I’m starting a weekly newsletter where I share one thing that I would not post on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is awesome for a lot of content, but I’ve found that it is not a good place to share controversial or contrarian ideas.
In order to get the maximum possible viewership on a LinkedIn post about sales development, it must immediately resonate with people who have never been successful full-time SDRs. This group makes up the majority of a post’s audience, so engagement and exposure will depend on how good it sounds to them.
That doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with popular posts. There is a ton of great advice for SDRs that immediately makes sense to almost anyone regardless of experience.
But this constraint leads to a couple of gaps for SDRs who look to LinkedIn for advice:
Many of the insights and strategies that separate the top 10% of SDRs aren’t immediately obvious. They are often controversial or contrarian. If these get posted at all, they get very little exposure and can receive a lot of criticism from non-experts.
Many ideas that are extremely logical/popular among non-experts aren’t actually effective in practice.
Accurately identifying good advice that sounds like bad advice and vice-versa can give you an incredible advantage.
When you encounter a new idea, or new advice, try to figure out which of the following four buckets it fits in:
Good advice that sounds like good advice:
These get a lot of attention on LinkedIn and make a positive difference for SDRs. This isn’t necessarily fluff content. There are a lot of obvious things that people just haven’t thought about. It is very possible for a creator to consistently share things that are helpful, effective, and appeal to non-experts.
Bad advice that sounds like bad advice:
This type of post doesn’t get popular and doesn’t cause much harm since people generally avoid obviously bad ideas.
Good advice that sounds like bad advice:
This is hard to find on LinkedIn. If this type of advice does show up, it will not be popular and will likely be heavily criticized by non-experts. For this reason, it is often not in a person’s best interest to share these ideas publicly.
This is unfortunate because these ideas are disproportionately valuable. Being right about one contrarian idea could completely transform your career.
Bad advice that sounds like good advice
Ironically, bad advice that sounds like good advice can get much more engagement, reach, and social validation than good advice on LinkedIn.
Since it is a bad idea in practice, it is usually not done in organizations. This causes it to seem novel and interesting.
The combination of being different from what people typically see in their organization and resonating strongly with non-experts is extremely potent for virality.
Bad ideas that sound like good ideas are particularly dangerous. They are easily adopted, spread quickly, and are hard for managers to root out because an idea that sounds good on the surface is awkward to oppose.
This newsletter will focus on the latter two. I’m passionate about contrarian ideas because they are extremely fun to discuss and can pay massive dividends when you find them.
At the same time, sharing contrarian ideas is risky business.
“You have to remember that contrarians are usually wrong.” -Jeff Bezos
If you decide to subscribe, and I consistently share ideas that most people would disagree with me on, you can expect a few things:
You will not always agree with me
I will not always be right
Some thoughts will feel offensive or “off-limits”
It will get you to think about things in a different way
It will not be boring :)