(I tried to write this in lowercase. I failed.)

It began as a trickle. I noticed more posts from Nick in my LinkedIn feed. Then I began seeing a lot of my connections tagging him in their posts. People stopped capitalizing. They began copying Nick’s style: short, lowercase, punchy jokes about marketing, capitalism, mental health — end-of-the-world type shit, but somehow funny and hopeful, too.

I wrote my own “I’m copying Nick Power wink wink” post. It all got VERY meta. (Like the good kind, not the Zuckerberg kind.) It felt like everyone in my little LinkedIn community was in on the same secret. Meanwhile, Nick’s influence on the platform became a deluge, and he was everything everywhere all at once.

What struck me about Nick’s minimalist-text, maximum-selfies approach was that it wasn’t just a lark that went viral. He explained, in posts and comments, why and how he developed his strategy, and why it was working.

Now the marketing director at Noun Project (the world's most diverse and extensive collection of icons and photos), Nick has worked at several startups. He’s marketed surfboards, backpacks, skincare, stock photos — pulling from his psychology degree to understand how people think and the best ways to communicate with them.

I spoke to Nick about his approach to LinkedIn, how it’s impacted his work at Noun Project, and why getting silly on a “professional” platform can actually help your business.

You've been posting on LinkedIn for a long time and you and I have been connected for a while, so I watched your content pivot in real time. What made you decide to revamp your approach and your strategy? Because you had a great presence already.

I look at LinkedIn — and really any social media channel — as a place for me to play. It's like a sandbox. I’ve been writing about marketing for a long time and I enjoyed that.

But it started to feel like I was saying the same thing a lot of other people were saying. I didn’t have a goal to turn LinkedIn upside down and go viral or anything like that. It was more like, what can I do here that would be exciting and stimulating for me?

And then from a professional and career standpoint, I didn't book many meetings just writing about straight marketing. I definitely had some good conversations and I landed several jobs where the manager brought up my LinkedIn presence. But at the end of the day, it felt like I was struggling to be seen and add anything different.

I thought, I don't have anything to lose here. And at a higher level, it feels like we're in a weird time. That part of it was screaming at me a little bit.

There's all these people talking about work and tips and tools on LinkedIn. Meanwhile, things are on fire outside. Nobody's really sharing that, aside from very deep, long articles. I felt like that was heavy. Every time I came across one of those, I was like, I have enough of that.

So I thought, how can I bring all that together, and get these messages out in a way that doesn't feel like I'm adding weight to people? How can I use that as a way to connect with people, because they're things that I really care about, as a person.

I struggle with that, too. I think to your point, bringing a little bit of humor and levity to these things does not make them less serious. You can talk about how billionaires are ruining our economy with a joke and not have it be this super serious topic.

I read your posts in a different voice because of the style and format. It's a great signal that it's a little tongue-in-cheek, but you still believe what you're saying.

We all obsess over that as marketers, how to format and form the message, and you’ve really nailed that.

Humor is how I process stuff like that. You're not trying to be disrespectful or dismissive; it's more like, this is such a heavy thing that I really don't know how else to talk about it other than to make a joke, because if I don't, then I'm going to just block it out.

I was assuming or projecting that was felt by others in the space of LinkedIn, too. Everybody was running away from other social media platforms like Meta and Twitter. Even TikTok – you go on there, it's crazy. I think a lot of people came to LinkedIn because they missed being able to talk about what was going on, and have a sense of humor about it.

People say, oh, LinkedIn is Facebook now. I'm like, no, I think it's like the old, good Twitter, in the time when it actually felt useful and like you could form relationships there.

And as a writer, at least in my experience, LinkedIn is the place where you can get traction just with the written word. You don't have to make videos and constantly be doing visuals. How do you see video for LinkedIn right now, have you tried it?

I've tried it, but it’s like this whole other thing. I have a little bit of shyness I'm trying to get over. I actually started doing TikTok, and it's mainly just to play, to mess around. But I'm trying to push myself to get on camera and talk to it, baby steps.

I think you're right about the similarities with old Twitter. But I try to think of it as its own thing. As an example, I'll break up what I'm doing with a selfie and a long post every now and again. That would not work on Twitter. It's a blank canvas, and so I’m trying to interrupt patterns and not get stuck in that whole, “oh, we're doing Twitter now and I'm only writing in a certain way.”

And even now, I'm like, am I going to be doing this in a year or two? I don’t know.

I think about that, too, because we ultimately don't have control over these platforms and how they shift. I saw a post recently about what LinkedIn officially says the algorithm prefers, and one of those things was maximalist openings, instead of catchy hooks. And my unfounded theory is that people don’t actually want that. I think LinkedIn wants people to want that. 

This may sound harsh, but I think LinkedIn is totally out of touch with what's happening on the platform, and trying to be prescriptive instead of predictive. They’ve tried to push video for so long, and it's really struggled to catch on. It's rare that you find a video that's relevant to you, unless it’s from somebody you already follow. I think there’s a supply issue. But they also don't have the algorithm for it. It's not in the DNA of the platform, really. 

I think one of the biggest, weirdest things is that you never see people from LinkedIn writing on LinkedIn. Or I don't, anyway. It feels like they're not in touch with what's happening there. 

Just like any social media platform, when something crazy happens, people talk about it on LinkedIn. So the fact that a bunch of people are talking about things that are happening in the world is not that crazy to me.

It's starting to reflect more of how we exist on the internet in lots of places. What attracts people is the opportunity to get your next job, clients, to make connections that lead to professional growth. 

But if you come on there and that seems like your sole purpose, you're not going to get traction, You have to be interested in other people. My metaphor is, it's like a work happy hour — you're not going to only talk about work. 

I probably push more than other people should on the professional stuff, like the type of language that I'm using or the grammar. I don't think that people who are looking for jobs should be doing that, frankly. But I'm a marketer, and I'm trying to show my ability to do marketing, that I'm doing something different and it’s standing out.

I've had a ton of really, really meaningful conversations from all this in my DMs that had nothing to do with work, with people from different backgrounds and experiences. There's a lot of value there beyond trying to get a job or earn clients.

The flip side that's most interesting to me is that people really like to connect and work with people that they know and trust. So there's this element of, because you're not trying, you're the first person that people think of.

I have intentionally pushed the professional limits of the platform with my own stuff, but the intent is, “this feels stuffy, let's open it up a little bit and see how far we can push,” because I think it's been, historically, a super performative, very restrictive platform for content.

Of course, we're all thinking about our careers, but since you’re not looking for your next job right now, it's almost like a public service. You’re able to push it really far. Hopefully, other people might see that and feel a little bit of permission to push a degree further than they usually do.

I think that's why what you've done has had an impact. People are having a little more fun and making silly posts tagging you. 

I'm curious how your LinkedIn has impacted your work at Noun Project.

It's been really positive overall. When I was writing about marketing, it was rare that people would respond and ask me about where I work, or that I’d get DMs saying, “hey, I bought from your company because of you.” And now I've probably had five or 10 DMs from people who said “I found Noun Project through you,” and they ended up as customers when they didn’t know about the brand before seeing my content.

I'm pushing it further than we would with the brand page, but it's still consistent values. We're very much a progressive company, we stand up for human rights, we're an ally to marginalized groups. In terms of traffic, we've definitely seen an increase to our website from LinkedIn referral.

What’s your high-level advice to someone who’s either just starting on LinkedIn, or someone who’s been there but is thinking, “this is boring and not fun, and I'm not making any traction”?

Maybe you're writing and you're getting like two or three likes on things; the first thing I would say is, it's a social media platform, and if you're not social about it, it's not gonna work.

I've noticed a lot of people put a ton of time into content but not much time into connecting with other people, taking the time to write a thoughtful comment versus “Insightful post!” or some two-word comment. 

I manually connected with thousands and thousands of people. Yeah, you can break through and get a viral post here and there without that. But it's really hard to get any basic foundation of delivery without that network. I think that's a really underutilized aspect. 

Then the second part is to ask yourself, is this boring or is it fun? Whatever you put out there, it's up to you to make it fun, or make it interesting. If you’re looking at what's out there and thinking, “how can I fit in or make a version of something else”  that's always going to be boring and safe and not very fun.

It can't be self-serving. I know that some of my stuff comes off like a dear diary thing, but I'm actually thinking to myself, “is anybody else going to relate to this? Is anybody else going to see themselves in this?” I have historically been a very quiet person. I've tried to push myself to get out of that, as a professional and personal goal.

That's something I'll bring up in my content, how writing helped me be less shy. I think a lot of people can relate to that as an example.

Any final thoughts on LinkedIn strategy?

Try not to box yourself in. Even the stuff that I'm doing, I wouldn't recommend people do exactly that. It's more like, think about it as a thought experiment or a place where you can try different things.

There's a whole bunch of different ways that you can create. I don't do carousels, but I'm sure that there's a way to do them really well and make them fun and engaging, not like the Canva templates and the AI generated stuff. There are creative ways to use different formats or polls, for example. 

Don't build any walls and don't think about it like it's the same as one platform or the other. It's just a social media platform with a bunch of people on it. There's a professional element to it because of the DNA of the platform, but that’s no reason to make it stuffy.

What I’m reading/watching/eating

Because a marketer is only as good as their creative inputs.

FICTION 📖 Vantage Point by Sara Sligar and The Blue Hour by Paula Hawkins. I accidentally read two novels back to back about women on accursed islands, and I would happily read more in this micro-genre! Very different books, but I recommend them both. Vantage Point revolves around the impacts of deepfake videos on the public consciousness and personal trust. Creepy and thought-provoking.

TV SHOW 💻 “The Four Seasons,” Netflix. It’s hilarious but also deeply emotional. Be warned! It’s especially fun to see Steve Carrell portray a somewhat sympathetic cad and to watch Tina Fey and Will Forte play off each other.

FOOD 🍉 Hibiscus-infused watermelon salad with whipped feta and arugula. Had it at a restaurant in LA, Bacari, and am dreaming of how to recreate it at home. The perfect summer salad.

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