Have we changed LinkedIn? And by “we,” I mean vendors like me.
There was a time when my feed felt like an ongoing conversation between people working in commercial real estate. CFOs, asset managers, operators and executives sharing ideas, experiences and lessons from the work they were doing.
That was before I became an active contributor myself.
Today, it feels different. More polished posts. More product messaging. More “thought leadership”.
More people – including me – competing for attention.
I’m not suggesting that’s wrong. I’m a founder. I use LinkedIn to share ideas, introduce people to the company we’ve built, and pass along what we’ve learned from working with clients across the industry.
But I do wonder…
With every post written by people like me, have we shifted the balance? From practitioners sharing experience, to vendors sharing expertise.
Maybe that’s inevitable.
If it is, I think we’ve lost something valuable.
The conversations I enjoy most aren’t the ones trying to sell me something. They’re the honest reflections from people closest to the work – sharing something they learned, something they got wrong, or something they hadn’t considered before.
That’s the standard I try to hold myself to. Not to sell first, but to contribute something worth reading, even if nobody ever becomes a customer. I may get that balance wrong, but not with intention.
In your opinion…
Has LinkedIn changed, or are you changing the way you use LinkedIn?
