(Re)introducing The Break Room

Hey everyone, it’s awesome to be back in touch with y’all. Thanks for holding tight while we shuffled some things around. Speaking of which, Hey there! I’m John- I spend my days helping founders fall in love with sales and I’m excited to be partnering with Alec to give everyone a break from the doomscrolling and hopefully making LinkedIn a more fun and useful place for everyone! 

What to expect from us going forward: 

1. MVP (Most Vulnerable Poster): There’s way too many faux experts out there acting like they’ve got it all figured out on LinkedIn, so each week we’ll spotlight a particularly impactful vulnerable post we saw that week, and what you all can learn from it. 🏆

2. Least Robotic Sounding Company: Establishing a brand voice on LinkedIn can be tough, so we’ll share an especially human-sounding brand post each week alongside how you can replicate it if you’re creating LI content for your brand 🤖

3. Oddest thing we saw this week: Let’s face it, LinkedIn can be pretty unhinged at times. Each week we’ll call out something odd that went down and focus on the takeaway in an attempt to make the insane insightful 🙂

4. Parting Thoughts: We’ll close each edition with a quick thought or anecdote to help you navigate the LinkedIn madness for the coming week!

lets go!!

MVP (Most Vulnerable Poster)

MVP (Most Vulnerable Poster) of the week goes to this post from Carson Hoffman, Founder of Kingsman and one of my personal favorite follows on LinkedIn. Carson did a few things here that made his post stand out: 

• He got DEEP: It can be really hard to publicly tell a story about a low point in your life, but if you’re brave enough to do it then it’s an incredible way to establish a meaningful connection with your audience

• He made it relevant: LinkedIn has somehow become the unofficial home of trauma dumping, and while I support everyone’s right to create an outlet when they need one, LinkedIn is a professional platform, so vulnerability and relevance go hand in hand. Carson didn’t just tell us a story about his low point, he told us it literally gave him the inspiration to start the business he still runs today!

Least Robotic Sounding Company

Least Robotic Sounding Company of the week goes to Duolingo: Duolingo has been killing it on all platforms for many years now, and this LinkedIn post was just another example of that. A few things Duolingo did here that other brands could learn from: 

• Humanized hiring: It’s well documented how tough the job market is right now for both employers and job seekers, and Duolingo managed to talk about hiring in a deeply human way. In fact, you might not even realize this post was about hiring until you reach the CTA at the end!

• Keep it LIGHT: Duolingo does this as well as any brand in the game right now. The emojis, the punctuation, the tone, all of it. If a candidate looking for a job saw this post, they’d immediately know Duolingo is a really fun place to work which makes them stand out as a phenomenal option for potential applicants.

Oddest thing of the week

Oddest thing we saw this week: This week John learned the hard way that people LOVE their AI notetakers. In this post, John stated a seemingly benign opinion that AI notetakers don’t work for him but he thinks people should use them if they want to. And then, things went CRAZY. The flurry of comments (287 and counting), and reposts (7) was more than a bit odd, but also provided some good learnings about the crazy world of LinkedIn: 

• Like it or not, hot takes work. John didn’t even realize he was taking a controversial stance when he posted this but oh boy it sure turned out that way. For better or worse, people engage when they get angry, so clearly taking this position that a lot of people disagree with was fuel that drove this post to have such huge reach

• LinkedIn’s algo remains mysterious: In the first 12 hours, this post did fairly mundane numbers- not bad, not great. And then it became a runaway freight train from LinkedIn h*ll- 36 hours after posting John woke up to DOZENS of comments from people all over the world who had seen the post and had a lot to say

• It’s not all bad out there: Although many of the posts were exceedingly negative (a few folks even cursed at John!), several people commented that they totally understood both sides and loved the sentiment that everyone should do whatever allows them to be most engaged/productive. TLDR; there’s a lot of nice people on the internet too 🙂

Parting thoughts: Be a human: This might sound obvious but I think we are all seeing increasingly more obvious AI in our feeds, so the next time you go out and post- be yourself! We’re all getting better at spotting the AI junk so show people your personality and they’ll probably thank you for it :)

Have an amazing week y’all!

Alec and John