Why I stopped looking at my LinkedIn ranking
Once you see how the system is gamed, the numbers lose their shine.
I'm apparently #22 on LinkedIn in Singapore. But I stopped looking at rankings once I realised how many people game the system.
A new ranking
I just received an email from Favikon about their overhauled methodology, which is now much more granular. Good for them. They seem like a decent organisation out to do the best job they can, and worth a look if that sort of thing interests you.
Interestingly, my main category is now Copywriting and Content Writing, where I'm #73 globally and #22 on LinkedIn for Singapore. Which brings me to a wider point: social media isn't always what you think it is.
A fresh scorecard
I've long written about the many ways people game LinkedIn to appear better or more popular than they are. Yet it was only recently that I could quantify my suspicions. And almost everything I'd suspected turned out to be true.
One of the simplest ways to get a lot of engagement quickly is to punch out a lot of comments every day. Most of us don't have the time, so some decide to simply automate it.
Take this one profile I tracked, which averaged 40 comments a day over 12 days. When you look at the cadence, almost all of them go out within a minute of each other, and it's sustained over hundreds of posts. I don't think that's humanly possible. And yes, the profile in question ranks very high on Favikon's new rankings.
So what's the moral of the story? Engage with your favourite creators, diligently build a good reputation, and don't believe everything you see on social media.
