Episode #180 - The Peril of Social Media Algorithms

Today, an important observation I’ve made this week.

Regular listeners will know that I’m a prolific blogger, if I can use that term, of sorts, having published over 200 blogs in the past couple of years.

Some perform really well, others not as well - and that’s just the nature of creative pursuits.

And more recently, I noticed an influx of people post long-form, often narcissistic status updates on lInkedin following a predictable formula, separating each line by an entire line spacing and often running about 30 lines long.

It turns out that Linkedin picks up on this in its algorithm and serves it up to a much wider audience and therefore such posts have the ingredients to go viral.

This can be both a blessing, for content creators who are taking advantage, but also a curse, because Linkedin, seemingly makes no effort to distinguish between quality content and for lack of a better word, garbage.

I recently posted a tongue in cheek status update on Linkedin calling out everybody posting such long-winded, devoid of substance posts, and did so using the same formula...and low and behold, this rant, which took me all of 20 seconds to think up, has now amassed in just 3 short days almost 1,000 likes and 100,000 views.

Meanwhile, a 3,500 word article I published a week earlier on an alternative to business cases to explore disruptive innovation is sitting at just over 100 likes and has not been getting anywhere near the same level of distribution from Linkedin even though hours of critical thinking and years of learning and experience went into it.

The lesson here is, be intentional about where you consume your content from and don’t place too much faith in algorithms to serve up the best, most value adding and relevant content - not yet anyway.

As the late, great Zig Ziglar used to say - you are who you are because of what you put into your mind - so guard your mind with your life!

That’s it for another week of Fast Fix Friday, have an epic weekend!

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