Peer into the back of your wardrobe or have a nosey in your attic and what do you see?
My guess? Clutter!
Stuff you’ve not worn for years, stuff you’ve not used for years, stuff that needs chucking away. A clear-out is well overdue.
Now take a good look at your LinkedIn home page feed. It’s no different.
Among the gems – the useful, relevant and interesting – there are endless meaningless posts that stop your feed from shining.
I bet 90% of what you see there is rubbish. So, what do you do? Yep, you ignore it.
Your homepage feed is one of the most important features on LinkedIn but how many times have you scrolled through it and found nothing to comment on, nothing to share?
No, you can’t do anything to stop the advertising, but it is possible to gain control over what you do and don’t see.
Blame it on the algorithm?
Ask yourself what you are doing to improve your feed?
It’s easy to think, “Oh it’s because of the algorithm and I can’t control it.”
There is some truth in that as it doesn’t always do a great job but it’s just a machine, doing the best it can, whereas you have the means to be its master, not its servant.
How? Unfollow, unfollow and unfollow again!
By simply going through your feed and brutally unfollowing people that don’t add any value to your LinkedIn experience, you can dramatically change what you see there.
I do this regularly, and trust me it’s very liberating.
It’s so effective because you’re telling the algorithm what you like and what you don’t like. The algorithm will then respond with both positive and negative feedback by:
• Giving you less of the type of content posted by people you have unfollowed
• Giving you more of the type of content you’ve liked or commented on
Until you get your home page in order, it’s hard for the algorithm to give positive feedback when 90% of what you see is rubbish. It will just keep showing you the rubbish until you tell it that you want things to change.
Be brutal!
To do this effectively you need to be brutal and ignore the anti-declutter devil on your shoulder.
Think back to your wardrobe. There’s a suit in there you haven’t worn for three years. It’s in good condition but it’s a bit tight around the middle.
Your inner doubt devil whispers: “Hey, come on, you’ll lose a bit of weight and squeeze back into it one day. Keep it, keep it!”
Your LinkedIn feed is the same. The persuasive whispering tells you that this person might post something mind-blowing, that person might share your dream job opportunity.
I doubt it. If they’ve not posted anything compelling in three years, what are the chances of that changing?
Be honest, be ruthless – dump and unfollow!
If you need more convincing, here are five questions you should ask for every post you see on your homepage feed:
1. Do I actually know this person?
2. Is this relevant to me?
3. Is this useful to my followers?
4. Do I wish to engage with this person?
5. Does this person normally post relevant content?
If you can’t answer yes to one of the above questions, you know what to do.
Get it right and you’ll soon start to see a positive impact.
It won’t happen overnight, especially if you get lots of invites and make lots of connections that set back your good work, but your feed will eventually become powerful and useful, the feature it was always supposed to be.
Your cathartic clear-out will allow you to engage and build relationships more easily so you really start to benefit from LinkedIn. It will become a tool to help you grow your business and make money rather than one that takes up your time.
So, start unfollowing and set your home page feed free! You won’t regret it.
Let me know what you think. I’d love to hear your views.
1 Comment. Leave new
What great advice, Mark. I’m going to start this immediately because I only want to see what’s useful or interesting to me. This will change my LinkedIn world!