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I seem to be writing a lot about Collaborative Articles these days, as they
are on my radar as something that may be very important, both as a feature,
and as a canary in the coalmine for where LinkedIn may be going with the
homepage feed and content.
A week or two ago I was asked by a subscriber about the little badges that
you can be awarded for Collaborative Article contributions. I have some
info on how this is done, plus some further thoughts on Collaborative
Articles that I thought I would share today.
Should LinkedIn deem you a top contributor, you can get a badge for your
profile, for example âTop Brand Strategy Voiceâ, which appears under your
headline. Badges appear to be rewarded based on how readers respond to your
contribution to Collaborative Articles. My guess is that the LinkedIn
algorithms use some kind of vote tracking, where it adds the likes and
comments your contribution generates in a Reddit-like âupvoteâ system. The
top vote getters are awarded badges. So that kind makes badges a âViewer's
Choiceâ award.
LinkedIn also says Badges are reviewed every sixty days. That sounds to me
like a veiled threat, âkeep it up or lose the badge.â
So how are collaborators selected anyhow? LinkedIn says the prime criteria
are the skills you list on your profile, how much those skills have been
endorsed by others and your recent job titles. They also consider the
likelihood that you will contribute based on your posting and commenting
activity. I also found this reference: âand implicit skills, which are
inferred based on recent hires for job postings or a memberâs
self-evaluation during job applications.â That one was interesting as
LinkedIn was in effect offloading the selection to whoever hired you
recently. If you just got hired as a Brand Manager by Ernst and Young, the
algorithms may be more disposed to considering you an expert on Brand
Management. This sounds pretty good until you ask whether Ernst and Young
has ever made a hiring mistake. What if that mistake is one of the
âexpertsâ contributing to the article you are reading?
LinkedIn continues to promote and note the huge growth in Collaborative
Articles - â74% growth month over monthâ - without specifying what the
actual underlying numbers are (typical LinkedIn) and that someone had made
the âone millionth expert contributionâ, remembering that LinkedInâs algos
decide who is an expert based on what skills you say you have on your
profile. Hardly the most objective barometer out there.
So, in theory, I could add âCryptocurrency Investingâ as a skill to my
profile, get a bunch of my friends to endorse me, add âCryptocurrency
Investment Advisorâ as a new job to my LinkedIn profile, and wait for
LinkedIn to invite me to add my thoughts to a Collaborative Article on this
topic.
The likely result? Mayhem. I know absolutely nothing about Cryptocurrency
Investing.
Thus, I am still skeptical of Collaborative Articles as the selection
process for contributing âexpertsâ seems thin to me, and basing who gets
the top voice badges on the quantity of likes and comments would appear to
open up the whole thing to automation or âcollaborative article pods.â
Whether Collaborative Articles are really that popular or valuable, or
whether itâs a case of LinkedIn just wanting them to be, LinkedIn is
pushing them hard, and I have come up with a couple ideas on how to
maximize your possibilities if you want to start participating in them. My
ideas here revolve around the reality that once a Collaborative Article has
been out there for a while, you start seeing them with hundreds and
sometimes thousands of contributors. How do you separate your voice from
the noise?
The first strategy would be to get involved in arcane subjects where there
is less competition. I would rather be the expert on something really
specific than a generalist who is part of a crowd.
The other strategy would be to only participate when you can answer quickly
and be one of the first people to contribute. If you log on to LinkedIn and
a notification inviting you to contribute pops up, consider doing so now.
If you notice a notification from two days ago? It doesnât matter how good
your contribution might be, people are going to have to read a long way
down the article to find your ideas. Itâs like being on page seven of
Google search results.
Collaborative Articles could be the real deal and have a long shelf life
like the resurgence of Polls a couple years ago. Or LinkedIn users could
become indifferent and LinkedIn decides to dump them like they did with
LinkedIn Stories, or they could make changes that screw up Collaborative
Articles like they did with LinkedIn Groups. I am not participating (yet)
in these things, but I am watching them carefully.
Chris Morton https://linktr.ee/IsntThatWrite
â Substantive Editing â Technical Writing â Proofreading
â B2B/B2C â Marketing Expertise â Mentoring
On Tue, Dec 5, 2023 at 10:38âAM Roberta Hennessey <rahennessey -at- gmail -dot- com>
wrote:
> Thank you so much for this Tony. Very enlightening.
> Bobbi Hennessey
>
> On Tue, Dec 5, 2023 at 10:35âAM Tony Chung <tonyc -at- tonychung -dot- ca> wrote:
>
> > As if on cue, I saw this on LinkedIn today:
> >
> > Quote from Joseph Perry:
> >
> > LinkedIn laid off their entire content team and is now trying to trick
> you
> > into doing their work for free because Microsoft over invested in AI.
> That
> > is why you've been "invited to contribute to this collaborative
> article." I
> > promise LinkedIn doesn't actually value your credentials. Don't give
> social
> > media companies free labor.
> >
> >
> >
>https://www.linkedin.com/posts/lousyhacker_linkedin-laid-off-their-entire-content-team-activity-7136813781573083136-Q1QD
> >
> > Wellâ maybe I wonât be so free with providing my content.
> >
> > -Tony
> >
> >
> >
> > On Tue, Dec 5, 2023 at 05:38 Nina <e -dot- dickinson -at- gmx -dot- net> wrote:
> >
> > > Couldn't agree more that such platforms don't do it in 'altruistic
> > > fashion'.
> > > It's always about 'them', they provide a service for making money
> > > and/or collecting data to use that as a basis for providing other
> > > (commercial) services.
> > >
> > >
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