AI and LinkedIn posts: not a marriage made in heaven

This is a cautionary post about relying on AI for your LinkedIn posts. If you don’t agree with me, you may want to leave now.

But if you are skeptical, read on. I am not currying agreement; rather providing food for thought on this very timely topic.

I attended a workshop session the other day teaching newbies on an online  platform how to best use AI to help them generate posts and self-branded marketing.

My skin was already crawling.

The teacher suggested asking ChatGPT extremely specific questions to get the best ideas that he just could not come up with.

I listened a bit more.

Then he showed the results from a ChatGPT query and admitted it read “stiffly” and not friendly in tone.

He is not stiff and is friendly.

He suggested amending the copy.

OK, I agree. But…

Then I suggested against copy-pasting-editing and incorporating all the emojis, italics, and capital letters which current thinking about the LinkedIn algorithm seem to indicate will penalize you for their use.

I piped in that ChatGPT is based on the internet as we knew it in 2021 and today many things may have changed in LinkedIn, so caveat copier.

I want to be clear:

Post when you have something interesting, compelling, educational, demonstrative to add to the global discussion.

Relevant, reliable, referable.

Concise, cogent, consistent, compelling.

if you are dead out of ideas, don’t post. Wait, inspiration will come to you.

I also want you to think before you use a hack, or a crutch, or a shortcut. You will look like you did.

Be yourself. Be real.

Beware ChatGPT as a means of writing something for you, as it will never really be in your voice, diction, vocabulary, intonation, when you lazily rely on it to think for you.

You may disagree.

I may be wrong in your POV.

I may have to eat these words someday, but for now this is clear to me:

• Your marketing will sound like everyone else’s when you rely on a machine to generate your attractiveness.
• They’re using the same tool! Where is your uniqueness coming from in that situation?
• You will not be hired for shortcutting the sales process. Or hired again if you slipped this one by the client.
• You will not generate a fruitful client relationship by using the words and ideas of others.
• Where did this source material come from? Do you believe everything you read on the internet? I don’t.
• Your rich past experience makes you attractive as a partner today, so why not optimize it to demonstrate your future worth?
• In all the above, ask yourself: If I can ace that project / assignment / proposal / activity / advice, how can a machine do that better? Who’s the expert here?
• And if you can’t ace it, why would they need you, then?

I will now step off my soapbox.