{"id":1769,"date":"2020-02-01T19:03:49","date_gmt":"2020-02-01T19:03:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cookywook.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1769"},"modified":"2020-02-01T19:04:18","modified_gmt":"2020-02-01T19:04:18","slug":"what-can-we-learn-from-linkedin-influencer-oleg-vishnepolsky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cookywook.co.uk\/blog\/what-can-we-learn-from-linkedin-influencer-oleg-vishnepolsky\/","title":{"rendered":"What can we learn from LinkedIn influencer Oleg Vishnepolsky?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Let’s get this out of the way: I hate LinkedIn. It exists in this weird interzone of social media – ostensibly for ‘professionals’ yet sharing the feature set of a ‘friends and family’-style social network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I mean, I’m not stupid. I get the point of it. For better or worse, ‘networking’ is part of any industry. I’m just more likely to do that through actually working with people, or following interesting folks on Twitter. The idea of coldly ‘connecting’ with someone on LinkedIn does nothing for me, and I get almost no value from it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For me, LinkedIn is mostly a distraction<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

People add me EVERY DAY, and 99% of the time they fall into three categories:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. Marketers trying to sell me some tool I don’t want or need<\/li>
  2. Other people in my industry who want to meet up for a coffee chat<\/li>
  3. People I actually work with<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    The colleagues I don’t mind so much, happy to have them on board. And sure, maybe three years down the line I’ll need to contact some mutual connection. But the marketers are just annoying – I’m happy with my tooling! If I wasn’t, I’d be looking for some? Woe betides anyone who is subscribing to new products and services off the back of a LinkedIn connection. And the coffee chats are fine<\/em>, it’s good to meet and talk with fellow folks – but it’s usually me giving them advice and just parroting the same topics. So I’ve had to revert to a less involved “here’s my work email, just send me your questions” approach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Enter the influencers<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

    What I’m not using LinkedIn for is the personal brand-building stuff. I’m not trying to post content on there for other people to like – I’m strictly a passive user. But there’s an interesting breed of people on the site who are active content publishers. Chief among them: Oleg Vishnepolsky<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Oleg is a LinkedIn rock star. He’s posting pretty much every single day, and everything he posts gets tens of thousands of likes. For example, here are the last few days:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Like, wtf? It’s pretty much the most extremely bottom-of-the-barrel content you could possibly imagine. Empty epithets with all the depth of a “live laugh love” embroidered pillow. Yet people lap up this supposed received wisdom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Worse than these mere bagatelles are the STORIES he posts. Stories of employees doing extraordinary things, bosses that have made some incredible display of compassion, an inspirational interviewee who changed the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n

    jfc, linkedin pic.twitter.com\/uyDDa3uwAN<\/a><\/p>— Richard Cook (@cookywook) December 6, 2017<\/a><\/blockquote>