Is Social Media Worth It for Your Business? Part 6: LinkedIn
Before I became a Regional Director for Get Ahead, I spent years as a Buying Director for major UK retailers and then ran my own social media agency, with a specialism in Pinterest for business. I’ve used these platforms commercially. I’ve seen what works, what doesn’t, and what’s simply not worth a busy business owner’s time. This series is my honest perspective on each one. No strategy guides. No content calendars. Just a straight answer to the question you’re probably already asking.
Is LinkedIn Worth It For Your Business? Yes! The Metaverse? Let’s Talk About That!
We’ve reached the penultimate post in this series, and for once the verdict comes quickly.
LinkedIn: yes. Unambiguously, for most business owners reading this, yes.
The Metaverse: no. And the story of why not is actually more useful than the verdict itself.
Let’s do LinkedIn properly first – because it deserves more than a one-word endorsement – and then we’ll take a brief, honest look at what the Metaverse hype cycle taught us, and why it matters for every platform decision you’ll make in the years ahead.
Why LinkedIn is different from every other platform in this series
Every other platform we’ve covered has come with a significant caveat. Facebook: yes, but only if your audience is there and you engage through Groups. Pinterest: yes, but only for visually aspirational businesses willing to invest long-term. TikTok: yes, but only if you’re genuinely prepared to show up on camera consistently. X: probably not, unless your business runs on real-time commentary. Reddit: possibly, but only with patience and zero promotional intent.
LinkedIn is the platform where, for most SME owners, the answer is simply yes – without a long list of conditions attached.
Your clients are on LinkedIn. Your referral partners are on LinkedIn. The people who might recommend you to others are on LinkedIn. It is the professional network, and for businesses that grow through relationships, reputation, and trust – which describes most of the SMEs I work with – there is no substitute for showing up there consistently.
What good LinkedIn presence actually looks like
The mistake most business owners make on LinkedIn is treating it like a CV. A static record of credentials and achievements, updated occasionally, used mainly to receive connection requests and occasionally browse job listings.
That’s not what LinkedIn rewards. What it rewards is consistent, personal, and useful presence. Posts that share genuine thinking. Commentary that demonstrates expertise. Responses to other people’s content that add something rather than just agreeing. The occasional personal post that reveals something human about who you are and how you work.
LinkedIn rewards consistency and personality above polish. A post that sounds like you, published regularly, will outperform a perfectly crafted piece of corporate content that appears once a month.
The businesses and business owners that get the most from LinkedIn are not necessarily the most prolific. They’re the most consistent. They show up regularly enough that their name becomes familiar to the people they most want to reach – and familiarity, as we discussed in the context of community earlier in this series, is what shortens the sales cycle.
What to post about? Your expertise. Your observations. The questions your clients ask you repeatedly. The things you notice in your sector that others haven’t said yet. The occasional honest reflection on what running a business actually involves. None of it needs to be groundbreaking. It just needs to be genuinely yours.
The mistake that undermines LinkedIn for most SMEs
The single most common LinkedIn mistake I see from business owners is inconsistency. Posting intensively for a few weeks, then going quiet for a month, then posting again when something feels urgent. The algorithm notices. More importantly, your audience notices – or rather, they don’t notice, because you’ve disappeared from their feed.
LinkedIn’s algorithm strongly rewards regular, consistent engagement. An account that posts twice a week reliably will almost always outperform one that posts daily for a fortnight and then vanishes. Rhythm matters more than volume.
The practical implication for time-poor SME owners is that LinkedIn is one of the platforms where having consistent support – someone to help you maintain a presence even in your busiest weeks – delivers disproportionate returns. The content should still sound like you. But the consistency doesn’t have to depend entirely on you finding the time.
A brief reflection on my own approach
LinkedIn is where I do most of my own professional showing up. I post regularly – usually around the Get Ahead content I’m involved in, the conversations I’m having with business owners, and the things I notice about how businesses are using their time and resource. It’s not a polished strategy. It’s a habit. And the habit, more than anything else, is what builds the kind of presence that generates warm inbound rather than cold outreach.
If there’s one thing I’d say to any business owner reading this: start smaller than you think you need to, but start consistently. Two posts a week, every week, that actually sound like you, will do more for your business than ten posts a week that sound like everyone else.
The Metaverse: what happened, and what it tells us
In 2021, Meta announced that the future of social connection was the Metaverse – a fully immersive virtual world where people would work, socialise, attend concerts, and conduct business through customisable avatars. Mark Zuckerberg showed the world his virtual office. Analysts predicted trillions in economic activity. Brands rushed to buy virtual land. Business owners were told they needed a Metaverse strategy.
By 2023, Meta had written down billions in losses on its Reality Labs division. The virtual world was largely empty. The avatars, which notoriously had no legs in early versions, became a meme. The urgency evaporated almost as quickly as it had arrived.
What went wrong? Fundamentally, the Metaverse proposition failed the most basic test: it didn’t solve a problem people actually had. People weren’t clamouring for a virtual office. They weren’t desperate to attend meetings as legless avatars. The technology existed before the need – and in the absence of genuine demand, even the most lavish investment couldn’t manufacture it.
For SME owners, the lesson isn’t really about the Metaverse specifically. It’s about the pattern. Every few years, a new platform or technology arrives with outsized promises and credible advocates. There’s pressure to act early, to stake out territory before the rush, to build a presence while the algorithm still favours early adopters. Sometimes those bets pay off. Often they don’t. The filter that cuts through most of the noise is simple: where are your customers, and what would it genuinely cost you in time and resource to reach them there? Applied honestly, that question would have saved most businesses their brief Metaverse anxiety. It will serve you just as well for whatever comes next.
A final thought
LinkedIn is the one platform in this series where the answer is almost always yes.
Not because it’s fashionable – it isn’t, particularly. But because it’s where your clients, your referrers, and your peers actually are. And showing up there, consistently and genuinely, is one of the most reliable investments a business owner can make in their own visibility.
As for the Metaverse: it’s a useful reminder that not every bold prediction becomes reality. The filter is always the same – where are your customers, and what does it cost you to reach them? Apply that question to everything. Including whatever arrives next.
LinkedIn is a platform I use every day – and helping business owners in Oxfordshire show up consistently and confidently there is part of what I do. If you’d like to talk about what that could look like for your business, I’m always happy to.
I’m Vicky McKenna, Regional Director for Get Ahead in Oxfordshire.
Next in the series: And Then There’s AI.
If you missed Part 1 of this series discussing Facebook, you can find it here. Part 2 – on Pinterest – is here. Part 3 about Twitter is here. All things X in part 4 here. Read about Reddit here.
