In the second part of his exclusive series with SJA, Tyler Schmoker, MPA, PROSCI, examines how to redefine “the new normal” for security, one post at a time.

Looking at LinkedIn

In Part 1 of this 3-part series, we looked back at how LinkedIn started out as “the world’s largest professional network”, characterized by highly polished professional user demographics, online resumes, business formal profile pictures and job postings.

For most of its now more than 20 year run, those were the defining characteristics of the platform.

That is, right up until the immediate wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

During this challenging period, smack dab in the middle of a global public health crisis, LinkedIn underwent a significant shift that saw its membership explode and led to the platform’s emergence as a full-scale social media channel; more videos, more personal posts, content creators and “influencers”.

For better or worse, LinkedIn had forever changed.

We’re going to explore how some of these changes came about, what was gained and lost in the process and how this all relates to the security industry.

Hopefully, it’ll provide some useful insights that will help security professionals determine how best to successfully navigate these previously uncharted waters of “professional networking”, which has now landed somewhere between job boards and Instagram.

The migration

Before we dig in, it’s important to first acknowledge that there isn’t necessarily a complete consensus around whether or not all of the changes LinkedIn has had over the last three to four years are positive, negative or somewhere in-between.

Like most things that undergo significant change, to the magnitude that LinkedIn has, there is a certain segment of the end-user population that would just as soon do without all the personal posts in the feed, while others see the platform as a professional forum providing a means to redefine and democratize the definitions of what it means to be a modern “professional”.

One of the most interesting aspects of this emergence of what’s often been referred to in social media parlances as the “creator economy” and the “attention economy” on LinkedIn is that it didn’t start out as a direct result of a carefully architected corporate strategy developed by the platform to make it more interactive, thereby attracting and launching the platform to over one billion subscribers, which is what ultimately occurred in mid-2023 nevertheless.

If this had been the case, this plan would have certainly represented one of the more brilliantly executed platform transformation strategies in social media’s still young history, but alas this wasn’t the case, at least not initially.

On the contrary, the emergence of the creator/attention economy on LinkedIn was the result of a digital grassroots movement, incited by a societal altering global pandemic.

It was in this time of increased isolation and the shared human experience of professional uncertainty, that the community took to the LinkedIn feed en masse and staged a professional cultural revolution.

Prior to this, the LinkedIn feed was more exclusively occupied by company sponsored ads, the occasional “great opportunity” employer job post reshare or the pictures from an awards presentation at the latest industry conference banquet.

In many cases, it had the feel of a carefully curated corporate website, complete with internal memos from senior executives and large organizations to advertise and distribute information to its people, rather than interacting with its people.

LinkedIn often felt like a less approachable place for up-and-coming professionals earlier into their career journeys, who were also actively seeking out opportunities to express their aspirations, share their ideas, demonstrate their knowledge and expertise through the platform, establish their own unique professional brands and ultimately feel heard.

Then it happened.

Content creators began to trickle onto LinkedIn either for the first time from other social media platforms or to resurrect that LinkedIn profile they hadn’t touched in five/eight/ten years.

Soon, they began to amass in both numbers and frequency to the point where entirely independent of the job board and online resume sections of the platform, the LinkedIn feed was becoming a much more interesting place.

It became a place that, like it or not, was getting a lot more professionals engaging regularly on the platform.

The LinkedIn feed had effectively been either liberated or hijacked by its end-users, depending upon how you look at the current state of the platform.

This revolution did not come without resistance from some legacy LinkedIn users more accustomed to the previous norms of the platform however.

In the early days of this content creator revolution, it wasn’t uncommon to find posts that focused on the lighter side of professional life or personal content posted by a professionals and at the time this was a distinct departure from the way content used to be done on LinkedIn.

It was different, people took notice, platform usage increased and membership did as well.

All of this change didn’t come without its criticisms however.

It was during this time that comments arose as a call-to-action of sorts to try to resist and restore the old digital order of how the platform should be best used, before all the selfies and shameless self-promotion moved in next door and then there went the LinkedIn neighborhood, so to speak.

In time, the reformer calls faded from the LinkedIn lexicon.

More professionals were beginning to throw their hats into the ring of the LinkedIn personal brand arena; to write, to share, to not simply “connect” to “network” with their colleagues off the platform, but also now collaborate with their digital communities and “find their tribes”.

Industries and organizations alike began to take notice of the changing landscape on LinkedIn as well.

For them, it became a matter of deciding whether this newfound strategic communications capacity was a low-cost, high-return guerrilla marketing promise land or a disruptive professional Pandora’s box.  

The opportunity for security

It was in these heady digital times, during the early days of the LinkedIn content and personal branding revolution, that I decided to do something radical, take some chances, accept some professional risks and throw my hat into the LinkedIn ring.

I was a large market managing director for a global security services firm at the time.

Back then, the inherently conservative social media norms of the security industry on LinkedIn meant that you’d be far more likely to find industry professionals’ profiles with no profile picture and a first name with last initial only, as well as far less likely to find security industry content creators becoming recognizable fixtures in the daily feed… but that’s exactly what happened.

I recognized a unique opportunity to both operationalize LinkedIn as a legitimate strategic communications enabler in ways that hadn’t previously been done within the security industry, but more so develop and use this capability to offer a more contemporary, alternative voice geared towards broader mainstream audiences.

From that point on, in the course of a little better than three years, I leveraged LinkedIn to create a professional brand and distribute daily security and preparedness-related content that took me from being a relative unknown middle manager, to one of the more recognizable contemporary figures in the profession.

It has granted me unprecedented access to movers, shakers and decision-makers in the security industry and beyond.

In the third and final part of this series, I’ll be shedding new light on to why I decided to take the leap and change mindsets in the security industry.

I’ll also be sharing tips and best practices that I learned along the way that other security professionals can apply to their own LinkedIn strategies, to expand their own strategic communications capacity and improve their results and industry impact using LinkedIn.

Read the previous installment of Tyler’s series here and keep an eye out for Part 3 – coming 16 May!

About Tyler

Tyler Schmoker is a retired Army Combat Arms Senior Non-commissioned Officer, former Paramilitary Advisor and Strategic Projects Consultant to Fortune 500s.

He has worked in corporate security, strategy, project/program management and tech. He is an avid Alpine climber and endurance athlete.

Tyler is the Founder and Principal at Winsly LLC, a high-performance consulting and advisory services firm.

He is also the creator of LinkedIn Tradecraft; a course offering that incorporates human psychology, social sciences, Fortune 500 consulting and military intelligence best-practices into comprehensive LinkedIn strategies.

Connect with Tyler on LinkedIn here.