I've just watched this video, which is offering support to people to create content on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn's content problem

If you didn't know, LinkedIn has a problem.  Only 10% of the people who use the platform create content.  If you think for a second, of course this is true, the way LinkedIn works is you go on, set yourself up with a CV and then pray that a recruiter will call you up about that dream job.  You don't actually go back to the platform.

If you look at social network competition, TickTok, for example, has a very number of people creating and consuming content.

Whereas Twitter, has 55% of the people reading and not creating.

LinkedIn is the only social network who don't publish active user numbers and you can see why.

Let me take you through what is wrong with this program.

LinkedIn is ageist

Writing as I do at the age of 56, I don't see anybody in their 40s or 50s contributing here.  I know plenty of people older than 30 who are great content creators, it's as if LinkedIn only think Gen Z and Millennials are good at social media.

It's time for people to realise that age is not a factor to how good or bad you are on social.

Would you learn to sky dive...

Imagine this, you have decided you are going to learn to sky dive.  You sign up for the course and the trainer, takes you through the course.  You learn how to jump out the airplane, how to land, everything you need to know.

The comes to crucial day of the jump, you go to get on the plane and you make way for the trainer so they can get on the plane.  Then the trainer says "oh I'm not coming with you as I've never done this before".

Would you get on the plane, if your sky diving teacher had never sky dived before?

Here is LinkedIn's problem, the people they have put forward to lead the creative program don't meet the program criteria.

Like the Linkedin trainer who will teach you to be a Linkedin influencer, but isn't a LinkedIn influencer themselves and the sales guru on LinkedIn who has no sales experience on their LinkedIn profile.

Would you learn to drive, from somebody who couldn't drive?

Who are the creatives?

Maybe I've missed something, but the greatest majority of people on LinkedIn work for companies, the people I see being put forward are people who work for themselves.

Creating a band of self employed people to motivate other self employed people is great, but what about creating a movement of people who work for corporates? 

Some of the advice is just bad

During the video things are said like "you need to keep you videos to less than a  minute long"  why?  How can you say this without understanding the context of what the person's strategy is?

Yes, I totally understand that people want snack-able content, and as a business, we totally advocate engagement but is "a lot" of engagement what you need?

I was recently interviewed on a podcast, the podcast host posted the interview on their LinkedIn profile and it got 80 likes.  Which is great.  But not one of these 80 likes were from people that would buy from me.  I totally understand that the content sits there and is great as building up a library of content to showcase me as an expert, but it's a great example of where a lot of engagement is actually a cost.

One of my team recently put up a post that got 700 likes, it's taken him a week to harvest that for business.

As a strategy, I might actually want just one like, from somebody who will buy from me and will spend $1 million.

Engagement is related to your strategy.

What are the positives?

There is some great advice about creating content to start with a hook, being human, my concern is that this is presented as "hints and tips" and not as a strategy and methodology.

It's great to see LinkedIn supporting and encouraging creators and I'm sure there will be a number of iterations.

Let's all hope that LinkedIn decide to make things inclusive and decide to tap into the real skills and creativity out there.