Hey friends,
I have been avoiding controversial content for so long.
And if you know me, you know I have strong opinions. 99% of the time, I keep them for myself.
Today we are the 1%.
I love LinkedIn. I worked there for 4 years. I built the LinkedIn Sales Navigator team in Italy. Loved it all.
Last year, LinkedIn generated over 130K in pipeline for me. It is my 2nd best channel for inbound leads.
I have been on this platform for 10+ years, writing consistently 3-4x a week.
Thousands of posts, millions of impressions, 8K followers later… There are still some things I will never understand.
Disclaimer: I have done some of these things.
I am part of the tribe too. I am not saying I am Jesus Christ (or Allah, or whatever God you trust).
I do s***y things on LinkedIn sometimes.
I am not perfect.
But I can say OUT LOUD that I have a balance.
I deliver 100 days of value for 1 selfie.
Let’s go.
You should sell yourself, your services, and your products. Of course.
But if you do it 10 times out of 12 posts, well, you will give me urticaria.
The goal on the platform is to deliver value, to grow your professional network with meaningful connections, and to sell whatever you are selling as a result.
In this order.
At least this is what I have always tried to do.
If you open my timeline, you can still spot lots of people (some I admire too) where every day is a post about them.
A little suggestion: make it about you 20% of the time.
The rest, think about the people, the audience you have in mind.
Give without asking anything in return.
Another trend.
Take the “fractional” or “consultant” community I am now part of.
I built 10 sales teams from scratch before doing this as a full-time consultancy gig.
I hired 100 people before advising anyone on hiring.
I implemented 20+ CRMs before implementing one for a client.
I did the damn thing over and over again.
Built the process. Documented the journey. Gathered the results. Gave it away for free.
Then I monetised.
What I see now is the opposite:
What have we become?
Fuffaguru at their best.
I use AI for my LinkedIn posts too.
I start with an idea, give it to Claude Code to structure it better, then run it through Grammarly to refine.
I write in English, but I’m Italian, and I need structure and process around it.
But writing a full post with AI? Come on.
Thank God it is getting easier to spot, and LinkedIn is now reducing the reach of AI-written posts. (Way to go, LinkedIn!)
Worse than that is AI commenting.
I have never done it and I never will. I still find it very hard to understand why somebody would.
I get it, commenting brings more impressions than posting. But AI commenting has gone too far.
I did this once, and I was called out.
They did well calling me out. Because if you ask me to connect, I accept, and straight after you pitch me something, I will remove the connection.
And potentially block you too.
Never do this if you can.
My personal connection request netiquette:
That’s it.
Outside of these 5, I do not connect. I follow.
The following is a great way to learn about someone.
And if one day you want to sell them something, you already know what they care about, what they write about, and how to be relevant with your outreach.
This happens because of the 4 points above. Plus some things I completely ignore.
Every time I see somebody with tens of thousands of followers posting selfies, self-promotion, or “comment AI to get my full playbook”…99% of the time it is somebody playing the algorithm game with 0 value.
Or they add value 20% of the time, and the other 80% is selfies, kids, good-looking people, etc.
I could point you to at least 10-20 profiles you follow that fall into this category.
But I am a nice person, and calling out people is not my style.
(Send me an email, and I will send you the list. 🤣)
I know I am not alone here.
LinkedIn is growing in numbers but losing trustworthiness over time.
That is why so many people are moving to Substack and similar platforms.
Because we need to focus on the value, not the content.
And if you are on LinkedIn, ultimately, you are there to grow your skills.
You are there to meet interesting people, to land your dream job or build your product or service.
I am glad I built this newsletter and that the people close to me read it.
Same with my YouTube channel.
Long-form content. No impressions, no likes, no trap.
I will keep diversifying away from LinkedIn.
Not to leave the platform, but to build sources of revenue that do not depend on it.
Would love to hear your POV on this one.
Thanks for reading this far. See you all next week!
