on people's decisions).
I think that's what bothers me so much about seeing this prescriptive bulls**t from obviously successful business owners and content creators. People look up to them for advice. Instead of addressing the nuances of owning a business or building online, they offer the same old advice, time and again, dressed up in different ways.
Instead of addressing the societal privilege that enabled them to quit their job and start a business, or build a second business on the side instead of worrying where their next meal was coming from, they offer solutions that cost money so that you can be like them. Except, you can't.
Because what worked for one person is not likely to work for another. That's the beautiful thing about building a business or creating - it really is a unique journey. No one can do it for you, but you can't do it alone.
No one can do it for you, though. We can't overlook that first bit. Which means that when we follow the advice of the people who have "made it" blindly, we're missing out on what we have to offer the world - and ourselves.
I am sure that every success story I see on LinkedIn and every social media platform out there has struggle behind it. There is a human being with hopes and dreams for their life behind those posts I loathe so much.
I just wish those human beings would be a little more conscious of the influence they have over the thousands of millions of followers they have. Simply because LinkedIn exists in the work and networking sphere doesn't mean that people aren't as influential as they are on Instagram, for example.
LinkedIn is very much a social network. That's why it's part of people's social media strategy. That's why I would likely be better off writing a nice little article about why your business needs SEO than this think piece.
People on here, perhaps more than anywhere else, are striving to be the hero of their own stories. That's the American ideal behind work, right? That we can make it, one day?
Except that's founded on capitalist ideals designed to keep us each working harder to get more, buy more, consume more until we die.
Maybe, today, let's consider that we've made it already, and we don't need someone else's hacks for our life.
