THE THOUSAND POST SPRINT — One person’s extreme challenge to test the power of connections on social media [Part 2 of 2]
Last December I undertook a gargantuan social media challenge partly to learn more about human behaviours and the algorithm that sits behind LinkedIn and partly because I was bored; in this second part of a 2 part blog series that was originally commissioned by Training Journal, I explain what I learnt from my experiment
In my previous blog I outlined the reasons and the approach to undertaking my recent #1000PostsChallenge; while this was interesting, the real gold comes from what I learnt about the algorithm and human behaviour which I share here.
We need to talk about posts
Although I read a lot of blogs and watched a lot of videos; 85% of posts lacked any visuals and were all about the words.
I learnt some fascinating things and felt like I got to know some people much better (such as the in-depth blog about 90s boy bands one lady wrote).
Let’s be honest though, there are a lot of terrible posts out there. So many are self-indulgent and/or badly written with too many tags.
When they were like this, it was really difficult to find something meaningful to comment — if I could give two tips to all the posters out there: 1) think about what is the key message you want to impart and 2) use less words.
Then there are the vast amount of posts written by AI (and supported by bots); we all know these ones, usually some leadership tip supported by a quote or infographic.
It turns out that a lot of these do the rounds as I saw multiple identical copies of the same post over the weekend.
The other thing that became clear was the number of LinkedIn pods that exist with the same people liking and commenting on each other’s posts.
It was also clear how reactive people are; the weekend I did the experiment there was a fake news story about a company that sacked all their employees that had reported feeling stressed. You would have thought the news was real based on the amount of outrage that was expressed by certain people on LinkedIn.
Throw in all the boasting and sob stories and it is important to take everything you read on social media with a pinch of salt.
We need to talk about the algorithm and vanity metrics
In part 1 of my blog, I talked about how the algorithm mistook me for a bot at several points, locking me out of LinkedIn and throttling the reach of my posts.
That said, the massive upsurge in commenting did impact my metrics.
Compared to my baseline, it increased impressions and profile views by 25%, engagements by 200% and daily followers gained by 250%.
However this effect merely lasted for 4 days before each of those metrics returned to their natural levels.
This really showed that, unless you are commenting everyday (which is what LinkedIn want you to do), the impact you have is marginal and temporary.
How people responded was by far and away the most interesting thing
Within the first week of the experiment, the stats were shocking:
- 65% of people whose posts I commented on did not respond or acknowledge my comment
- 20% responded with a simple thumbs up or “Thanks”
10% of people did respond with heartfelt messages (either publicly or privately), letting me know how much they appreciated the comment. In some cases they shared lovely things like how my comment had brought much more exposure to their post or how it was the first time they had ever been seen on social media.
Then there was the final 5% of people and they responded in what I would call a negative manner.
Because I had publicised on different channels that I was doing this, these people generally fell into this group; they became task-focused and had an expectation.
I had people who sent me 20 blogs or long videos to comment on and then got annoyed when I refused, and there were people who were unhappy with the comment I wrote (asking for rewrites). I had other people complain about the timing of my comment (“What use is a 4am comment?” they said) or the length (“Can it be longer?”).
It was fascinating not just that this happened but how belligerent some of these people became — realistically there are people like this in all aspects of life but I didn’t expect it when doing the challenge.
My takeaways a couple of weeks later
Despite all the headwinds, I managed to achieve my goal and I’ve had time to reflect on all I learnt; there are 5 key takeaways:
1. It’s easy to forget that social media (LinkedIn in this case) is a bubble; it’s important to remember that most people don’t post and that you tend to get shown the same people with the same views all the time. Now that I completed the challenge, my feed is quite different with many forgotten contacts reappearing
2. It’s hard to fight the algorithm; it really does show you what it wants to show you
3. Commenting will do little for your long-term vanity metrics; unless you do it all the time, real engagement can only come from interesting content
4. A nice comment can make a massive impact on relationship building; that said most comments will be ignored so be strategic with your comments and think about alternative ways to reinforce relationships (like just picking up the phone)
5. It is not easy to write comments on 1000 posts and everyone thinks you are crazy for doing it; people really want to know why you are doing it, they don’t believe you are not cheating and even if they do, they do not believe your results apply to them and diminish your efforts (I got asked so many times: “What’s next?”, as if this was a regular thing)
Would I do it again?
“Hell no”, is my simple answer.
Aside from the learnings, it really makes little impact and if you were to do it then a considerably lower volume of comments placed strategically on people’s posts that you know will see them would be best.
The experiment gave me confidence to spend less time scrolling and commenting on social media and to index more towards genuine relationship building activities like speaking with people.
Still I did it, so none of you need to.
No need to thank me 😉
Faris
Faris is the CEO and Founder of Shiageto Consulting, an innovative consultancy that helps firms and individuals sharpen their effectiveness. Connect with him here
Success = IQ x EQ x FQ
