'Thrilled to Announce' Is Killing Your LinkedIn

Three words. You've typed them. We all have.

Thrilled to announce.

And the moment your reader sees them, something happens behind their eyes. A little shutter comes down. They know — before they've read a single word more — exactly what's coming. A new job. A funding round. A panel you sat on. A badge, a milestone, a journey. And they know it'll arrive in the same packaging as the four hundred posts that opened the same way this week.

So they scroll. Because you've just told them, in three words, that there's nothing here worth slowing down for.

The crime isn't that it's corny. The crime is what it signals. It says: I had nothing of my own to say, so I reached for the phrase everyone reaches for. It's a costume. And the trouble with a costume is that everyone's wearing the same one.

You know the whole wardrobe by now. Thrilled to announce. Humbled and honoured. Delighted to share. Beyond excited. Couldn't be prouder. So grateful for this incredible journey. The single-line paragraphs, stacked like a ransom note. The one-word sentences. For emphasis. The "Agree?" The "Thoughts?" The "Let that sink in." The comment-the-word-BELOW-and-I'll-DM-you-the-guide. Synergy. Leverage. Value-add. Circle back. Move the needle.

None of it means anything. That's the whole point. It's language that's been handled so many times it's worn completely smooth — no edges, no grip, no information left on it. Your eye runs straight over the top and absorbs precisely nothing.

And here's why it matters, beyond the cringe.

A brand's only real job is to be recognisably itself. To sound like nobody else in the room. The entire game is distinctiveness. So when you open with the exact words ten thousand other people opened with this morning, you've done the one thing a brand genuinely cannot afford. You've made yourself interchangeable. You've handed back the only asset that was ever truly yours — your voice.

You didn't sound professional. You sounded like everyone. Which, on LinkedIn, is the same as sounding like no one.

I understand why people do it. It feels safe. Nobody was ever hauled into a meeting for sounding like a press release. The corporate voice is armour — it can't be wrong, because it doesn't actually say anything. You can hide an entire career inside "excited about the journey ahead."

But safe and invisible are the same outcome. The post nobody objects to is the post nobody remembers.

So here's the alternative. It costs nothing.

Write it the way you'd say it. Out loud. To one real person, across a table, pint in hand. If you wouldn't tell your mate you were "humbled and honoured," don't type it at them either.

Start with the thing. Not the throat-clearing — the thing. "I got the job" beats "thrilled to announce I've joined." "We lost the pitch, and here's the one thing I'd do differently" beats anything with the word learnings in it.

Have a point of view. Risk being slightly wrong. A post that somebody disagrees with is worth a hundred that everybody nods along to and forgets before lunch.

And cut your first sentence. Almost every time, the real opening is the second one. The first was just you clearing your throat in public.

LinkedIn isn't broken. It's just drowning in people who decided that sounding like a brand meant sounding like a brochure.

The ones who cut through aren't the slickest. They're the ones who sound like an actual human being who actually had something to say.

Be one of those.

And never, ever, be thrilled to announce anything again.