I have no freaking idea.

Seriously.

Three hundred-plus posts later, I have managed to move from getting zero likes on some posts to perhaps a fairly consistent four or five. If you’re looking for an algorithm expert, this is probably where you should stop reading.

I’m not complaining though. At least, not anymore.

As human beings, validation matters.

I think many of us pretend otherwise. We tell ourselves we’re sharing ideas, contributing to conversations, serving our audience. All of that may be true. But there is also a small voice somewhere in the background asking a much simpler question:

“Did anybody notice?”

There were times when I would spend hours crafting a post. I would think carefully about the story, the lesson, the wording, and the flow. Then I would hit publish and wait.

An hour later, maybe one like. A few hours later, perhaps two. Sometimes none. I found myself asking the same question repeatedly.

What do I need to do to get more likes?

The strange thing is that the more I focused on that question, the more uncomfortable LinkedIn became.

Every day there seemed to be someone receiving hundreds of reactions. Someone whose posts appeared to take off effortlessly. Someone who seemed to have cracked a code that I had somehow missed.

Comparison became a daily habit or perhaps a
daily affliction.

Recently, I came across something called Goodhart’s Law. Economist Charles Goodhart observed that once a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that likes work exactly this way.

At first, a like is simply a measure. It tells you that something resonated with someone. It is one signal among many. But the moment likes become the target, something shifts.

You stop asking yourself what you genuinely think and begin asking yourself what people are most likely to react to.

You stop sharing ideas because they matter to you and start sharing ideas because they might perform well.

Without realizing it, you begin serving the metric instead of the purpose.

What struck me most was that some of the posts I am proudest of received very little engagement. Yet months later someone would reference one of those posts in a conversation. Someone would tell me it helped them think differently. Someone would mention a line that became a turning point for them in their life.

The engagement numbers suggested those posts hadn’t resonated.

The people who referenced them months later suggested otherwise.

That realization changed something for me.

Likes can measure visible reactions. They cannot measure reflection. They cannot measure influence. They cannot measure the impact that happens when someone reads your words, says nothing, and carries the idea with them anyway.

So yes, I still enjoy getting likes. I still smile when a post gains traction…in my case mini-traction LOL…I’m human after all!

But I have become much more careful about asking likes to provide something they were never designed to provide.

Because the truth is that I wasn’t really looking for engagement.

My breakthrough came when I realized I was asking a tiny blue thumbs-up to settle much bigger questions about my worth, my ideas, and whether my voice mattered.

The funny thing is that I never really changed what I wrote.

I haven’t learned the secret formula. I haven’t mastered the algorithm. I haven’t figured out how to consistently generate engagement. I couldn’t tell you the perfect posting time, the ideal word count, or whether three lines perform better than four.

Instead, I continue to post the things that move me, the ideas that spark my curiosity, the books that challenge my thinking, and the observations that emerge from conversations, experiences, successes, mistakes, and the occasional bout of comparisonitis.

Some posts resonate. Many don’t. At least not in ways that are immediately visible. But I keep showing up.

Over time, I’ve come to realize that the real value isn’t in the reaction count. It’s in the practice of thinking, reflecting, writing, and contributing to a conversation larger than myself. The likes were never the work. The writing is the work. The reflection is the work. The growth is the work.

Strategic Reflection Prompt:

What scorecard are you using to evaluate yourself right now? Is it measuring what truly matters, or has the score become more important than the reason you started?

About Giselle

Most costly decisions begin with an inaccurate understanding of the situation.

I’m increasingly interested in how leaders make sense of uncertainty, complexity, and important decisions. If you could better understand one thing about your business right now, what would it be?

Giselle Hudson is a Pre-Decision Diagnostic Advisor who helps leaders gain clarity before major decisions are made or resources are committed to the wrong solution.