Don't post things on LinkedIn that make you look like a loser

I imagine this will be the most divisive article I’ve written but, due to the times we’re living through right now, I think it’s something people need to hear.

Don’t post things on LinkedIn that make you look like a loser.

Why am I writing this now?

I’m in the middle of writing a piece about what you can learn from how Rise at Seven onboarded more than 50 people in a year (although headcount isn’t everything) and I started an aside that’s already two paragraphs long, so it’s here instead, in a piece of its own.

To summarise how I got onto the subject: as the UK went into lockdown at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Rise at Seven was 9 months old and had 14 employees. We had been renting desks from another agency in Sheffield and so it was easy for everyone to move out and work from home (maybe one of the reasons why our location never became a big part of our story). The agency felt young and fragile, but we were in a surprisingly good position:

• We had a few “traditional” high street retailers on the books by this point: Cath Kidston, Matalan and Halfords. These companies went from doing ~10% of their business online to 100% of their business through the websites…and at least a couple of them were too bureaucratic to bring new agencies onboard quickly, so we ended up with more work by default;
• We had some ecommerce brands like Missguided, who were well-placed to capitalise on increased demand for their products, particularly things like loungewear;
• We worked with three travel brands through the lockdown era; a ski holiday brand was certainly badly disrupted, but decided to continue investing so they could capture the pent up demand…the other two brands were more staycation focused.

We lost an Irish price comparison website - one of our smallest clients by revenue, but one we felt we could do a great job for nonetheless - but, otherwise, no client reduced fees; paused; or left.

The scenarios above took a few months to play out, but something happened quickly: we won a sizable retainer with European fintech brand Raisin about two weeks into the first national lockdown.

Up to this point in the COVID-19 pandemic, we’d been uncharacteristically quiet on social media. Other agency leaders had posted about their situations: the changes they’d had to make pre-furlough to staffing; the worries; the steady stream of “it’s OK not to be OK”. We didn’t post anything like this for perhaps no other reason than it wasn’t what we were experiencing.

Then, with that first lockdown win, we couldn’t put off the fact that we needed to hire any longer. We did the same thing that we had done 12 times in the preceding 9 months and posted on social media that we were looking to hire some people and, as you’d probably expect when we were the only agency apparently hiring, we were inundated.

People who were laid off immediately, before the furlough scheme came into effect, were applying in numbers…but brands were sending briefs. Despite being less than a year old, we were the most robust looking agency around, since everyone else was oversharing on social media that they were in bad shape and we were proving the opposite. During that first year of lockdown, we received multiple briefs from marketers who’d been working with the agencies sharing about how hard things were for them…including from some of the very people who had been commenting “thank you for sharing” on their agency’s leaders’ posts.

What you shouldn’t share

Firstly, you do you. I’m only an adviser to marketing agencies, after all, so you can choose to ignore this advice if you think that I’m being melodramatic (or machiavellian)...but here’s some quickfire for you:

• If you post that you’re owed [a very large amount of money] then clients may be concerned that you’re not all that robust if there’s another shock (which seems to come most weeks at the moment). Personally I think the exception is when you’re naming and shaming in hilarious fashion
• On that subject, general posts about “everyone paying late” tells the whole world that you’re the sort of person who gets paid late. It’s not helpful if you want to work with freelancers; it’s also not helpful for clients who need their agency to have positive cashflow because they don’t want to find a new partner if you go under; and it’s generally just an ick
• It’s good to post about lessons learned from [insert disaster here], but only once you’ve come out the other side and are stronger for it (otherwise the lesson isn’t worth as much): if you’re sharing that you’re fighting for your life right now then, at best, a client isn’t going to expect to get your full attention on their brief
• Don’t share “my client doesn’t get it” or “my client won’t sign off ideas” or “my client is an idiot” type posts because, even if the client in question is completely fictional (👀), non-fictional clients probably don’t want to risk being referenced in future posts. Besides, they’ve likely thought “my agency doesn’t get it” and “my agency pitches stupid ideas” and “my agency are idiots” from time to time, so it’s probably not going to be your side they see
• I don’t want to get all manosphere on you here but, like in the dating world (for most species, not just humans), you don’t want to post things that signal that you’re a “low value” mate. This is legit social science, as well as something we all experience sometimes. To torture a metaphor, clients are worried about the future and need to feel secure with their partner (agency); they want to feel looked after and they want their [business] to have the best chance of survival. We might use the phrase “fake it ‘til you make it” but a good way to be in demand is to tell everyone that you’re in demand (better still if it catches on and others say the same thing about you)...

The exceptions to this

• Being polarising is good. Genuinely. But “polarising” means you attract some people and turn off others. Share the controversial thing if you think your ICP clients will like it and everyone else will hate it. Rise at Seven was marmite by design: like we often said, if we wanted to work with HSBC, we’d look and act like HSBC…there’s a reason why we looked like Missguided (and it’s why we won Missguided as a client after about 6 weeks of trading)
• If posting about your financial woes might, in some way, fix your financial woes, then obviously do it. Examples off the top of my head would be: “we’re about to run out of cash and need to be acquired in a hurry” or “we desperately need some work right now to keep the lights on”. Niche example I saw a few weeks ago: “we’ve sold loads of tickets to our events but we sold less sponsorship [so the fewer sponsors we did get are enjoying exclusive access to a large audience]”...fair enough
• If you really, really want to complain on social media, just use a different social network where people you depend on for your income aren’t lurking. Maybe try X: complaining to bots is literally the entire function of the platform
• If you don’t care about winning business, you only need likes and shares. Life is hard for a lot of people right now (agencies included), so reflecting that at your audience is going to get a lot of people nodding in approval…it just won’t get people pulling out their chequebooks. If that’s fine with you (although I’m not sure why it would be), then fill your boots

I get it

It’s sad that social media is like this and it’s perfectly reasonable for us to be annoyed at the people who are projecting an idealised view of their life (on Instagram) or their business (on LinkedIn), especially if they are our competitors (and even more so if we know it’s BS).

But…it is like this…and it’s absolutely not the worst part of social media. You don’t have to post on LinkedIn…you can do these things instead.