Takeaways:

• In today's episode, we discussed the recent introduction of the AI slop button on LinkedIn, which has sparked a lot of controversy and animated reactions from users.
• Louise shared insights on how LinkedIn leverages AI technology to enhance user experience, particularly in content delivery and engagement.
• We explored the importance of creating original content on LinkedIn, rather than relying solely on AI-generated posts, to maintain authenticity and engage your audience effectively.
• The upcoming Raise Your Visibility Live conference offers a fantastic lineup of workshops and speakers, focusing on practical strategies to enhance your online presence.
• Louise emphasized the value of using AI as a tool for efficiency, while cautioning against producing content that lacks a personal touch or genuine human insight.
• Listeners are encouraged to connect on LinkedIn and share their thoughts about the evolving landscape of AI and social media, as we all navigate these changes together.

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• LinkedIn
• Microsoft
• OpenAI
• YouTube
• Pangram Labs
• Dow Social
• Web Crew
• Spider Working
• Descript
• Claude
• ChatGPT

Welcome to Raise youe Visibility Online.

Join Louise Brogan, a LinkedIn expert, CEO and dynamic mum turned YouTuber as she dives into the world of B2B companies and entrepreneurial success.

Each episode brings conversations with business owners and industry experts who leverage LinkedIn and video to attract leads and scale their ventures.

Get ready for actionable insights, real world strategies, and inspiring stories that will elevate your online presence and help you grow your business.

Hello and welcome to today's episode of Raise your Visibility Online with me, Louise Brogan.

Okay, we're going to have to talk about the seems like AI slop button on LinkedIn.

This appeared on my LinkedIn profile about.

I think it's only a week ago now, but the Internet had a meltdown about it.

So what is it?

So you may have noticed that there's been a lot of AI generated content on LinkedIn and LinkedIn have been very encouraging about using AI.

But Backstory is LinkedIn's owned by Microsoft, who also partially own OpenAI.

A lot of AI in the back end of LinkedIn.

I've talked about this before.

The algorithms are based using AI.

Welcome to today's podcast.

Let's talk about LinkedIn and AI.

I'm going to cover the seems like AI slot button, but I want to start with why LinkedIn is using AI, the tools that it's giving us to use AI and what has changed.

And let's talk about the AI slot button, but then let's talk about how you can actually, I think, really use AI to benefit you in your work with LinkedIn.

Okay, before we get started, I want to let you know about my upcoming conference in Belfast.

If you're not able to get to Belfast, you can also get a virtual ticket.

It is going to be epic.

It is the full Conference day is the 8th of October and I have speakers including Manal Patel talking about email marketing, Jess Lorimer who will be talking about how she has created a seven figure business from her podcast.

I'm going to stay with all ears because I don't know if you guys know this, but I am not making seven figures from this podcast, although I do get work.

Anyway, we're not talking about that now.

We have Nick, Sharon, he'll be talking about how to use YouTube for business.

And Chris Brogan is.

I cannot wait to see Chris on stage coming from Boston and he is going to share his genius with us.

That's not actually the name of his talk.

When I get the official name for his talk, I let you know.

Yeah, that's Just some of the speakers on the 8th of October.

But on the 7th of October I have lined up a plethora of amazing workshops as well for attendees.

So if you get the virtual ticket, you only get access to for now, the recordings from 8th October.

I'm working on figuring out how I can record the workshops as well, so hang on for that.

But if you are in person, the workshops start around midday on the 7th of October with a workshop by YouTube themselves, which is going to be amazing.

You need a ticket to the conference to get into the workshops, by the way.

So YouTube are coming up from Dublin and they are going to deliver a workshop for us in person, which is so exciting.

We also have a workshop from Christian from Dow Social who will be doing a workshop on how to use LinkedIn Thought Leader ads, which I think will be hugely interesting to a lot of you.

And we have Patricia Green from the Web Crew talking about how to optimize your website with AI, and Amanda Webb from Spider Working who will be delivering her workshop on Google Analytics.

Then in the evening we're going on a walking photography tour through Belfast if you want.

You don't have to attend the workshops or the walking tour, but it's going to be really fun, I think.

And then we're hosting a kind of a networking evening in the Ulster bank overlooking Belfast City hall where you can register for the next day if you're in town by then and just meet your other attendees.

So yeah, the whole, the whole conference is called Raise your visibility Live.

You go to louisebrogan.com raise-live to get your tickets.

We have max 240 tickets available, but we don't have that many because we've sold a third of them already.

So yeah, check it out and hopefully I'll see you in Belfast and we have a big hunt and then you can get all the learning.

This is an education based conference.

In other words, you will be.

No one is selling from stage.

There'll be no fluff.

I said no all.

No fluff, all filler.

You sound like a dj.

Anyway, you get the point.

It's going to be amazing and so valuable to you and your business and I want you to attend.

So check it out.

Raise your visibility Live.

All right, let's talk about AI and LinkedIn.

So first of all, why are LinkedIn so invested in AI?

Well, I mean, you kind of have to be these days, don't you?

But also they are owned by Microsoft, who also own, I think it's 50% of OpenAI who also own ChatGPT, by the way.

And so they've got a lot of AI in the back end of how LinkedIn works.

You really, when you understand how this works, it makes it so basically the AI algorithms, plural in the back end will look at your profile, your content and your activity on LinkedIn.

And if they all overlap, then it knows what to share with you and who to share your stuff with.

So an example of that might be if you are a management accountant and your target audience are small businesses.

So your profile, if I looked at your profile, it'd be really clear to me that you are in a management accountant working with small businesses.

Your posts would be helpful to small businesses who need to understand their accounts.

And then your activity would be connecting with people who are that target audience and commenting and engaging on posts about accountants, accounting, small business.

And so they all overlap.

So hopefully that makes sense.

And that's how the AI engines will deliver you the content you're interested in and share your content to people who would be interested in you.

I have spoken about this on stage regularly, more than happy to discuss it in depth if you want to reach out and ask me about it.

But you can really see it come to fore.

So one of the guys in my network had said that his, his LinkedIn newsfeed was just full of stuff he wasn't interested in.

So I made it.

I literally looked at my newsfeed and thought I'm going to record exactly what I see here without, without setting it up.

And it was really good because I posted the video on LinkedIn and it's kind of very tongue in cheek that I wrote in it.

But the first 10 posts that I saw were either, apart from like what, three adverts, they're either on topics I'm really interested in or from people that I connected to, who I actually engage with.

So it, you know, it works.

If you stick with how LinkedIn works, then it works for you.

All right, so what tools so they on LinkedIn has, you know, they.

All I love about the people that work there is that they try stuff out and if they don't think it works, they just change direction, kind of like me.

So in late July they rolled out a button that seems like, seems like a islop.

And the idea is that you as the user, if you see a post in your newsfeed and you think it seems like AI slop.

Literally, that's what you click and report it.

People who have their posts flagged by this will be.

Will see it in their analytics dashboard.

So you don't get a notification.

You need to go look at your analytics and see if someone has said they think that your post is AI slop.

People were very animated about this, rightly so.

Thinking this is like a.

Could be like a harassment type of thing.

Could be very widely misused.

However, your post doesn't get removed from the newsfeed, it gets removed from the newsfeed of the person who reported you.

So that's important to note.

A organization called Pangram Labs data shows that 40% of LinkedIn long form content and about 30% of short form content, that's our posts, is fully AI generated, which we don't want.

So what are LinkedIn doing about this?

Because they gave us an AI writing assistant and it's like enhance your post.

It's also, it's still there in your about section.

And when you write your profile, if you have premium.

I have talked about this before.

Do not use those.

Do not use those because it's so generic.

It's.

It is, it's not slop.

Slop is.

Slop is whenever.

Let me give you an example of slop that I see.

So I have talked previously about.

I really like prehistoric or megalithic monuments.

Easier.

The easiest way to describe that is like going to Stonehenge.

So they're all over Ireland.

I like going and watch, looking at them and making little videos about them.

In the Facebook groups that share that show up in my Facebook feed about these.

There, there are long written posts.

They're absolutely not written by a human being.

And I don't think the other members of the group realize.

And it's just, it's just if you put a bit of effort into it and wrote it yourself, it just would read so much better.

So that's where I see a lot of AI slop happening.

LinkedIn have said, you know, they want us to.

They are encouraging people to use AI but not to create their posts from AI.

Holy.

So here's another example.

Whenever I record a video for YouTube and I do this with clients.

So I use what I call the Create once, publish everywhere framework, if you like that I created.

And so maybe I'll do like a 10 minute video and then I'll use AI to extract the transcript from that.

And then sometimes I'll just say what are the key points that I made in this video?

Although I know it because it's my own video, but it speeds up the process.

So there's ways to use AI to help you and I have no issue with that whatsoever.

What I don't like is if, and I've done this in the past myself, hands up.

When AI came along, we're like, ooh, this is interesting.

What could we do with this?

I've never written a whole post with AI, but I have used AI to take my transcripts to create a blog post on my website.

And what I realized was I lose the skill of taking that knowledge and writing it out in a way that makes it easy for the reader to understand.

But as because I'm doing that, it helps me understand the structure of what I'm trying to share, which increases my knowledge of that piece of information and then I end up teaching it.

So like this week I did a. I do have LinkedIn VIP sessions which it's a two part package I do with people I do.

In the first session we write your rewrite your profile together.

In the second session I basically show you how to use LinkedIn.

And the knowledge that I have from doing the work means that I don't have to refer to anything, I don't have to go through a checklist to make sure I cover all the stuff that I know you should be covering because I write about it and I understand it.

And if I'd outsource that all to AI, I just wouldn't have the knowledge that I do.

Does that make sense?

Anyway, tools that I do use with AI in them.

One of them is Descript Use that I would say pretty much on a daily basis, if not every other day.

It's a great tool.

That's the video.

I use it for video editing and using transcripts.

I use Claude all the time.

I use Claude projects to keep all the different parts of the business organized.

And I'm actually going to be delivering.

I'm doing a talk on Claude in Belfast in September and I'm going to Cambridge to deliver a workshop on how to use Claude to sell executive assistance, which is very exciting.

Yeah, I really like Claude and I use ChatGPT as well.

I use them both for different things.

I've been so powerful in helping me get organized with my conference, I cannot tell you.

Claude, for example, can go into my Google Drive and go into my Gmail and pull out key information and key conversations I've been having with people.

And it is such a time saver.

So I think there's really brilliant ways to use AI as tools and that's how I think it should be used.

I'm going to go and look at my analytics.

I don't like.

I can't imagine anyone has accused me putting slop on LinkedIn, but I haven't actually checked.

So let's have a look at the analytics.

Well, it wouldn't make sense because there isn't anything there.

It's created with with AI.

But again, this is where content analytics.

If someone reports me of having potentially used AI, I guess it would show up in my analytics.

I don't know anyone.

Has anyone seen this?

It's not there.

Anyway I can tell you on the last seven days of my content performance on LinkedIn, 59% of my posts were shown to my in network followers and connectors connections and 41% out of network.

I had 364 reactions, 107 comments.

Come on guys, get your visibility up by commenting on people's posts.

I didn't have any saves this week.

I had one person clicked on my premium custom button and three people clicked on visits to links in all posts.

There you go.

So no one has reported me for AI slop.

If I go to 20 days I wonder does it look any different?

That's when I put the post of my AI slop.

So it had maybe 16,000 people.

Nope, nobody has said anything about me using slop.

The post I wrote about AI Slop itself had 30 profile viewers, 15 new followers, 30 reactions, 209 comments.

Yay.

8 Saves, 8 reposts, 2 premium custom button engagements and 0.

Well, there wasn't there links in the post, so there you are.

So interesting.

Anyway, what do you think about all this stuff to do with AI?

I mean the fact is that we are all learning as we go, including the companies.

So I think you gotta give people a bit of a break.

They're figuring out stuff.

We're figuring out stuff.

LinkedIn is run by humans, as is this podcast.

And that's probably where we should leave it today.

Okay, go and check out Raise youe Visibility Live.

I hope to see you there.

If you are attending the online version instead then I am in discussion with somebody to manage the like breakout rooms for that as well.

So it's not should be a really great experience as well.

However, I want you to come.

I want to come to Belfast and experience everything Belfast has to offer.

Okay, thank you so much for tuning into the podcast today.

Get in touch with me, connect me on LinkedIn.

It's Louise Brogan over on LinkedIn and look forward to speaking to you again soon.