Numbers and Influence in Social Media
I did that experiment on a weekend and it worked, but I quickly deleted the post. Yes, “If you are looking for a job, like this post and tag 10 people”. Magically, Likes everywhere with marginal increase on follow count. But the question was: was the person liking the post on the position of value creation or betterment for himself/herself, or just being tricked to waste his/her time. And for the recipient of the Like, is that person sending a consistent leverageable image which can compound for value capture in future?
As in academia, if a top journal cites your work, you are better off than citations from 5 useless journals. In other words, metering the impact on LinkedIn goes beyond the number of Likes, Follows, etc.
So, reading an effort on this hypothesis was amazing. Yes, Tekedia Fellow, John Mc Keown, has a postulation here on LinkedIn, data and growth. I encourage you to read it:
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"It’s dangerous to compare data from different LinkedIn users. Members have different objectives for their LinkedIn networks and they build them differently. Some indiscriminately value all contacts equally.. some want to build networks with the intention of creating impact with decision makers or recruiters within clearly defined industries or segments…. others are more focused on ‘ripple effect’ and want to maximise downstream network impact by prioritizing connections with close to maxed out members who will soon be rapidly attracting ‘followers’." JMK