by Tim Hughes | @Timothy_Hughes | LinkedIn
If you don’t know what a LinkedIn pod is, is a community of people on LinkedIn, usually solotrepreneurs who club together to share each others content. There are a number of these groups.
It is usual that the deal is that – Other people like and or comment on your content and you like our comment on their content.
The Benefits
Rand Fishkin once said “before you write content, you must create your distribution channel”.
If you are a single person company or a small business pods give you scale. If the average person on LinkedIn has 500 people, a pod of 20 people would give you a potential network of 500 x 20 = 10,000. Let’s assume that the people have a larger than average network of say 2,000 people, that means the Pod has a potential market of 40,000 people.
Why would you do this? The idea is that you get yourself into other people’s networks, these networks will think you are amazing and they will approach you and buy.
It’s a bit like posting content and hoping something will happen. I’m sure Pod users will give you examples of it working, but it’s a “passive” social strategy rather than a “active” one. If you work for yourself, maybe you need all the help you can get?
The Negatives
I was a member of a Slack group which shared each other’s content and I left after a few months because:-
- Of the 20 or so people in the group, only a couple created good content.
- Most of the content that was created was just blatant adverts for products, no insight or education.
- Many people that dropped content into the group, expected you to share it, but didn’t replicate or they had so small networks you got no additional coverage anyway.
- I’m aware of people in Pods and I see them making comments on people’s content and those people are the other side of the world. Maybe, just maybe somebody will see you and buy something from you, but being as most who work for themselves network is in their own country the possible is small. Possible, but small.
- It Takes effort, should you be putting that effort into a more focus approach?
- The content that I saw posted in the Slack group I was in, just wasn’t appropriate for my audience.
- I think your network gets content fatigue, there is only so much content you can put out.
- Is the content really appropriate for your network?
- You have to remember that there are more people selling on LinkedIn than buying. The people in the Pod are all trying to sell.
- Is this really authentic? Some people might be shocked that people are artificially bolstering their engagement, like steroid use in sports. That said, there is little or no debate about this so I assume it is OK?
People who read this article also read these:
https://dlaignite.com/the-one-thing-you-need-on-your-linkedin-profile-to-get-a-job-and-its-not-your-cv/
https://dlaignite.com/why-social-selling-and-a-great-linkedin-profile-is-now-a-core-competency/
https://dlaignite.com/why-using-profile-writers-is-not-social-selling/
