The Water Cooler: Are Carpenters and Other Tradespeople Reading Different Articles on LinkedIn than Bankers and Other Businesspeople?

LinkedIn has more than 660 million members around the globe and counting. The first workers to embrace LinkedIn have been businesspeople or knowledge workers. Salespeople, marketers, bankers, consultants, architects, and similar professionals have been the first wave to become LinkedIn members.

Now, however, the number of carpenters, plumbers and other tradespeople joining the network is growing. In light of this fact, we did some research to find if electricians and other tradespeople and electrical engineers and other businesspeople were engaging with fundamentally different articles on LinkedIn in October.

Here’s what we discovered.

Top 10 Articles Engaging Tradespeople

1. It's Nice To Be Important, But It's More Important To Be Nice! By Brigette Hyacinth
2. You Get the Talent that You Pay For! By Brigette Hyacinth
3. Integrity is Everything! By Brigette Hyacinth
4. Good Bosses Appreciate their Employees! By Brigette Hyacinth
5. This Phrase Will Kill your Business By Gavin Dawson
6. All-Woman Delta Team Flew 120 Girls to NASA to Get Them Excited about Aviation By
7. Positive Culture is a Major Key to Success By Daniel Haley
8. Why Employee Experience is Important By Jan Tegze
9. What Coach Taught Me! By Jay Lewis
10. The Iceberg of Ignorance By Frank Zijlstra

Top 10 Articles Engaging All LinkedIn Members

1. It's Nice To Be Important, But It's More Important To Be Nice! By Brigette Hyacinth
2. You Get the Talent that You Pay For! By Brigette Hyacinth
3. Integrity is Everything! By Brigette Hyacinth
4. Good Bosses Appreciate their Employees! By Brigette Hyacinth
5. All-Woman Delta Team Flew 120 Girls to NASA to Get Them Excited about Aviation By David Williams, CNN
6. Positive Culture is a Major Key to Success By Daniel Haley
7. This Phrase Will Kill your Business By Gavin Dawson
8. Why Employee Experience is Important By Jan Tegze
9. The Iceberg of Ignorance By Frank Zijlstra
10. The Day My Husband Died By Kirsten White

It’s hard to notice any difference between the articles engaging tradespeople and those engaging everyone on LinkedIn. That’s because there is very little difference. Nine of the top 10 articles are the same for tradespeople and for all LinkedIn members.

Lessons for Salespeople

The most engaging articles on LinkedIn go broad. The posts explore concepts — such as empathy and integrity — that virtually any business can put into action. The posts also explore the topic of management; almost every business is looking to make its managers better or hire better managers — most likely both. And the posts dive into the human side of commerce. The posts, for example, tout the power of kindness and positive culture to contribute to the bottom line. As a salesperson, you have to be knowledgeable about your vertical industry, but it can help immeasurably to also be knowledgeable about business in general and also how people respond to positivity.  

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