Who the f**k is Mollie Adams?

This is a post about the power of personality, content, and how if you have both, then you can ‘win’ the internets – if you keep it up.

As most around me will know, I have been very, very, very ill over the past few weeks, being housebound for over a week. As I started to feel better, I did my usual middle-aged business guy thing of checking LinkedIn to see what was occurring.

I am always on the lookout for great content ideas, and for those that do stuff well on the platform – people like the nutters of Caroo, Seed to Branch, Phil Slorick, Jo Watson – those types. On this particular day, I came across an interesting post that stated,

“Yeah I know I love to moan about an instant sales pitch or a flirty message, but hey, it’s given me an idea. Plus, I love to moan about anything so give me a break.

LinkedIn isn’t a dating site?

Next you’ll be telling me Tinder isn’t a recruitment app. Tell that to all my new leads.”

Followed by a clever screenshot of a rather pretty girl with a profile that reversed the (very true) trope of (some) men using LinkedIn as a way to try and chat up women. You can see it here:

You can see the actual post here: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/mollieadams_yeah-i-know-i-love-to-moan-about-an-instant-activity-6633329943382241280-SC0L/

I think I must have seen the post through my connection to Jo Watson, as she had commented on it. I saw how popular the post was becoming, with lots of comments, likes, and people sharing it themselves. I even shared it to Gareth from Caroo, because finding someone who seemed to have their finger ‘on the pulse’ (as Mollie seemed to) in recruitment was something that I thought that he would be interested in.

At this stage, my thoughts were along the lines of, “OK, she’s made a great post here. Is it a one-off? Is it because – as IS the case with many LinkedIn’ers – she is getting a lot of shares because she is pretty?”. You may not agree with my thoughts here (or are burying your head in the sand), but I see some women on LinkedIn getting shares/comments despite their content being weak/rehashed/banal. It’s sad, but true – and when they respond kindly, they often get dating requests mere seconds later in LinkedIn messenger. Ask your female friend, she’ll tell you.

This was not the case. This was some clever work here getting rewarded for being great. I then saw that Mollie had made a podcast with Jo Watson. Jo is easily in the top three people in my LinkedIn feed in terms of knowing how to write a post that engages but still has great candidness – which is a combination that I wish more people would use when posting on social media. If there is a person that writes how my brain thinks, then Jo is it. So…a podcast between these two is possibly going to be interesting, I think. So I listened (you can listen here, too – https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/ox-seven)

And over the next fifty nine minutes and fifty six seconds…NOTHING happened. Yet I was as entertained as I had been for a while. Now I had been ill for two weeks, and barely watched a TV show or film of any note, so I was devoid of entertainment, but it was still great, nonetheless. It reminded me a bit of Coogan and Brydon from ‘The Trip’ TV show. I let both of them know that I enjoyed the podcast, even if I could not remember one thing that had happened during it, which then brought about this LinkedIn post from Jo:

See the post here: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jo-watson-agoodwriteup_want-to-listen-to-the-podcast-that-critic-activity-6633743361847234560-LBbg

Around the same time, I had been reading about innovation (interesting, eh?) and made a seemingly small post on LinkedIn myself, asking professionals in Manchester who they thought was the most innovative person that they knew from the city. And that’s when the fun started!

You can see the full post here: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/marketingsalescto_manchester-activity-6633748848764346369-UF3Q

I expected just a few responses, if any at all. Innovation is a tricky subject and most people always seem to think that they don’t understand it enough to be able to give an opinion. This happened…the same Mollie had decided to put herself in a comment as the most innovative…OK, haha, a bit of fun…but then LOADS of people liked that comment. That was very strange…the post itself had zero likes at this point.

Who the f**k is Mollie Adams, I asked myself! Why had she got so many likes, when the post itself hadn’t. And then more weirdness happened…look at these…

And there were more – lots more. Many comments sprouted conversations that had their own culture and timezone. There were some very serious responses, and some valuable, useful information to someone like me, who loves to find innovative people to work and hang about with.

Over the course of a couple of days, this Mollie Adams creature – through great multiform content – had played a big part in my social media experience – and undoubtedly in other’s feeds, too. Through seeing her comments regularly, I now know who OX Seven are (a recruitment company from Oxfordshire). Her content just earned them that link, for example, which will help with SEO. The awareness of OX Seven will have increased a lot. And if Mollie’s LinkedIn contacts (and secondary contacts, too) are either candidates looking for work, or indeed clients looking for candidates, then this (and her other online) activity will certainly have helped to spread the word.

This kind of activity that Mollie involved herself in, is how to engage with a social audience. By not being salesy, nor not being too formal, you can open up opportunities that those that simply pedal cannot do. She is obviously observing the innate tactics of Jo Watson, who will self-deprecate greatly when talking about LinkedIn, despite her mastery of it. This is how LinkedIn should be done in my opinion. Add a bit of the madness of the Caroo nutters, and you have something very powerful indeed. If they all got together they would be wildy successful, I suspect, no matter what their offering.

So, this, is Mollie Adams, the LinkedIn content queen of the hour (and for much longer, I suspect) – and the best bit, having caused all of these shenanigans in Manchester…she doesn’t even live here yet!