In NSW and Southern Queensland, fire conditions are beginning, with yesterday seeing outbreaks. In the evening I had the privilege of speaking on ABC QLD radio, but it was not about fire. No. It was about etiquette on LinkedIn. Apparently a merciful break of fluff in the coverage, which people no doubt needed.
What I found fascinating about the topics we discussed was the push and shove that this platform faces between the professional profile and personal lives in how people use it. So I did a bit of research so that I didn’t sound like a complete duck and thought, well, I haven’t posted on my blog for a while, why not put it there.
I’ll cover the questions we discussed, the research insights I found into how LinkedIn is used, and the sparse information I found on the norms of interaction on the platform and how these may be changing. I’d observe that one of the reasons these norms change is connected to the changing dynamics of the broader ecosystem. Currently, this would include the backlash over Twitters rebrand to X and changing use (or disuse) patterns.
Social networking has transformed the process of building a personal brand, seeking challenging and fulfilling work, and advancing your career. The use of social media in the recruitment process has also grown exponentially. According to the literature, interaction on LinkedIn is focused around professional networking and career development.
The platform is designed to facilitate/afford how people make business connections, share their experiences and resumes, and find jobs. It is not the only platform where people do this, but it does seem to hold prevalence, at least in the circles I move in and the for its reported 950 million members sprinkled across 200 countries at the time of writing.
Research suggests that being active on LinkedIn does what it says on the box, supports career advancement. It also functions as a platform for B2B marketing, given that its functions are built around helping firms creating brands, build relationships and connect with existing and potential customers (relationship marketing).
As a feature, an active profile is probably the most important content project for any LinkedIn user, as it is the image that they project towards the wider LinkedIn community. Personal branding, including self marketing, reputation building and networking are key behaviours that social media platforms like LinkedIn afford. The platform also supports an individual user indicating availability for employment and to present their work experience in a way that can be ported across organisations and have endorsements from peers and co-workers of their work.
So when you look at someone’s LinkedIn profile, you are likely to know their education history, the probably that they are not a bot and a little about their socio-economic profile and reputational status. This point becomes relevant a little later, so keep it in mind.
So which question was most burning at the top of the show: Why are people sharing all their personal photos (babies, birthing, engagement, significant others… and making comments about everyone else’s) and where is the line on this platform? This question seems to be riding on the continuation of a trend of increased personal posts jumpstarted during the pandemic on the platform, and as mentioned above, changes in the platform ecosystem.
I’d suggest the continuance of this trend is probably a hodge podge of norms intersecting as people transfer what they do on more socially focused platforms in an attempt at authenticity and approachability, which is still an aspect of professional branding involving visibility and credibility signifiers. I found this piece bit of advice hanging prudishly in one article that attempts to put a normative compass around the overshare line. “Sharing your personal life on any social media platform puts you in a vulnerable position, but posting to LinkedIn as if it were Facebook can affect your professional reputation.” The observation I did make on air was that when posting we probably needed to remember that our job affiliation (and overlaps between personal and organisational branding) was being associated with the content we post. This is mostly different from how other social media platforms such as Instagram, TikTok and Facebook arrange and present information about individual users.
Next up, we talked about whether people were using LinkedIn like a dating app, to profile and hit up prospective candidates. The literature looking at the gender differences on impacts to men and women for being hit up, sexted or receiving sexually explicit content through LinkedIn suggests that women tend to decrease their active engagement with the app more than men in the face of these kinds of messages.
It appears that this is a real thing, because in August 2020 LinkedIn announced it was cracking down on unsolicited romantic advances and other forms of harassment on the website. They reportedly deploy machine learning designed to detect detect and hide potentially harassing messages from the recipient, who is then able to unhide, view or report the messages at their discretion. They also made their stance against the platform’s use as a dating site in their professional community policies. So it seems that the platform does not want to become the next Bumble.
The last couple of questions were about what functionalities and practices the site was best used for and possible shifts for it in the future. They really didn’t want to talk about the fires, hey.
In the literature I found research that maps along the classic strength of weak ties and job finding work by Mark Granovetter. But LinkedIn does this on gas using its contacts structure. Apparently, it’s about both the quantity and quality of ties because of the first, second and third level contacts network effects and having influential people or field experts at the first level of contacts. Doing so adds to the network of second- and third-level contacts people who are equally interesting to their professional field.
Another study, however argued that it was not the quantity of contacts mattered, it was all about frequency of usage that mattered for the receipt of career benefits such as sponsorship and job search assistance. Ah, the attention economy strikes again. You must be before eyeballs if you want to be seen and amplified by the networks you have curated in social media.
Broadly, professional benefits were found to be informational ones, such as timely access to relevant information and being referred for career opportunities. Combining the insights of the previous two studies mentioned, the authors who looked at informational benefits of Linked in observed that posting about work and strategically selecting ties (network composition) predicted higher informational benefits for users. Surprise.
Finally, where is linkedin likely to go from here? Well this one was a no brainer for me because I think that all the platforms we are using will move into augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) and attempt to build out the mixed reality and immersive reality experiences. I also think that those who are successful in this will attempt to build ecosystems of interaction around social, marketplace and creative/ professional activities rather than sticking to one stream. With this enhanced environment of interaction, I have no doubt norms and etiquettes will once again change. Who knows, maybe LinkedIn will move into professional matchmaking…
Disclaimer: Not written by GenAI… all typos, opinions and observations were made by the composite being that is me. Probably a partial cyborg, definitely digitally-enabled, sort of cute, of the human variety.