Digging Out Of Content Fatigue With A Different Approach To Posting

The Unobstructed Podcast: Episode 17

Hope you brought a shovel. The forecast is calling for a flurry of contrarian thought leadership and personal branding.

There’s a kind of exhaustion that comes from pretending to show up.

• You post because you’re “supposed to.”
• You rearrange your words a certain way.
• You aim for engagement, but not connection.

And for your troubles, you close your laptop feeling distant, disheartened, and… just way more tired of the content circus. But if you stop, your career suffers. No one reads resumes anymore (AI is screening the job apps anyway).

People aren’t reading the 1,200 word bio you wrote on the About Me page of your website. And if they do, they’re skeptical until they go check LinkedIn. Or whatever platform you use. Because they want to see if other people are “buying what you’re selling.”

Said simply—people want to see if other people engage with you… publicly.

They want a stamp of approval before they make a decision about you. And we’ve all collectively, stupidly, agreed to hawk our ideas to the highest bidder (with the lowest bar) in exchange for that stamp. That means making yourself digestible. But sounding provocative. And interesting. While also insightful.

You know, performative.

It’s a game we’re all voluntarily playing because the alternative is rejection. No job offer. No promotion. No backchannel opportunity at your old coworker’s company.

I’m doing some form of that game right now. That’s not lost on me. But still, are you as disgusted with this overly-verbose, placating shit as I am?

• “It’s not x, it’s y”
• “[insert strategy] is dead—do this instead”
• “One email made me 18 billion dollars in 7 minutes—reply ‘I love performative slop’ to get the exact template so you can use it, too”

I mean… really?

What are we even doing here?

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In this episode, Rachael and I are joined by our first-ever podcast guest (!!!), Bella Cowdin, to talk about the over saturation of content that’s watering everything down for all of us. On many, many platforms…

But especially on LinkedIn.

Bella’s a RevOps consultant, Hubspot Admin, and all-around systems badass. She also has a background in snow science, like me, which turned out to be a pretty fitting metaphor for the ol’ thought readership avalanche on LinkedIn.

Aside from sharing a lot of laughter, she offered some very unique perspective. It was really interesting to see how she thinks about posting online. She’s refreshingly honest. And it helped us get to the bottom of some hidden, but pretty big, contributing factors to the LinkedIn content mess.

Things like:

• Bella’s lunch vs cocktail party posting vibe.
• The difference between visibility and resonance.
• How LinkedIn has become an invisible job requirement.
• How engagement (or lack thereof) shapes your voice without noticing.

As always, you can listen below or on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Amazon Music.

And then you should pay Bella a visit over on (ironically) LinkedIn and on her website.

onward.