LinkedIn: The Good, The Bad & The Cringe (Part 2) | E78 with MC Silfer

In this no-holds-barred episode of Blame It on Marketing, hosts Emma and Ruta team up with the ever-so-authentic Marie-Claire Silfer (MC) to spill the tea on everything LinkedIn. Tired of the endless parade of AI-generated spam, forced selfies, and “engagement pod” shenanigans? So are we.

Join the trio as they dissect the art (and occasional disaster) of creating content that’s genuine, engaging, and refreshingly human. They share their war stories—from early “pitch-slapping” mishaps to dodging misogyny and microaggressions—and dish out the real-deal tips that can help you level up your LinkedIn game without losing your cool.

Key Takeaways:

• Authenticity Wins: Learn why mixing personal struggles with professional wins beats bland, over-polished posts every time.
• Consistency Is King: Discover how treating content creation like “brushing your teeth” can transform your online presence—even if it’s just 5–10 minutes a day.
• Content Remix Magic: Get tips on repurposing old posts into videos, carousels, or bite-sized text gems, so you’re never out of ideas.
• Call Out the Cringe: From forced selfies in random settings to all-male influencer shout-outs, find out what to avoid if you want to keep it real on LinkedIn.
• Community Over Clout: Explore why building genuine relationships beats chasing likes and how to navigate the pitfalls of engagement pods and fake comments.

We’re Ruta and Emma, the marketing consultants behind Blame it on Marketing. 

If you’re in B2B SaaS or professional services and looking to do marketing that actually drives revenue and profit, we’re here for it.

Visit blameitonmarketing.com and let’s get this show on the road.

Transcript

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Hi everyone and welcome back to Blame It on Marketing with Emma and Ruta. And we've got a very special guest today who I'm sure you have seen all over LinkedIn. And if you don't know her by the end of this episode, you will. And we are going to be talking about LinkedIn, obviously, the good, the bad and the really ugly. But before we get into it and before we get your marketing slash sales confession, MC over to you, please introduce yourself. Hi everyone. So I'm MC and I have a love for everything sales and marketing, but also community as well. So I run my own community called Saleswomen Unite and that is a huge passion of mine. I'm so happy to be on this show with you, Emma and Ruta. I know we've connected in many, many ways. So I'm excited to share that as well with the audience. Amazing. Empty is definitely one of our internet friends that we've never met in real life, but we constantly comment on each other's stuff and message each other. So it's absolutely great to have you here. And you're actually not too far away. You're in Copenhagen? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so... Fair. minus five or something. Very, very chilly. So, yeah. yeah. a distinct lack of galaxy chocolate over in Denmark as well which we will rectify at some point. And also Terry's like, I don't know, since I moved abroad, I crave a Terry's chocolate orange. It's not Terry's, it's MC's if you see one. Love that. So before we get into the topic of LinkedIn, what is your deepest, darkest marketing slash sales fuck up that you've had in your career? Oh my God, I've had so many fuck ups, little ones and big ones, but I thought I would kind of like intertwine it into what we're talking about today. And I'm a little bit of a shame that my first role, I'm not ashamed of my first role. I loved my first role as an SDR, but I'm ashamed how I use LinkedIn in the beginning. So I was literally on LinkedIn to connect with people and pitch slap the hell out of them. And I'm ashamed that. that ever happened, right? So, yeah. It's still. blocked you, MC, and they've moved on. hahahaha Exactly. That is my theory. That is my theory. They're not thinking, hey, that girl on my feed was two years ago was messaging me 10 times without a reply. Yeah. But I feel like we've all been there. We've all been ashamed of something. But yeah, I've had some small like hiccups along the way, which are quite funny, like calling prospects by the wrong names and Sometimes like during the sales cycle, just sending the wrong video across or, shit, that's the wrong link. don't watch that kind of stuff that happens. for you. As we are on the topic of LinkedIn, obviously, we're probably going to get into people doing some pitch slapping at some point. But what is what in your mind is going on with LinkedIn at the minute? And, know, obviously, you post consistently, you're one of those great content creators for sales marketing, people to follow. So yeah, what's the kind of what's your experience of it at the moment? And what do you think is kind of going on in the world of LinkedIn? Yeah, I mean, I love LinkedIn. I wouldn't be there almost every day if I didn't. But it is changing. And I feel like if you are creating content, you kind of need to keep up with it. You need to adapt all the time. What's working for me is just being consistent. And everyone hates that as like, you know, bit of advice, but it really is like trying to make meaningful relationships, connections, and just like how I met you guys, like find small groups and share advice. Also share your experiences. That's, that's kind of working for me. So rather than concentrating on those short gains, think of it as, kind of a long thing, like, you know, that you'll get success from it eventually. However, there is a lot of things going on at the moment. So video is one thing. And I think that is just because of the raise of AI and lots of people using AI for content creation. And I'm not saying that it's wrong to do. I use it also to help me be more efficient. But there is this kind of disconnect where people want to see the human behind the content. And I think that's where video really, really, really helps. One thing that I hate about LinkedIn, and that's probably what we're sharing as well, is I see more and more kind of trolling happening and kind of less focus on the positive conversations and more about kind of the bad things going on. And I think there is a balance. So we do need to kind of call people out. We do need to have the bad and the hard conversations, but at the same time, like we also need to keep it positive, right? Otherwise it just ends up being another X. So yeah, I don't know what your thoughts on that are as well. yeah. I mean, we have a podcast called Blame Our Marketing, so we're probably in the slightly negative camp. Yeah, our comments are also a bit deranged, but it's for fun. It's not to be mean to people or to call people out. We just kind of make it fun for us, I guess. It is that fine line though, isn't it? For pushing for best practice and for people to use it better, which I think, if I'm honest, as awful as this sounds, I think that's what we try to achieve with our comments. So where we see someone's used an AI comment and we comment back with a little robot, it's like a cheeky like wink to say like, we kind of know what you're doing, you know? And maybe don't. all the time. All the time. The little robot emoji hits it on the spot because everyone knows. Yeah. that was one of the reactions that you could have, just a little robot emoji on comments. That'd be an easy way for LinkedIn to suss out all the fake AI comments. Exactly, exactly. Yeah, I had a complaint yesterday about how, because LinkedIn isn't punishing engagement pods and shitty AI comments and that kind of thing, it's actually hurting real creators and it's kind of discouraging for us to... take a lot of time and a lot of effort to create really great content when somebody just posts a selfie with a regurgitated, you know, description of something and has a hundred comments and a hundred likes in a few minutes, which are, you know, going to then be pushing them to be seen by other people instead of great original content like MC creates So yeah, that's, that for me is kind of a real irk at the moment. And also the more I... the more I think about it, the more I see it. You know, like once you, once you like notice it, you can't stop seeing it everywhere and it's just like, can we just not do that? Yeah, exactly. think there is a huge problem with LinkedIn and kind of these engagement pods happening. Thankfully, like, I don't know, with my network, I feel like that isn't happening so much, but I know in the kind of creator, but maybe, yeah, I don't know. I try and keep it very civil. I have some. like groups that I'm part of, but it's very tiny groups and more about giving value to each other, sharing things, sharing our experiences. So I think you can approach LinkedIn in different ways as well. Generally, I feel like those that are using LinkedIn for their main business purposes, maybe they go down this kind of route rather than it being kind of a supplementary thing to their, you know, everyday work. Yeah. at the moment. It's a way of being a human and it's really helped kind of my sales processes. People know me, people have seen me and it's that weird kind of social media phenomenon that people think that they know you already just from your content rather than actually meeting you in real life. I think that what you're describing MC is the difference between people who genuinely want to invest in community and People who want to create like this echo chamber that kind of makes them sound like an expert for people who don't realise that that's what they're doing. So there are a group of people who don't really know that these pods exist, obviously, naturally. And they're like, oh, this person must be an expert because look at how much engagement they're getting. So it looks good. But genuine community is never about the volume of followership or the number of likes or any of that stuff. It's about the real relationships. But so now I want to go on to the really bad bit, right? So The way that I started properly talking to MC was I had this awful gentleman. I don't know if we could call him a gentleman. So I posted something about being a fractional CMO on my LinkedIn. He then proceeded to send loads of trolley LinkedIn messages to me basically questioning. my level of experience which is you know first of all it's insulting i can't imagine ever doing that to anybody being like you need to justify yourself in your role and i'm not going to do that now either because why should i and mc lovely because she's lovely i've reached out to to say, you know, are you okay? Like I'm really sorry that someone sent you that shitty message. And I really appreciated that because not only does that make me realise the kind of person that you are, even though we're only internet buddies, but it also makes me feel like there is a group of people who do genuinely care about the kind of shitty content people are posting and sending to one another. So I wondered what's your take on that, MC? And you've obviously had some of this yourself. And is that kind of the worst bit about what's kind of going on with LinkedIn now, would you say? Yeah, I think first of all, wow, that guy was an absolute asshole. Hard in my French, but you know, there's just no need for it on on LinkedIn. It should be a professional network. And, you know, I think you did amazing thing by calling it out. I think there's two kind of routes you can go for these people is either like, just unfollow them and mute them. take them away from your network completely. And the second route or do both of them actually is to call them out on it. So literally just post the hell out of it and say, this should not be happening in 2025. And we need to change it because sorry to say, but usually It's misogyny, let's just say, like I've experienced it myself and these microaggressions that people think that they can just get away with on social media. And I think that's the worst thing is that people don't feel like, you know, they don't have any boundaries because it's social media. but they don't know me, I can say anything. But there is actually a person behind, you know, that profile. There is a creator, a professional person, whoever it is, or yourself, Emma, like in this case. And yeah, let's call them out. That's what I say. I've had some very, very bad experiences myself, especially being a saleswoman where people openly have said, I want to speak to a man, know, stuff like that. And I'm like, I'm sorry, you know, how is this happening these days? But that's also why I started my community for saleswomen. it was to like talk about these things openly share experiences like and also have this conversation of how can we change it moving forwards? What's the best way of approaching it? How can we make it a safer, more inclusive place to be? And to be honest, I'm a little bit scared at the moment, especially with what's happening with meta, you know, and what's already happened with X, like how can you know, how can LinkedIn not follow suit kind of thing. I'm a little bit scared because already I see these kind microaggressions happening on the platform. I've seen some wild shit in the last week. I've seen a guy being like, I registered to the UK reform party, which is like a alt-right party, but he put it on LinkedIn to thousands and thousands of followers. And I'm like, are you okay, honey? This isn't, what am I trying to say? not to say that you can't post about politics, but I think when you're really going out there and like kind of making that part of your like professional portfolio of things that you say, it's just like, we living in this like weird dimension where people just think now they can say whatever the hell they like and it's all okay. you know. we both commented right, didn't we Ruta? We both commented and you know, I put something like, know, obviously you're entitled to your own political opinions, but you have openly chosen to promote a party that probably actively hates some of your customer base. Like, you, yeah basically are you okay? It's, yeah, those behaviors are leaking over into LinkedIn where you have like your full professional portfolio and who you work for and, and those things, which is, which is wild. Although I bet. As we always say, some people would look at mine and Emma's profiles and be like, you're so unprofessional. Yeah. And I think if you work in a big corporation, you actually do have certain guidelines, probably social media guidelines. I'm lucky that, you know, I'm working for startups where it's, you know, it's okay at the moment. But I also wouldn't share anything politically anyway about myself. I think there's, there's, there's kind of lines, I think that's that you have to choose yourself of, okay, am I going to post about this or not? So actually had a conversation with one of my colleagues, because she wasn't comfortable sharing any kind of personal content. And I was like, but that's totally fine. Because I actually find personal content super easy to share. And I know there's people that say, personal content shouldn't be on LinkedIn, it should only be on Facebook. But I actually feel like a lot of what happens in my personal life comes into my work anyway. I'm a mom, I have two kids, like, I want to share that like some days are just really, really goddamn hard to, you know, to cope, be able to do all of it at once. And I think that's actually people can relate to that kind of content as well. So, yeah. it's all part of like being a real human being online, right? Like if you want to make connections and you want to build rapport with people that you might be selling to, for example, as part of your job, kind of can't be, well, you could be doing yourself a disservice by just being like very robot, very like, you know, narrow and because you are a real person, right? And people will connect with that. Yeah. the old old school boys club of i know like some of these still exist but days gone by why were those people friends because they were in the same golf club having a drink after playing golf or like going to fancy restaurants all together on the company dime and now you know we've moved away from that which thank god we have because it's you know very exclusitory but now we have this inclusive way of building relationships with people online like we've been talking about so why would you if sharing something personal is going to resonate with the people that you're trying to kind of connect with and build relationships with, I'm all for it. I've seen some of my personal and most kind of authentic, what some of times the hardest posts for me to write have performed the best. So like sharing about kind of my previous career as a ballet dancer, going into software, and kind of the struggles that I had doing that, and the journey that I've been on, like those are what actually resonate with people rather than just copying and pasting a blog post from your marketing team. Nothing against marketing teams. I love them and I love marketing. I'll always be in marketing's corner. But there is other ways to do content on LinkedIn. So moving away from like the really bad stuff like misogyny, et cetera, et cetera. What's some of just the cringe stuff that maybe kind of crosses the line into maybe don't do that. Yeah, I think this is a hard one because I'm usually one of the people that is in the corner like saying yes to everyone like just keep posting, just keep posting. I am the cringy one. we live for it. No. it naturally, if you know what I mean. Like it's just, that's her, you know, like. of cringe. There's some, the per, do you know who it is that are really cringe? Sorry, cause MC, want you, obviously we want you to answer this, but I will give a really good example of why you're not cringe versus what we see as cringe. The people who have clearly paid a photographer to take a picture of them drinking a coffee in a coffee shop, like it's natural. And then the post is completely unrelated to what is happening in the scene. That to me is like, no, that's cringe bad. You've crossed the line. Yeah, I think that that is definitely cringe. I've also noticed, maybe this was going back a few months when it was really popular for the algorithm, but people just taking selfies and posting selfies all the time. So every post, no matter what the content was, it could be like, this is the great thing about FinTech software. And suddenly it's a selfie. It's not connected whatsoever. So for me, that is like, Yeah, super cringe. I think probably kind of like over self-promotion. Yes, I'm in sales and I like to kind of share maybe success stories and things. But I do think being more authentic and sharing your struggles, sharing something. And I love the success story, you know, more than most, but if it's all the time, it can get a little bit old, I think. Yeah. And I think if you are more authentic sharing your struggles, sharing, you know, things that will relate in a personal level and a professional level. And even if you do, you know, manage to do that in one post, like everything intertwined, I think that's where kind of, you know, it hits, it hits the spot in a good way. Yeah, I feel like some people's entire LinkedIn profiles are based on that selfie plus unrelated post. And it does work. literally tested this out the other day. I posted a selfie. was like, I wonder if it's still going to get more engagement than my actually useful videos do. And it did. Surprise, surprise. But if you only post that kind of content, you're also at the risk of basically disengaging your normal audience. because every time you post, they'll see that. So they'll just start scrolling by, which is one of the reasons why you kind of have to mix up the kind of content that you do create with this video photo or image of something or just text or whatever it might be. yeah, because I definitely noticed there's sometimes people that I connect with and they're doing the whole selfie post thing. And then they kind of disappear from my timeline because I don't engage with it. So obviously my personal algorithm knows that. I'm not interested in that kind of post so they just go away. Yeah, I agree with you. And I think the best creators out there, like you said, Ruta is that people are just mixing up their content, mixing up the forms. And also that makes it more fun. I have more fun by kind of, you know, taking one of my text posts, making it into a video, and then later on making it into a carousel and then later on making it just into another text post with a picture. Like it's, and then it's super easy as well, rather than like having to come up with fresh new ideas all the time, which can like after two years of posting, like you can hit ruts. Like there is times where I'm like, what am I doing? Like, what am I going to post about? But I think one thing that I, sorry. No, no, just like, you know, when you're sitting there you're like desperately trying to type a post and you're like, I've got nothing. I've said everything I have to say. Yeah, exactly. You can just have writer's block sometimes. And my advice is just to go back six months on your own profile, see what you wrote then, and then make it into a video. Super easy to do. Yeah. But one thing I have that I've noticed more and more, and it's such a shame that in 2025 or 2024, it's still happening, was kind of men only promoting men. So one thing that went viral and maybe it's also another thing. So it goes viral and that also really hates me. And like, it just hits me in the wrong place is, you know, men saying, follow these five founded founders of these amazing companies and they're only men. And I could name like, you know, three amazing female founders off the top of my head right now. And you know, how is this still happening? And I feel like sometimes it's only for engagement sake and that really also annoys me. But one thing is just we all have our unconscious bias in us. But if I'm on LinkedIn and I see a promotion of an event, of a community or something, and I only see a sea of white men wearing blue shirts, like there's something wrong. especially if it's not also said in the post, you could also just say, PS, we're working to bring more women into this community, help us, you know, but it's just that nothing is put out there. And actually I posted about this a few months ago and it got some really good engagement and I actually had some really, really meaningful conversations with some businessmen afterwards about, you know, how can we change this? How can we get more women talking on stage? And that's kind of the positive that came out of it. But yeah, it's something that I hope will change in 2025. We just got to bring back the David Hasselhoff manel thing. Do you remember this? I think Ruta, we've talked about this before. You're like, what? It was, yeah, this used to happen back. God, this is when I used to work back in the NGO sector, is that if you had a manel, you know, or men on a panel and the picture went up, some of these people would come along and stick David Hasselhoff on your picture and post it online. and actively shame you on what was then Twitter. So I'm just saying let's just bring back David Hasselhoff and like some public shaming. I think so too, because there's some incredible organizations. So I don't know if you follow Wednesday Women, they have a directory full of fantastic women that can speak on your stage. So there's just no excuse nowadays for, you know, only seeing a male panel. Like it should be 50-50 on every event in my honest opinion. Absolutely. So moving on to the good side of things, I guess, is how I'm gonna segue this is, first of all, I wanna talk about the post from Dream Data with Stefan, where he was reading out what Gen Zs would say about things that are happening in the office. Incredible, amazing. But how... Do we make better content? What's your process? Have you got any tips for us on making good, genuine content? That's all the cringe, but none of the cringe because it's so real. Yeah. So, I'm probably one of those weird ones out there where, I have ideas and I have kind of, I would say like content pillars or things, topics that I want to talk about, but I'm very much like on the day organic, rather than kind of planning it out. I've done both. So when I started, I really, planned out everything and then it just didn't feel genuine. I was like, I'm missing kind of that vava boom, you know, I just want to. post what I feel like on the day. So I do that. And one advice I got from my colleague, Laura, I don't know if you follow her, but if you don't follow her, you really should. So she said, but it should be like brushing your teeth. So make it a habit and it shouldn't take longer than five, 10 minutes ever. Mm-hmm And that's how it can be genuine. Of course, if you're doing video and kind of carousels, it takes longer, but just the idea and the brainstorming behind it, don't spend too long on it. And that's what I think makes it a little bit more organic rather than it being stiff and professional. Not saying that that's not good content, it is. But also, I think your marketing team, like you guys in marketing do such a fab job. So I know that I just previously said, don't just copy a blog, but you can mix up a lot of marketeers content that they've already put out in the world and make it your own and give it your own point of view. So I do that quite a lot, especially on marketing topics, sales topics and share your own experience. So nobody's living your day like you're living it. So just share what you've struggled with last week. If you've closed a good deal, a good client, share it. And your customers as well. They are kind of a goldmine for content. So if you've had a fantastic, or even if had a rubbish client call, I would recommend just kind of dissecting it and making three posts from that. Like, what could I have done better here? what I've learned from this process and what results I've got from doing this again and again. So you're putting out there some of your learnings and that content does really, really well. I truly believe that everything is content as awful as that could be. Everything is content. You can make content that will then you will make content off of if that makes sense. So like when MC was saying, I look at my post from six months ago and see what else I can reuse. It's literally content making content. So if you can get into the habits, kind of trying to see everything in that way, you, yeah, you, should be good for ideas. It's just then actually executing and, and doing the writing or the filming, whatever it takes that. again, you'll get better at it it'll get easier as time goes basically. Yeah. And I think the bigger your network gets as well. So you're saying, Ruta, content on content. If you are following people. So I've had people and I was like, mind blown at this point, because it was really an influential B2B marketer that did it. He took one of my posts and did content about my post. And that is a really smart thing to do as well. If you're kind of got a bit of a writer's block, you don't know what to write about. just go to one of these big influencers, see what they've written about or even a smaller influencer and see, you know, what are they writing about at the moment, what's good. And then you can give your own point of view on it as well. Of course, tag them, always tag them, make sure you give them credit, but it can start a conversation, especially if you have a completely different viewpoint on the subject as well. And then you can kind of engage your audience and you can kind of ask their point of views as well. I completely agree with the like in the moment doing it on the day type thing. Like, we on blame it on marketing, not on our personal profiles, but on the network one, we try and post twice a day, which is really hard going like at times because, know, sometimes you're like, I got nothing. I really have nothing. then, I mean, we've been doing it. We've been doing it consistently now for about, I'd say it's like nearly two months of posting twice a day. And the engagement on our post on our page has gone through the roof. So it clearly is working, which is great. We love it. But yeah, I don't set myself a goal that's like post a video, post a long post, do a poll, do it. It's very in the moment. And also it is like very much based on what I'm seeing in my feed. know, obviously we try to post things that are sometimes humorous if we can be funny and that doesn't come from us all the time it comes from other people and you know like even if it's social commentary or whatever it might be like i don't know snowing in the uk we're like get ready for everybody's unbearable snowing posts coming your way you know all of that kind of stuff so yeah it doesn't always have to be it just also doesn't have to always be really long i think that's the other thing people feel like I need to write an essay so that people know that I understood this subject and sometimes it's a bullet point and that's it and that's cool I I'm a bit of a waffler, to be honest. I like to waffle. But one advice I got for both, like, you know, if you have sales emails, one guy I just spoke to actually said, I just do the email in the subject line. And I was like, that's bloody brilliant. Like, we should, if you can get your point across in the subject line. my God, how much time you're saving from people. And it's the same on your scroll. Yes! I know what this email is about! Yes! right? Genius. Guys, 2025, all emails have to be in the subject line or you can't send it. Let's do it. Let's do it. I'm obsessed. one earlier on out as blame it on marketing and I think I've hit the brief. I hope we can go back and check. What was the subject line? Watch podcast now, thanks. I think it was I think it was like episode about attribution with Tara Robertson from Chili Piper done go watch it it is so we've I mean I think feel like we've aired a lot of LinkedIn stuff and last it was so funny because last year nearly every single episode we ended with the marketing gossip bit And nearly every single person said LinkedIn was their marketing gossip. So MC, no pressure. But have you got any marketing gossip for us that you, know, something you've seen that you love or you loathe or somewhere in the middle? Yeah, I'm trying to, well, I think I've mentioned a lot of things already, but something that I'm loving more and more, and I have a feeling people loathe it, but I love it. I love seeing the B2B influencer marketing space growing. It just, it works so well in B2C. So why the hell can't it work in B2B? And I'm interested in this and how it's going to go forwards. I might love it at one point when it gets too much, but at the moment, I think it's a super smart move from a lot of companies, especially startups that maybe don't have the muscle to have people creating content all the time, is to use these influences in the space that are already there. I mean, why not? Like, why not monetize on it as well? Like, I think it's a super smart move for people that are creating content all the time. So I'm... interested in that at the moment. And of course, I'm loving video. So I think video all the way. I still need to kind of get my hands around what makes things go viral. I haven't got a clue if I'm completely frank, like it's just completely random. Some of my videos where I think like, oh, this is a really good one. It just doesn't hit the spot. Thank you so much, MC. It's been so lovely chatting to you as always. I'm so glad to have you on the podcast. I feel like I've been waiting for this episode very just because we really scheduled it in advance. I'm like, when is it happening? So yeah, thank you so much.