For Pod’s Sake!

🧐 LinkedIn pods – yay or nay?

There’s something of a new fashion occurring on LinkedIn at the moment – – pods.

A LinkedIn pod is a private group or message thread of people who agree to like, share and promote other pod members’ content, with the aim of beating the LinkedIn algorithm.

In theory, this works to gain you those all-important “engagement ratings” that help LinkedIn’s algorithm to see that your content is both relevant and valuable – it must be, if so many people are engaging with it.

But could this backfire?

Could this see you committing the ultimate social media faux pas – being inauthentic?

Essentially, the algorithm wants to show you content that it thinks you’ll like. If you’re only ever engaging with the people within your “pod”, then it follows that they will be the people who see the majority of your content (and vice versa) rather than the people that you actively want to be engaging with: your potential customers.

Superficial engagement can hurt your credibility.

A simple “great post, thanks for sharing!” doesn’t ring true. It’s far too similar to the wave of Instagram bots that comment “love this pic!” on hundreds of accounts every day.

This kind of engagement is a far cry from your connections actually reading/viewing your content and giving you a genuine response. For example, “great post!” adds nothing to a conversation. Imagine you see one of your connections at a business event – would you walk up to them, tap them on the shoulder, say “great post!” then turn around and leave?!

Hopefully, the answer is a resounding NO.

Of course, you wouldn’t do that. If you really thought their post was great, you’d tell them WHY you thought it was great, and what resonated with you, or what riled you. You’d have an actual conversation about it, and this conversation would demonstrate both party’s expertise, and their openness to genuine, authentic engagement.

The theory behind a LinkedIn pod is sound, but it shouldn’t be the only way that you engage with people on that platform. It’s awesome to find your social media cheerleaders, the people who want to help boost your content organically, but there has to be more to it than quid pro quo, otherwise you’re going to fall flat.

Please don’t rely on your pod to keep you afloat – you still need to do some actual swimming on your own.