By now many people are figuring out that LinkedIn is, or at least could be, the most powerful prospecting tool to come along in quite a while for the world of B2B.
It won’t stay that way if people don’t stop trying to screw it up! It is a powerful tool for developing relationships online that can be taken offline at the appropriate time for a more conventional selling process.
LinkedIn has done a pretty fair job (although a bit Draconian at times) of trying to shut down spamming loopholes, etc. to protect the tool from abuse and thus keep the decision makers of the B2B world as engaged, active members. I just think we should help them out a bit.
Below are a few of the things that I believe will be the eventual death of active participation on LinkedIn if they continue to be practices that appear more and more frequently.
- Invite and Sell- This practice of asking someone to connect just so you can immediately start trying to sell them something is totally missing the point. Here is a tip to those of you that think this is a good idea- IT ISN’T and I will go out of my way to AVOID doing business with you if you apply that tactic. There is obviously a time and a place for sincere sales conversations but it isn't within the first hour of making a connection! There is an easy fix from the standpoint of only accepting invitations from people you know reasonably well but that practice takes away from the long term value of the tool as a way to build online relationships.
- Fake Personas- You know who you are. Creating fake profiles, with fake pictures, is about as low a tactic as there is. STOP IT! I can’t imagine it is working from a business perspective and you are screwing things up for the rest of us. The LinkedIn Police are already onto you and actively trying to shut this down but just do us all a favor and self destruct.
- Confusing LinkedIn for Facebook- Please stop it with the puzzles, math problems, politics, etc. In my humble opinion LinkedIn is a perfect platform for sharing business related posts, updates, and related shares that add value to the target professional community represented by your connections. Once again, this is an easy fix as you can turn off the newsfeed from people that post silly things but why not just stop doing it?
I am sure there are more "annoyances" I could come up with but that is my rant for now. This is admittedly only one man’s opinion and in the immortal words of comedian Dennis Miller “I could be wrong” but at least I feel better by venting.
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