We had youtubers on YouTube, we had “influencers” on Instagram, and by now we’ve got TikTokers on TikTok. But there is another breed of internet famous. It is becoming more and more prominent as of the early to mid-2020s.

Welcome to the age of the Linkedin influencer.

As the name suggests, the Linkedin influencer is a type of “influencer” on social media. Except the platform is Linkedin, which is a space for professionals to network. It was launched in 2003, the good old early days of the internet since before “I love this makeup palette, not sponsored!” was a thing.

That’s right. LinkedIn went from being a low-key website that had maintained the nostalgic utilitarianism of the early 2000s to just another brain rot propagating social media platform.

I don’t know when the term “LinkedIn influencer” was invented. Google Trends suggests that 2022 was when its usage saw an uptick in popularity.

Regardless, you can probably thank the Linkedin influencer for the surge of aggravating, demotivational, and overall cringe content on your main feed. Oh, and the fact that LinkedIn now promotes short form videos doesn’t help.

So how does the average person respond to this? The introvert, the low-key person, and the everyman? After all, LinkedIn is known as the place to be if you want to further your career.

I would argue that LinkedIn is still essential for anyone who wants to level up. I would even go as far as to argue that you should be active on the platform. It’s just that there is a way to go about it.

There is a fine line between actions that lead to killing it on LinkedIn and those that lead to making a fool of yourself on the platform. Oftentimes, only the former scenario yields desirable results.

If you want to optimize the time you devote to LinkedIn, you need to do these things.

Know that trying to become an influencer on LinkedIn is not worth it

Let’s get the first question out of the way. Is trying to become a Linkedin influencer even worth it? The answer is a surprising “probably not.”

Nonetheless, the idea prevails that posting often on LinkedIn and getting lots of views on your profile is the key to getting job offers. For a long time, I used to think that this was the case. That was until I recently came across a very specific post on LinkedIn.

The user was a data scientist who boasted “ex-Meta” and “ex-Amazon” on her profile and had over 67,000 followers. In her post, she said that “the ROI of posting on LinkedIn is so low.” This might actually have been what influenced me to write this article.

I guess a social media “influencer” does have the potential to influence people after all.

Jokes aside, that one sentence she wrote changed the way that I looked at the whole idea of becoming a LinkedIn influencer. Because the truth is, I had entertained the idea of trying to become one myself lately.

Why? Because like any other gold rush, lots of people are doing it. And the return on investment, at least for the people whom I came across, seems to have been much higher than the previously mentioned data scientist suggested.

As is with other domains, you don’t want to follow the crowd who is obsessed with trends. You want to start the trends. Because those who are around when something is just starting to become popular are usually the ones who end up having a reasonable chance of attaining success.

As far as I’m concerned, this whole “LinkedIn influencer” trend is no different.

Our biases get in the way of how we perceive reality. For every person who became super successful in her career after becoming a LinkedIn influencer, there are probably tons of other LinkedIn users who are not succeeding at all, wasting time, and making a fool of themselves in the process. Survivorship bias is what perfectly describes this type of situation.

Not only do I not enjoy gossip, but I try to avoid it as much as possible. However, I can only imagine the type of things coworkers and other acquaintances say about someone who is not benefiting from his or her attempts at becoming a Linkedin influencer.

“She’s trying to become one of those Linkedin influencers.”

“Just another try-hard who writes cringe posts instead of actually focusing on what’s important.”

“How sad.”

Now I’m definitely not suggesting that you need to live your life according to other people’s comments. Becoming an independent thinker is crucial to achieving self-actualization.

However, we still need to consider the effects that our actions have on others as we navigate our careers.

If the main focus of our careers is just to gain more attention and notoriety so we can have a chance at “faking it until we make it” to high salaries and lofty perks, then it’s not really worth it in my opinion.

Also, avoiding this “LinkedIn influencer” trend will probably result in less posts that spread negativity, hopelessness, and sheer annoyance. That itself, especially in this day and age, is a highly valuable contribution.

Realize early on that your network and followers alone won’t get you anywhere in this field

“Your network is your net worth.”

This is probably the one saying that any young professional has heard at least a few hundred times. Is it true? The short answer is yes, but at least in the field of computer science, this is only true if you are good at your job and are an effective communicator.

For some time, this was a bit difficult for me to believe. Especially considering some of the things I’ve thus far known about.

The industry is a meritocracy but also it isn’t.

I once came across a post on Linkedin by a user who worked as a machine learning engineer at a Fortune 500 company in the United States. To the untrained eye, the post seemed to contain very helpful advice for any ML/AI professional. As a mid-level machine learning engineer, I quickly realized from the contents of the post that this woman had a very weak understanding of her own field.

To make things even worse, this wasn’t just some employee who had stumbled upon the job. She wasn’t some internal hire who had previously worked under a different job title but in the same location. Rather, she was brought to the United States as foreign “talent” after having worked at a totally different company in her home country of India.

We hear this all the time, but I’ll say it again. The system is broken. These types of stories happen most likely because some workers in this field have others vouching for them due to an already existing connection.

The research community in computer science is another setting where neither dishonesty nor the act of gaming the system are strangers.

I used to frequent the Adobe Research website, and there was one researcher who stood out. This researcher, originally from western Europe and now working at one of the Adobe research centers in the United States, had published an unusually high number of papers in the past year alone. Needless to say, I was very impressed.

Not long after, I discovered Andy Stapleton, who is a youtuber based in Australia with a PhD in a STEM field. In one of his videos, he talked about “paper mafias” which are common in the scientific research community. Researchers join to ensure that their names appear on any paper that anyone else in the group has published, regardless of contributions or lack thereof.

These examples prove that “getting ahead” largely because of connections is a possibility. Yet, I would not consider any of these cases to be examples of genuine success because of the lack of integrity that is involved.

Here at MLE Resource, we don’t want to do anything that goes against our values nor engage in unethical behavior. However, it is still essential for us to connect with fellow professionals who work in the same field. After all, how would it be possible to grow in your career if no one else knows who you are?

The thing is, you want to be noticed by relevant people in your area of work. Your dream connections, if you will. Just keep in mind that the reason they notice you is equally important.

Getting noticed for existing by the right people is not the key to hacking your way into a higher paying job or obtaining more leads for your solopreneur gig. Getting noticed for your valuable contributions by the right people is what can lead to the opportunities you are looking for.

At the end of the day…

No one cares about your connections or how many followers you have if you cannot do the job.

Identify your talents and then focus on them

What are your talents? Moreover, what are your interests?

No, I am not just talking about your job title. I am not even talking about your tech stack or your area of focus.

Every job has multiple responsibilities and necessary skills. Coding, designing, keeping track of KPIs and progress, writing documentations, mentoring, giving presentations, maintaining rapport with partners and stakeholders, and more.

We all have our talents and interests. I would even argue that there is a correlation between those two things.

As you become more interested in something and work to improve yourself in that domain, you eventually end up offering more valuable contributions. This gives the impression that you are talented in that area. And it’s probably true, if you get to a point where your work is of high quality.

From early on, it is crucial to identify what you do best and what are the most impactful ways you can contribute to an organization, a project, and a team. When I say impact, I am not suggesting you have to make a change that people will remember and still be affected by 10 years later. What I mean is focus on what you can do so that you ensure reasonable success and help your team reach their goals.

A lot of people in this field think that more experience is correlated with more marketability. In other words, if you are a junior you will have a harder time finding a job and if you are a senior, job offers are fairly easy to attain.

As much of a travesty as it is, this does not appear to be the case. Companies are hiring less people, and those that are publicly hiring seem to demand “10x engineers” or “unicorns” for senior positions.

This is where the importance of focusing on your talents becomes especially handy. When it comes time to look for a new job, you don’t rely on the same old resume filled with the same old skills and tasks. There will be hundreds of other applicants claiming that they are no different. To stand out, you need to highlight how you, as proven by your abilities and past work, are crucial to the success of the organization.

Consider Chip Huyen, for example. Her claim to fame was teaching a course about using Tensorflow for deep learning when she was an undergrad student at Stanford. Based on her story, you can tell that the only reason she became the instructor was because she was highly interested in that topic and took the initiative to launch the course in spite of how difficult it was.

Although Huyen did actually work in AI research at some point, she eventually quit. Now, she is known as a world expert in machine learning system design. Rather than filling her resume with the same topics as everybody else, she decided to focus on the areas where she knew others would value her contributions.

If you want to find the people who will value your contributions, growing your network is essential.

Focus on growing your network

We talked about why it is important to grow your network. The next question is, how exactly do you go about doing that online?

LinkedIn is the perfect place to find people, although Twitter (which some people think is now called X) is at least as effective. Although Instagram has a small community of people interested in stuff like web development, ML/AI engineering, and cybersecurity, it mostly consists of influencers whose target audience are beginners and aspiring techies.

After we begin working on strengthening our talents, we want to reach out to our fellow professionals. The second part, reaching out to the right people, is a very common piece of advice you will come across when the topic is growing a professional network.

This advice is often followed with the insistence that you should reach out to others immediately through a direct message. At the time I write this article, LinkedIn only allows you to send one message to someone with whom you are not already connected. Even that is typically when you are sending a connection request.

Personally, I would not recommend this. Not only do social media platforms such as LinkedIn often discourage cold messages, but many users disable DMs and even connection requests from strangers. But that is not even the main reason I don’t recommend reaching out to others unsolicited.

The main reason is because it’s not very effective.

Think about it. Imagine you are at the top of your field, and you have numerous people reaching out to you because they want to add you to their network or even have a specific question. What are the odds that you would even remember any random person amongst them a few weeks later?

Not very high.

I would argue that reaching out to someone you don’t already know is a process. Here is how I would go about it.

First, I would follow the person on at least one of the two social media platforms (LinkedIn and Twitter), if not both.

Second, I would periodically check the person’s profile for interesting content. If I have anything interesting to say as a response to any post, I would submit a comment. It’s worth noting that you send replies if and only if you have something to say that you consider to be genuinely insightful and/or useful.

I would continue step 2 for at least a few months. Also, I would not move onto the next step until the person has somehow acknowledged me. Either through liking at least a few of my comments or sending at least a few positive replies.

Last, I would reach out to the person directly. That could include sending a connection request, sending a direct message introducing yourself and requesting a video call, or arranging to meet the person at a conference s/he recently announced s/he will be attending.

Maybe you want to collaborate on something, work at the same company, or just want the person to see some of your recent work because you thought s/he would be interested.

In my opinion, these steps make up the most effective way to go about connecting with others online.

Don’t rely too much on the advice of career gurus on social media

As I always say, there is no shortage of bad advice on the internet.

That includes career-related advice you might come across on social media or even personal blogs.

The best thing you can do is to take advice with a grain of salt.

When I first began my career, I had no idea how to reach out to more established professionals in my field. The thing was that I didn’t know that many people, and I wanted to expand my network. Because I had no idea what to do, I turned to the internet of all places for advice.

A common theme was that you needed to do whatever you could to get one-on-one attention.

One really terrible piece of advice that I recall specifically was to connect on LinkedIn with a stranger who also works in your field, and then ask that person to review your resume. This was especially recommended if the person worked at a company in which you were interested.

One reason that I remember this piece of advice so well was because I was guilty of actually trying it. Surprise, surprise, it didn’t work. The person that I had recently connected with went radio silent.

What must have been a year later, I came across another stranger on the same platform who wrote a post that appeared on my main feed. In the post, he ridiculed the people who follow this advice and implied that he ignored them as well. Specifically, “asking other people to do chores for you” is how he referred to following this advice.

What’s the takeaway? Don’t be too eager to take advice from people on the internet, even if they are known as career gurus.

Also, don’t allow yourself to be too easily influenced by your environment. Especially online.

Keep calm, and don’t give in to the hype

It can be very easy to be influenced by your environment. Especially when the people around you, or the people on your main feed on LinkedIn or Twitter, are all talking about the same topics.

If these people are talking about topics relevant to your field, then it is definitely worth paying attention and even publicly responding to those posts. Research in the field of AI is something that I am highly interested in, and it is very relevant to my career. As a result, posts about new papers related to AI research and emerging trends are pretty much always welcome on my main feed.

The same cannot be said about politics, debates about social norms, and even pop culture.

Why?

The first reason is because these topics are not relevant in any way to achieving our goals. Joining these discussions doesn’t help others see you for your talent, competence, nor achievements.

The second reason is because it is risky. When you begin involving yourself in political debates, you have an approximately 50% chance of alienating anyone else who can see your activity online.

Even publicly talking about something as seemingly innocuous as pop culture can lead your colleagues into seeing you as frivolous and lacking good judgment.

The third reason is because it is futile. What are the possible advantages of discussing these topics in an online professional setting?

If you want to bond with your coworkers and friends over these issues, you can do that privately. Meanwhile, if you are admittedly doing it just to get attention in the hopes of becoming internet famous, then you aren’t fully convinced why trying to become a social media influencer isn’t a good idea.

The other really important thing is to keep calm. Remember that Keep Calm meme from the early 2010s? Maybe not.

Either way, that is what you need to do on social media. Which is relatively easy if you don’t post often and engage in discussions on controversial issues.

The End

Wow, that was a behemoth of a blog post. In all honesty, I wasn’t expecting it to be this long. It wasn’t until I was halfway through writing that I realized how long the post might get.

Anyway, I hope this article was helpful. Normally, I write about topics related to ML/AI and software. Hopefully the upcoming article will not stray from those topics.

Until next week!