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The Truth About LinkedIn Engagement Pods: My Personal Experience
Hey there, internet friends! It's Dana here, and today we're diving into a topic that's been buzzing around the LinkedIn world for a while now—engagement pods. If you've never heard of them, buckle up because you're in for a little education and a lot of real talk.
So, what exactly is a LinkedIn engagement pod? In simple terms, it's a group of people who band together to boost each other's posts. The idea is that by engaging with each other's content within the first hour of posting (the so-called "golden hour"), you can trick the LinkedIn algorithm into thinking your post is super popular, thus increasing its reach. Sounds like a win-win, right? Well, not so fast.
I joined a local Pittsburgh pod back in February 2021, right in the thick of the COVID pandemic. We were all craving connection and trying to grow our personal brands. The group started small, with just seven of us, but it eventually grew to about 15 members. The rules were simple: post your content, share the link in the pod, and then like and comment on everyone else's posts. Easy peasy.
At first, it was great. My post views jumped from an average of 600 to over 1,800, and I even hit 3,600 on a good day. But here's the catch—it's against LinkedIn's terms of service. Yep, technically, it's cheating the system. And while LinkedIn loves engagement, they don't love inauthentic engagement. So, there's a bit of a moral gray area here.
Now, let's talk about the pros and cons. On the plus side, being part of the pod forced me to create engaging content consistently. I had to think beyond cute dog photos (though my dogs are adorable) and come up with posts that sparked conversation. Plus, I made some great connections and had a little support system during a time when face-to-face interaction was scarce.
But on the downside, the engagement wasn't authentic. The people in the pod weren't my target audience, and while my reach increased, it didn't translate into new clients or meaningful business relationships. After a while, it felt forced and repetitive. I was reading the same types of posts over and over, and my brain was fried from trying to come up with intelligent comments on topics that didn't interest me.
So, would I recommend joining a LinkedIn engagement pod? In 2021, it was an interesting experiment, and I'm glad I tried it. But today, knowing what I know now, I wouldn't advise it. The risks of being on LinkedIn's bad side and the lack of authentic engagement just aren't worth it. Instead, focus on building genuine connections and creating content that resonates with your true audience.
Thanks for joining me on this little journey down memory lane. If you enjoyed this post, feel free to subscribe to my channel, like this video, and maybe even drop a comment below. Your support means the world to me. Until next time, stay authentic and keep engaging—just not in a pod!
#LinkedInTips #EngagementPods #SocialMediaStrategy #AuthenticityMatters #BusinessGrowth #Networking #ContentCreation #DigitalMarketing #LinkedInGrowth #DanaSchulte
Transcript
Hello internet friends and welcome to the Dana show where we BS about business and branding. I'm your host Dana. I'm so happy to have you join me today. If you're new, welcome. And if you're returning, welcome back. If you'd like to support my brandy new podcast and channel, you can subscribe, you can like, you can comment and you can share. And all of those things are free. So right, why not just help a girl out.
Okay, that'd be great. Thank you. I'd appreciate that. So today we were talking about LinkedIn engagement pods. And if you've never heard of this, you're in for a little bit of an education. So a LinkedIn engagement pod is intended to increase your reach across LinkedIn. And what that means is when you post something, your reach is basically how many people get to see it. And LinkedIn, like most social media,
encourages and rewards engagement. So the idea of an engagement pod is to have a group of people who would engage on your post in that first hour, that golden hour after you've posted something on LinkedIn, which would tell the LinkedIn algorithm, hey, people like this post, you should show it to more people. Okay, which sounds amazing in theory, but
It's against LinkedIn roles. But does LinkedIn really care? So the answer is kind of yes and kind of no because LinkedIn loves engagement. So when they see engagements, they're like, yeah, let's do this. That's how they make money. So of course they're going to encourage something that in the end makes the money by having more views and having more reach and having more engagement.
But on the other hand, because it's not authentic, they don't like it because it's basically cheating the system. So LinkedIn sort of has mixed feelings about it, but it is against their terms of service. So you're not supposed to do it. I did it. Don't tell LinkedIn. I did it in 2021 through 2022.
I joined a local Pittsburgh pod team with the name of our engagement pod on February 6th of 2021. And I'm here to tell you all about it. What worked, what didn't work. If I would do it again, you're to get all the T today. So I started this, I joined this group of seven total. So I was number seven in February of 2021.
And something to consider is we were not quite a year into the COVID pandemic at this point. People were sort of hungry, craving connection. We were all trying to grow our personal brands or our businesses or whatever we were doing. Most of these people were not entrepreneurs. They were just, you know,
fellow professionals who were trying to grow their reach and grow their business within their employer. Because, you know, people do business with people, right? So this is the welcome post that we received when we joined. And it says, hello, pod mates. Thank you for joining the group. There are currently, there are seven of us currently.
Anyone is welcome to invite connections to join as long as they follow the same guidelines. The more action our posts get in the first hour, the better reach we will have. My posts have gone from an average of 600 views to over 1,800 views. Top posts over 3,600 views using a similar group of financial advisors across North America. So the person who started this is a financial advisor. So guidelines.
And this will give you an idea of what it's like to be in a pod and what you have to do because it is an agreement between you and these other people. So guidelines, posting time will be 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. on Wednesdays. Within this hour, please post your posting to your LinkedIn page and then copy the link and paste it in the pod. So just a note from me as a technical.
No, it's actually your LinkedIn profile. A lot of people get those words mixed up. It's not a big deal, but just for clarity sake, your pages for your business, this is a profile. So it was just your personal, your personal.
So the second half of this, then you make one comment on each of the other links posted into the pod. Please do not create a mini post that aims to self promote when commenting on someone else's post. Post an insightful question or comment that directs attention back to the person who posted instead of yourself. By following correct etiquette, we will all achieve better results.
Please do not put a post link into pod chat unless you are to everyone else's within the hour. Please post and comment within the hour. That will give everyone the best results and limit the time we need to invest in helping each other. Looking forward to helping each other get better results on LinkedIn. So basically you make a post, you put it in the group,
And then you go and you like and you comment on everyone else's post within that that hour period. And when LinkedIn sees that, they're like, everyone else needs to see this, too. This post is new and it's so popular. And so we must share it with the world. That's that was the idea. And it it kind of worked. So this was a small group. I think it grew to like around 15 people. But this is an example in
our pod chat of what we would post. So we would go in and we would go on our LinkedIn profile, we would make our super awesome post, and then we would copy the link and post it in here. And then we would go through and just systematically click on it, comment, like, go back, click on it, comment, like to every single other person who posted and then everyone would do the same for you as well. And it would increase engagement.
And to note, like this person noticed he had a meeting and he'd be back around 940 to like and comment because he's holding up his end but wanted people to know, hey, I do have a meeting at this time, but I'll be back at the last part of the hour to fulfill my end of our group agreement. So.
Did it work? Yes and no. This is a group post where like, hey, everyone had amazing posts today. This was the part that I liked. It was the engagement where we would encourage each other. We would support each other. If someone wasn't feeling well, we would go in there and be like, hey, I'm sick or like, think the one time my basement flooded and I had a clogged drain and my garage in my basement.
flooded with raw sewage, was like super great. And I went in there and posted to everybody and they're like, my God, that's horrible. So you have this like little support system. And that's the part that I really liked about the group was having that group that we would just kind of pump each other up a little bit, you know, and especially in the the throes of COVID that was missing. A lot of us didn't have that face to face
community anymore because we were all quarantined and even when you went out you were like afraid to engage with people for too long because you didn't want to be within six feet of people and you didn't want to talk for more than a few minutes and you know everyday normal things that used to be fun or just normal and boring were scary and so having this was nice after almost a year of that and and did it work?
It did. One person says mine got over 2,500 views and a lot of other people said things like that too. I know my views and my reach increased a little bit. didn't a ton because it was a small group and it wasn't my target audience. They were not the people who I was going to be doing business with. So for me, didn't really help me grow in that way.
So after over a year, I left. I left in June of 2022 for a number of reasons. So here's some of the, let me give you some of the pros and cons about doing this and whether I would recommend it or not. pros. I did enjoy, I liked the consistency. Is it sort of was positive peer pressure in that it sort of forced me to
create not just a post, but an engaging post every week. Because I needed to bring a post to the group that they were able to leave a thoughtful comment on, an engaging comment on, or a question to start a conversation. So if I post a picture of my coworkers, which are my dogs, it's not, it's, they're cute, but you can't, it's, it's not going to grow my business just that, right?
It is something I do because it's fun and I like to post pictures of my dogs at times and I do call them my coworkers. But it's not something that was really easy for other people. Like if I did that every week, they would have probably kicked me out, right? You could do that once in a while. So it really sort of made me force myself to think of more insightful things to post about. And as I said before, the other pro was that connection.
that I got to know these other people because we were talking on the back end and we were having those conversations. That's the part I enjoyed the most. And it did increase my reach a little bit. But on the con side, it didn't increase my reach within people who were really beneficial to me beyond just being, you other people. And I enjoy talking to other people.
but it really wasn't the people that were going to do business with me. So on that part, was, you know, was this, was it worth it? And eventually I left because it just wasn't worth it anymore. And by the end of it, it really, after over a year of doing this, it felt forced. It was the same group of roughly 15 people with some people who came and went and
the same types of posts over and over again. And it got to the point where you're just like, I can't think of anything intelligent to write on this comment. Like my brain is now fried from reading financial and investment posts because a few of the people were in that realm. And that's not my area of expertise or quite frankly, interest.
I mean, to a degree, I think we all are interested in finances because, you know, we need money to live. But it wasn't something I was like, yeah, let's talk about this. So after over a year of those, it got hard. And then there were also some people who were in multi-level marketing groups. And I don't personally find those to be solid business investments.
The Federal Trade Commission even notes that over 99 % of people who participate in MLMs either make zero money or barely break even. So it was hard for me to then support groups like that who were really pushing that. And they also weren't my target audience. They were not going to work with me on any type of marketing or branding or anything like that. Because at that time I was freelancing.
I was just doing little things here and there, but it wasn't, they weren't going to work with me because they already had all of that through their main organization. And then at the end of the day, it was against the roles. And I don't think that was really clear to me when I joined it. I don't even, I think it was pretty early on in the creation of engagement pods. So LinkedIn wasn't really as up to date.
on their existence and how they worked. And so at the time, I didn't really have a problem with it, but LinkedIn started to. And I don't want to be on anybody's bad side. But I don't need to have my posts then depressed because me joining the script, that's supposed to do the opposite and help you grow. I don't want to be
blacklisted and I probably wasn't even on their radar because it was a small group and my engagement didn't go from like 10 to 100,000 or something like insane that they wouldn't like, oh, what's going on here? It was, was moderate growth. So I don't regret it. I don't regret doing it. I'm glad I had the experience. I do believe in experimenting a little bit with your social media and trying new things. And this was new at the time.
They are still out there and I have not been recruited in another one since then, but they do still exist and they are against LinkedIn's terms of service. So I think that's the biggest reason to not do it is you don't want to anger the LinkedIn gods. Excuse me. You don't want to anger the LinkedIn gods just in case. It's just not worth it to me.
for especially the small amount of growth that I got out of it. I did make good connections, but again, they weren't beneficial in me getting new clients at that time in my freelancing. So it really wasn't, it's not something I would do now for sure. I would absolutely not join another LinkedIn engagement pod at this time. I would be more likely to just join a regular group.
to foster connections and then organically become connections with those people and comment on them because I want to, not because I'm getting something in return, because I actually find their things to be useful. And I really think that at the end of the day, that's what it comes down to is authenticity. It wasn't authentic. The connections we made were authentic among the group on the back end, but the comments we made weren't authentic.
And to me, that's the biggest problem with social media is that it is so superficial in so many ways. And keeping that authenticity is a challenge. now there's with AI, there's automated engagement pods that you don't even have to like, we had to go in and physically do all of that. And that just leads us to the dead internet.
which is where it's just basically bots interacting with bots. And that's kind of the opposite of the purpose of the internet. The internet is meant to connect us and to help us learn and to share information. And it's not meant to just have a bunch of bots talking to each other. Like, what's the point of that? So I wouldn't do it again. I do not recommend.
I do not recommend that you join a LinkedIn engagement pod. It is a bad idea in 2025 and beyond. In 2021, it wasn't a terrible idea. Like I said, I'm glad I tried it. But today, knowing what I know now, I would not advise you to do that. I think the risks aren't worth it. And again, it's not authentic. So the parts that were authentic were on the back end.
You know, and it was fun for a while getting to know new people and reading their posts and learning about their business. You know, but it didn't it wasn't authentic after the kind of newness wore off. So don't do LinkedIn engagement pods, folks. It is not a good idea. Thank you for joining me today. Again, if you'd like to support me for free, just subscribe to my channel like this.
podcast like this video and If you really want to help me share it and make a comment below that's like gold star help right there You know you get an extra gold star for that So thank you so much, and I will see you next week. Bye
