You have two speeds on LinkedIn: warp-speed “on” or stone-cold-dead “off.”

You know my credo: you have to be in the LinkedIn game with consistently concise, cogent, and compelling content. Your profile portrays persona and perseverance positively and professionally. They want to know who posted that brilliant comment. You want them to know how you accumulated such wisdom. The two must converge.

OK, that’s the warp speed part for this week.

Now the sad part: so many smart people who can’t get out from under themselves, and I see this so so so often (that’s far far far worse than it needs to be)!

Unfortunately, some people only post their comments in the form of emojis (Imagine me supplying the yucky face here). No one knows why you liked something with a smiley face emoji if you do not use words. Clapping hands and all the other happy emojis carry my same warning. You can speak, you can type, why not put both to use to show others you can think in fresh, positive and educative ways? You can answer me when you are ready in words showing insight and intelligence. Fix that!

Others simply and robotically repost someone else’s thoughts, with no thoughts of their own to sway their reading audience. Not as yucky so I will cue the boring face emoji, its mouth open, yawning. No one admires copycats without telling us why they found the attached material to be worthwhile. If you insist on staying dull, drab, and distant, you will  attract no one viable on LinkedIn. If you repost without overlaying your thoughts on top of the attached material you want others to see, I’ll bet you a cup of coffee your profile is equally dull, drab, and boring. You can complain all you want about low ROI from LinkedIn but you will need to be honest and should blame yourself. Fix that!

The fix? Ha! Of course I have one. Some of my most in-demand group training talks these days, plus offered as part of my coaching individual clients, surround my work on 4 ways to boost the conversational process of posting great original content. I have posted on this before, and here is one of my blog posts from 2021, ever fresh, with a summary graphic for a refresher, or freshly if you never saw it.

Fix your eyes on a future when you give of yourself to others. They want to hear from you and learn about your fresh perspective. They will refer you if they perceive a need to offer you to someone else who could benefit from your demonstrated higher thought leadership.

As I always say to stone-cold-dead clients: if you do not tell us, we will never know how amazing you are.

I say this in closing: be warp speed amazing-er.