What Becoming LinkedIn Top Voice Taught Me

Back in April 2024, I decided to attempt a three-month challenge to reach the LinkedIn top voice, but things turned out more difficult than I initially anticipated. Towards the end of three months, which is back to this summer, I had to extend this challenge. Fast-forward to September, a few days after my birthday, and I am happy to share that I finally got the LinkedIn ‘Technological Innovation’ community topic voice budge. So, here’s my journey, my struggle, and what Becoming LinkedIn Top Voice Taught Me.

What legacy is behind LinkedIn’s top voice vs. the community’s top voice?

You may know about the LinkedIn Top Voice badge and Community Voice badge. The Top Voice badge is aimed at awarding members who consistently share valuable insights, thought leadership, and engaging content across various topics on LinkedIn and inspire their professional communities with their expertise and unique perspectives.

You may have learned about the difference between LinkedIn Top Voice badge and Community Voice badge. Here’s a recap: In a nutshell, LinkedIn Top Voice badge is invited-only and aiming for many high-profile leadership figures and those members got figured on Linkedin in a very prestigious and exclusive ways.

The Community Voice badge on the other hand is more about collaborative articles on niche areas like Artificial Intelligence, Cloud Computing, or the one I have been trying to get during those 6 months : The Top Technological Innovation Community Voice badge.

For the one I want to get : The Technology Innovation Community Voice badge. Though, is for those who contribute valuable insights and thought leadership in technology.

Why would I want a top voice badge?

Aside from those perks, I personally want the LinkedIn Community Voice badge to train my thought leadership muscle and, more importantly, stay updated on the latest technology trends and thinking in the tech industry.

Those LinkedIn contribution articles just keep popping up, and it help me to explore various use cases mentally or relate them to a situation that I experienced in the past. In some way, it allows me to transfer my own industry experience and practices into these scenarios.

Since it’s highly visible on Linkedin, it comes with the natural benefits of social media; I get to share my insights and experiences with my peers, and hopefully, I can help them overcome challenges and grow professionally.

But what’s more ? I’m on a mission to help innovate the industry with positivity, and I want to make a meaningful impact by fostering innovation and collaboration with those who are interested in similar technology and building the same as me. So, this badge will enhance my professional growth and keep reminding me to contribute to the broader tech community in a significant way.

Content creation is fun !

How do you define “valuable insights”? Linkedin uses a statistical approach based on the number of contributions, the engagement rate for those contributions, and AI-measured contribution quality (e.g., copywriting skill and make sure no duplicated or plagiarized content).

To some extent, this signifies one’s influence and expertise, helping to shape conversations around emerging technologies, technology & market trends, and innovations in the tech industry. As all the community’s top voice budges, it validates industry knowledge and influence and boosts professional credibility since it’s a super visible way to highlight individuals and their achievements on Linkedin. So, in a professional sense, it helps a lot to connect with like-minded professionals in the same tech niche.

If you’ve been following my journey, you’ll notice that every post I share here on Medium highlights my weekly efforts to practice and strengthen my entrepreneurial skills.

Fun fact: The content creation is not a separate entity from entrepreneurship. The entrepreneurial journey involves creating something new and unique. A key component of this is what I call technology innovation.

My personal philosophy about technology innovation

In 2023, I founded my first company, iMelonArt, in Bellevue, USA. iMelonArt, which serves as a holding company for the tech media brand I developed called CloudMelon Vision, also short for CVisiona. This venture continues my personal passion for technology and product development, so I created a newsletter called Cloud-Native innovators.

My philosophy of Learn, Leverage, and Innovate centers on the idea that continuous learning, strategic leveraging of knowledge, and fostering innovation are essential for technological advancement. Learning can be challenging amidst a busy career, but setting realistic goals using methods like OKRs, as highlighted in “Measure What Matters” by John Doerr, can make it manageable and impactful.

By dedicating time daily to learning, we can harness the compound effect for substantial growth. Leveraging this knowledge, we can tackle real-world challenges effectively. Innovating based on these learnings and feedback from practical experiences enables us to create solutions that drive progress, benefiting both individuals and the broader tech industry.

Top voice doesn’t mean you’re ‘TOP’

Having a beautiful badge doesn’t give you any privileges or mean you’re TOP on anything. However, the journey that you’ve learned speaks for itself.

The top community voice is much about your contributions towards collaborative articles. Linkedin in measures the quantity and more important the quality of the contributions. And here is where things get a bit trickier than it was meant to be.

Quantity vs Quality

However, it would appear it is a bit twisted when it comes to all the factors to measure ‘unique perspective’ : Linkedin has been improving this part by adding various ways of engagement to the collaborative articles, nowadays, you can like, dislike and comment the articles. Which makes the topic seems more interesting!

Quality vs Engagements

It is a harsh reality today, when some contributors using AI just to rephase what’s already there in the contributions without adding any new perspectives. AI is not the source of creativity, they are just tools, at least before AGI(Artificial General Intelligence) and singularity comes along.

Linkedin seems also counting engagements more than quality behind the scenes too. It is possible you wrote douzes of quality contribution with 100% human language but still takes weeks if not months to level up in the percentage band. However, a few clicks from other fellas can level up your visibility in a heartbeat. This means that some influencer profiles have an unfair advantage since they have already built a huge following on social media. Those people would appreciate you based on things you’ve done and your public image that’s been in the past. This is a true testament of the powerful of building a community !

Is a LinkedIn badge good for personal branding for real ?

LinkedIn badges is ‘kinda’ like certifications. What’s best in passing a certification ? You ask. It is what you’ve learned in the process.

So to speak, Linkedin badge could be a useful tool for personal branding, it is up to you to decide how they are used.

It is quite true though, badges offer a quick visual representation on the profile about a specific skills and qualifications: Those are helpful to make a strong first impression on recruiters or even your potential clients and followers if you’re running a business.

However, in spite of the badge is reasonably relevant to your field, it has to be backed by real experience or knowledge.

My journey was full of struggles

Do you know that at many points in this challenge, I was about to give up. Not because I don’t believe in myself but because I have some doubts about AI-generated articles, which is, unfortunately, where many topics for collaborative articles come from.

And also about engagements, an interesting loop: if you don’t write contributions regularly, you don’t get enough visibility, and consequently, you don’t get engagements, and then the challenge is dead.

It is definitely frustrating sometimes if you continue to contribute A LOT but still don’t get engagement because that makes it look like a never-ending challenge. But the truth behind this is: if you don’t stick to it, you will never get there!

You see, to reach the top 5% and get the badge displayed on the profile, I use the following to track my progress. An important reason I show you this here is that I believe in consistency.

With that in mind, here’s the Github Gist that records my journey for this special quest :

Onwards and Upwards

The entrepreneurship journey is a difficult road, but we may eventually get there. I will continuously exercise my entrepreneurial muscle here on Medium. Aside from a few days when I may have to focus on family, I create content weekly. So, if you enjoy my content and want to follow my journey, please feel free to follow me on Medium and subscribe to my YouTube channel and my newsletter.

Let me know your thoughts in the comment section. Stay tuned, and see you in the next one!

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