I don’t mean to shame anyone, but I do want to question the practice of purposely hiding links from main posts on LinkedIn. I honestly think it’s one of those situations where many don’t reflect on the full extent of consequences for something as simple as posting a link.
This widespread behavior has been bothering me, and I want to explain why.
When you publish a post on LinkedIn and then say ”the link is in the comments” you are making life harder for people.
– People with visual impairments will have to hunt for it through several comments as they’re often not able to quickly determine which comment actually contains a link (as, you know, they can’t easily see it).
– People with impaired cognitive abilities (persistent or temporary) may struggle to understand that they now need to seek out a link instead of seeing it immediately - and how to find it or ask for it.
– People with weakened motor skills may have to navigate several hard-to-tap areas to find what you are promising to share.
– And of course, it’s obviously more difficult for all readers to rummage for the link than it is to find the link in the very place where you wrote ”the link is in the comments”.
I understand that this behavior started because Hootsuite (and maybe a few others) did a study a few years back and determined that it was harder to get posts to go ”viral” if they had external links in the main body of a post.
Are you confident this even still applies? Are you confident that it truly applies to your posts? But more importantly: Is this a tradeoff that you are making intentionally? That is, making it harder for people (and more so for those who are already underserved) so that you may – possibly but not certainly – gain a benefit?
This is a good example of where humans are adapting to technology rather than technology adapting to humans. Social media ”experts” are encouraging non-intuitive behavior that creates obstacles for other humans, and many human publishers are trusting this advice without considering further implications.
From an accessibility perspective it’s of course disheartening that this tactic has become so common.
If you want to get real and trustworthy information on how the LinkedIn algorithm has been changing, and the type of content that LinkedIn values, why not listen to the Entrepreneur podcast ”Problem Solvers”. They recently did an interview with LinkedIn editor-in-chief Dan Roth and director of product Alice Xiong. The title of the episode is aptly named: Why LinkedIn Doesn’t Want You Going ”Viral”.
Link to the episode: https://pca.st/h530nibw
Yes, that’s an external link. I hope you don’t wish I had put it in the comments.
#Accessibility #LinkedIn
