The dirty truth about LinkedIn's top influencers

Want over-the-top growth on LinkedIn? First, don't make the mistake of focusing too much on quality. Then do these three things.

It's been some weeks since an #UnfilteredFriday. Today, let's talk LinkedIn growth. I'll also share three strategies that'll get you 100+ likes. Guaranteed.

LinkedIn 'gurus'

I was at a tech conference last week and spotted a session on organic ways to grow on LinkedIn by the founders of two successful LinkedIn marketing agencies. Always willing to learn, I decided to drop by.

The session was popular, with at least 1,000 seated and hundreds more standing. Here's what was shared over 30 minutes: write a good hook, present a unique viewpoint, post content that's interesting, comment for more visibility, and reuse and repurpose your content.

What a waste of time. Let's just say I figured out the above within my first two weeks on LinkedIn.

The techniques not shared

I'm on my 866th day of daily posts, and I'll tell you it's impossible to gain their alleged level of success with these tips alone. They claimed 321 million impressions last year and 898,000 new followers. To get to this level of success, a hidden component is needed, which I'll get to shortly.

Ever the studious one, I listened carefully nonetheless. What I didn't hear about is the importance of quality content. Instead, they encouraged posting popular content again and again, rotating it across multiple accounts, and repurposing it ten different ways. Nowhere did I hear about the importance of originality or thought leadership.

Growth at all cost

Since it's Unfiltered Friday and I promised, here's what will actually get you thousands of followers and millions of impressions.

Post regularly. You need to post at least once a day. It doesn't matter if it's copied or AI-rewritten. Get called out? Quickly delete the offending post and block the person so fewer will see it.

Join pods. The more the merrier. While this breaches LinkedIn's TOS, Daniel Hall will tell you that LinkedIn has never penalised users for this. And oh, Daniel regularly exposes pod users.

AI commenting. To get good engagements on LinkedIn today, you need to write at least 50 comments a day, preferably over 100. Since nobody has that much time, pony up for an AI commenting tool. There are many.

To be clear, I don't pod and have only used organic methods. But if your content's not doing well, it's not you. It's them.

Those massive follower counts and impression numbers that some influencers wield could be built on tactics that would make any serious content creator cringe. The irony is that the very people teaching LinkedIn growth are often the worst offenders.

Coincidentally, LinkedIn's Editor in Chief wrote about tackling the scourge of "inauthentic engagements" earlier this week. My thinking, though, is that they must do much more - and implement it much more aggressively.