One-Way Conversations on LinkedIn? Thought Leadership or Just Thoughtless…

Have you ever had a 1-way conversation? What a ridiculous question, considering that the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the word conversation as: an informal talk involving two people or a small group of people : the act of talking in an informal way.

If the definition states that there must be 2+ people involved in the activity, the question is actually wildly ill-described. Or is it?


We actually are witness to dozens, if not hundreds of 1-way conversations on a daily/weekly basis. The issue is that most folks don’t identify content on social media as the invitation to open a dialogue. There is an unofficial 1% rule when it comes to engagement on social media, which suggests that only 1% of your network actually engages in the content they scroll through on a daily basis.

Light bulb. You just realized that you are guilty of being in the 99%. How many time do you pick up your phone, click on a social media app, and just scroll through to see what’s happening and relevant, but never comment, or share, or even like? I am not suggesting that you comment on every single article or blog that you come across, but there is a middle ground.

As a thought leader in your company, industry, city, etc., you work hard on developing your original content, which you publish on the LinkedIn Publisher platform every week. But what happens next? Do you click ‘publish’, then forget about it… out-of-sight, out-of-mind?

Where is the social engagement? What happened to opening a dialogue? You invested your most valuable asset, your time, into creating an excellent piece of content that revolves around thought leadership in your industry, then you notified your network via the LinkedIn Plublisher, then you left the dialogue without ever getting into one.

LinkedIn provides each of us with our own individual metrics on the professionals that are engaging in our content, as well as the demographics we are reaching, and on which distribution channels our content is being found.

Now that you have created your inbound leads through your content, it’s time for some outbound activity in engaging. Bobbie Foedsich, Chief Social Selling Officer here at AAL , recently recorded this very brief video walking you through the metrics LinkedIn provides in ‘Who’s Viewed Your Posts’.