Carly Buxton, PhD

I do a lot of different random things, such that on the surface I may look like a serial shiny-object chaser, always changing my direction. But I try very hard to see things through once I’ve committed to them, and that’s why I am THRILLED to report that this is day 30 of my 30-day posting challenge. I’m so glad to be done with it and to retreat back into my hovel of LinkedIn hobbitry. 

As I close the experiment, I want to take a few moments to reflect on how it’s gone, to revisit why I did it in the first place, and to assess whether I achieved my initial goals with the effort.

What was the experiment?

I laid it out in my first post of the 30, but essentially, I’m trying to navigate my next career step and wanted to establish my “brand” as a specialist in product, specifically customer experience. So, following the advice Jason Calacanis gave to a call-in listener with a similar background and career quandary on his TWIST podcast, I undertook a challenge of blogging for 30 consecutive (work)days on topics related to CX, sharing my insights, educating, and generally trying to provide value.

How did it go?

The writing part was fun. I wrote most of the blogs during the summer and waited until I had nearly 30 to begin posting. I took this tack because my life seems to derail constantly (sick kids, crisis at work, sitter cancellation, friend in need), and I wanted to feel certain that I could post for the full 30 day timeline without missing a scheduled day. I also thought more people would be active on LinkedIn in September as opposed to the summer. Ultimately, I think this approach worked well for me, because I simply wrote “as the mood struck” on topics that came to mind irregularly, without any pressure. I was able to devote true energy and time to the content itself, because it was never forced.

What was I hoping for?

Honestly, I suppose I was hoping that somebody would read my stuff and be like: she’s brilliant! We have to have her on our product team! and offer me a flexible job working on CX or UX at a groundbreaking, meaningful company. If not that, I was hoping that someone, identifying my unique perspective and respecting my versatile skill set, would reach out to hire me as a fractional CXO or consultant of some sort, so that I could earn a little $$ while continuing to work on my projects (like Parentswarm, writing, and acting).

What did I achieve?

1. Zero unprompted job offers (though I did get hired to fly as a Delta Flight Attendant again should I decide to take that job in 2025… but I believe this was thoroughly unrelated to my LinkedIn hustle).
2. Zero requests for paid consulting / fractional CXO work
3. Seven requests to speak or advise for free (accepted 2 of these opportunities)
4. Countless LinkedIn connection invites and DMs from random people who identified me as a sales target (apparently hustlers recognize the hustle and take it as a sign that you might be an eager sitting duck for whatever they’re pitching)
5. Significant growth in my skills using Canva, AI, and coding 
6. A fair bit of enjoyment, writing non-fiction that is not about Japanese history. I really do love to write.
7. A small corner of internet content that I own (because I posted on my owned media aka my WordPress blog), and who knows what opportunities that might channel my way in the future?
8. Smiles and dopamine hits when friends and colleagues engaged with my posts (thank you)

What I’d Do Differently Next Time

1. Stick more narrowly to a single theme. My content ran the gamut; I talked a lot about UX/insights and CX, but I also touched on managing talent in a startup, iterating an MVP, and other basic “startup founder” fodder. Next time around, I’d get even more specific and only focus on the thing I’m most knowledgable about (CX)
2. Appease the algorithm. Call me stubborn, but I wrote what I wanted to write, how I wanted to write it. In the meantime, I learned a lot about the LinkedIn algorithm. My posts with images and tags got the most exposure. And LinkedIn especially loves it when you post without linking out to your own site.
3. Ask engaging questions. For the most part, I attempted to be interesting. Next time around, I’d go with being more interested. It’s such an algorithm play to ask for engagement with a question at the end of the post, but I admit as a consumer that I often get a lot out of people’s responses. And I think that more interested than interesting is a good touchpoint for LinkedIn content in general.
4. Post day-of. My content always performed better when I posted it “live” rather than “scheduled.” Why? Maybe it’s algorithmic. Maybe it’s because I always did one final run-through and tweaked things in a way that molded to the moment more precisely (if imperceptibly). I liked drafting the content ahead of time, but I think it’s a more authentic exercise to share content live rather than pre-coordinated.
5. Follow up. In all honestly, I really have only done “part one” of Calacanis’s proposed experiment. Part two is to reach out systematically to target companies I’d be interested in partnering with, to give a brief spiel on my expertise, and to ask if they’d be keen to talk about scoping out a (paid) project. I have yet to do this–and I will!–but I’m a little burned out on hustle at the moment and need to muster up a bit of a reframe of that kind of cold outreach (“it’s solving problems!”) before I pound more pavement there.

In Conclusion

Ultimately, I have to say that this experiment felt very “not worth it.” I did not enjoy feeling like an irritating, attention-starved content warrior doing the LinkedIn equivalent of a silly little TikTok dance every day. Social media truly is not my thing, and LinkedIn is indeed social media–more and more so each day. I’m not sure where this leaves me on my career trajectory and in this current midlife crisis of purpose I’m experiencing, but I appreciate those of you who joined me for the ride! And I do recognize that content has long-tail potential; who knows what opportunities may come from this experiment in the months (or even years) to come? At least… that’s what I’ll tell myself.