What’s the biggest myth about LinkedIn for thought leaders today?

My “recover LinkedIn” crusade launched 20 months ago, and why I believe that LinkedIn has turned into Instagram (and unsuitable for B2B):

1. Local reach confirmed by LinkedIn staff and consistently visible here. Although the majority of my business has been in North America for 15+ years now, a third of my views are capped in my hometown, Sofia.

2. Getting served local content more and more often, too. I have to explicitly mark “not interested” to see my global feeds and contacts I work with and DM with.

3. Over 400 CXOs in my network, and hundreds of other BDRs and marketing automation people in communities, spending most of their LinkedIn time in DMs or explicitly checking profiles, not scrolling the feed.

4. The absurd volume of clickbait content, viral hooks, “comment download to get the PDF” and all variations haven’t stopped. The only thing that was reduced to an extent were selfies, but with the Coldplay situation and the American Eagle jeans, these parody stories aren’t going anywhere.

5. My thought leadership ads are not performing. Hard to reach decision makers all year long. Considering step 3, this is only natural.

6. My “tech”-related content around vibe coding or AI performs 3X better. This indicates both algorithm signaling and tech/agency/solopreneur intent in readership and feed scrolling.

7. The number of solopreneurs/contractors/freelancers and 5-person teams spending 3+ hours a day on LinkedIn seeking partnerships or work has gone up dramatically, compared to B2B professionals.

I still have a specific cohort of professionals I follow, or conversations in professional circles, but most are still shared in private groups and DMs or require the notification bell to keep track of. Even newsletters are barely getting 15% of subscriber reach here, and the ghost town has turned into Instagram for good.

After years of not using Meta social networks, I actually moved gradually to Instagram in the process.

1. The feed is better curated and easier to get rid of virality.
2. Running ads can actually target the ICP for brand awareness campaigns because they really scroll the feed.
3. Networking with warm contacts you met in person works better, because… they use the platform.
4. Forming relationships around hobbies and interests performs better.

The irony here is – it’s a matter of a click or two for Microsoft to revert to a previous experience that worked, and doesn’t feature a game in the top right corner of your feed.

It doesn’t appear to be of interest to them as solopreneurs/freelancers are still a plausible applicant hiring pool, CoPilot is a great upsell for vibe coders, AI is easy to roll as a subscription mechanism… And generally speaking, LinkedIn can maximize high volume, low cost with this crowd similarly.