LinkedIn is huge – 310 million active monthly users, we’re told. So what’s in it for the platform to have users working on collaborative articles?
If you have a LinkedIn profile, you may have started seeing invitations to contribute to LinkedIn collaborative articles.
As LinkedIn itself describes it, these collaborative articles are a way to unlock community knowledge. “It starts with an article on a professional topic or skill, written with the help of AI — but it’s not complete without insights and advice from people with real-life experiences.”
See the collaborative article page here: Discover thousands of collaborative articles on 2500+ skills
See LinkedIn’s FAQs on the subject: Collaborative articles | LinkedIn Help
In essence, LinkedIn identifies people as experts (how they do that is unclear), and then invites them to add their thoughts to an article generated by AI.
How it works
For example, an article with the heading What do you do if your copywriting feedback is causing more harm than good? has 7 subheadings, the first being “Reflect First”. The AI-generated text under that topic says:
“Before reacting defensively to feedback that feels off-base, take a moment to reflect. Consider the source of the feedback and their expertise. Sometimes, what may seem harmful at first could be a miscommunication or a difference in creative vision. Assess whether the feedback has merit by stepping back from your work. This distance can provide a fresh perspective and help you discern which critiques could lead to genuine improvement and which may not align with your objectives.”
Boring, boring , boring.
The responses given by human beings are (of course) much better and contain much good advice. My own response to the question was this:
This question is problematic. Does it mean:
What do you do if feedback you are given on copy you have written is causing more harm than good?
OR
What do you do if feedback that you give to a copywriter is is causing more harm than good?
What is LinkedIn up to, and does it matter?
When I was first asked to contribute to an article, my first thought was: hmm, a way for LinkedIn to get people to write articles for them for free, or perhaps a way for them to train their AI. Or both.
I still think that is what’s going on.
But there might still be something in it for LinkedIn users.
A Reddit thread sums up the main benefit – you get a “Top Voice” badge once you’ve made a certain number of contributions. It’s unclear if it’s just the number of contributions, or the quality, and it seems the badge might only be temporary.
But LinkedIn is the place where you go to see and be seen, so badges of any sort might be helpful. The Reddit thread contains some theorising that having badges can improve the reach of your posts. It’s of course impossible to know what goes on in the innards of the LinkedIn algorithm, so I don’t set much store one way or the other by such theories.
On the other hand, an opportunity to showcase my skills can’t be a bad thing. I think though that the trick is to do it when you can add value, when you do have expertise and when it’s not going to take huge amounts of time. Oh – and also when the question actually makes sense.
(If you hate the idea of LinkedIn collab articles, and want to turn off the notifications, there’s a good post here, explaining how to do that:
Main picture: Greg Bulla, Unsplash
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