Stop the Scroll

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Someone’s about to post on LinkedIn, and they spend 45 minutes debating whether the background should be cerulean or cobalt blue. Or maybe abandon ship altogether because the photo isn’t sharp enough to slice through butter. Social media managers are all nodding their heads -- the slowness of the approval process is only matched by the flurry of feedback that has more to do with personal taste than marketing strategy.

Spoiler alert: No one cares—at least, not in the way you think they do.

Here’s the thing about LinkedIn: You’re not trying to win a graphic design award. You’re trying to get someone to stop scrolling and read what you have to say. In the hotel business, nearly every company has blue as one or all of its brand colors. It’s a sea of sapphire, a lagoon of lapis, a downright river of royal. It is important to maintain your brand integrity, but if you’re sitting there tweaking font size on yet another blue graphic, you’re not standing out—you’re blending in.

Blues

Instead of obsessing over perfection, focus on whether your content is giving anyone a reason to pause. Big fonts in unexpected colors? Yes, please. Slightly grainy photo of someone making an unforgettable facial expression? That works too. The secret isn’t perfection; it’s curiosity. If your post is different enough to make someone’s thumb hesitate mid-scroll, you win.

And let’s talk about “low-quality” images for a second. A slightly pixelated picture or a candid snapshot might just scream, “This is real!” in a way that a polished stock photo never could. People connect with people, not perfection. Especially in an industry as visual and competitive as hospitality, authenticity is a breath of fresh air in a room full of overly staged, hyper-edited content. I predict that people will seek out grittier imagery as an antidote to AI oversaturation.

So, next time you’re tempted to scrap a post because it’s not as polished as you’d like, remember this: scroll-stopping isn’t about being pretty; it’s about being bold. Stand out in the sea of blue with something—anything—that’s uniquely you. Because no one ever said, “Wow, I was going to engage with that post, but the kerning was off.”

Apologies to the color blue. It's nothing personal; you are just too popular for your own good.