Say Goodbye To Your LinkedIn Top Voice Badge .. The Program Is Changing!
LinkedIn Top Voice Program is changing again .. here is what you need to know
I am a massive LinkedIn fanboy
It has been amazing to see the platform change from an online CV to the professional social media giant it is today
Yes your feed might be full of cringe posts of CEOs pretending to humble-brag but the goods outweigh the bad
Previously LinkedIn was just about job-hunting and recommendations
Now .. careers are just a small part of the things you can do as people like Justin Welsh have built entire empires on LinkedIn
One of the best ways of personal brand building on the platform was the LinkedIn Top Voice program
The Top Voice is their earlier influencer program that comes in two colors:
Blue Badge: Invite only and given by the LinkedIn Team
Yellow Badge: Automatically given when you contribute to collaborative articles
I was lucky enough to get both badges once I started posting on LinkedIn as you can see below:
The yellow badge was quite popular allowing people to be recognized for their expertise on the world’s biggest professional network
People started putting the “Top Voice in xxx” headline and badges on their profiles as a way of showcasing this brand and their credibility as a thought leader
But sadly the yellow badge is coming to an end
LinkedIn recently announced in October that is retiring the golden badge
The reason it gave was
“We’ve learned that it is challenging to maintain the highest quality standards for our Community Top Voice badges, as they are currently awarded automatically to contributors, and not manually awarded by our team.
Therefore, we have decided to retire the gold Community Top Voice badge (gold badge) ….
If you currently have a gold Community Top Voice badge, please note that it will expire within 60 days from when it was awarded. Those who earn a badge on October 8, 2024, will have it through December 7, 2024.”
Honestly I am not surprised ..
The main issue with the yellow badge program is saturation
GenAI has resulted in LinkedIn collaborative articles being flooded with copy-pasted AI answers
People could literally swarm the articles with AI generated content to get the badge in a particular field like AI or Cloud Computing
The platform became saturated with Top Voices who had zero credibility in their space
The system was being “gamed” like crazy due to GenAI
Some of the answers in Cybersecurity read like they were copied out a CISSP text book .. zero insight or thought behind it
All of this led to a decline in value of the yellow badge and possibly played into LinkedIn’s decision to retire it
So .. what to do now ??
1 — Aim for the Blue Badge
The LinkedIn Blue Badge Top Voice does not suffer from this problem as it is manually given
There is honestly no way to game the platform for the blue badge as LinkedIn editors only award it to those who have consistently given value and engagement on the platform
I have written before that LinkedIn rewards people who provide genuine value on the platform
Most professionals only post this on LinkedIn:
I am pleased to announce that I have passed XYZ certification
I am pleased to announce I have joined XYZ company
I am pleased to announce I have completed XYZ training
While there is nothing wrong with sharing this information .. it ignores the power of LinkedIn as a platform for sharing your knowledge.
Try and aim for the top voice blue badge by consistently educating and sharing valuable posts about your industry
Show your expertise and you might be invited to join the program
Check out my Ebook on the techniques I used to become a Top Voice
2 — Start a LinkedIn Newsletter
One of the most underrated LinkedIn features is starting a newsletter
It is a great way of establishing yourself as a thought leader in a particular topic
The best thing is that LinkedIn promotes your newsletter to your followers which makes getting thousands of readers quite easy !
Check out my detailed article on this below.
