We get a lot of questions in our office about the appropriate use of
LinkedIn is an insanely powerful engine not just for networking, but for collaboration and personal expression as well.
Now that every LinkedIn user can publish blog posts on LinkedIn, you have a tremendous new opportunity to grow your thought leadership flame and connect with other people who see the world the way you do.
What a lot of people forget is that although there are over 300 million LinkedIn users, LinkedIn is still a community. In any community, it's important to be respectful of our fellow community members.
People forget to do that on LinkedIn sometimes.
In fairness to anyone who has made a mistake in their LinkedIn etiquette, the LinkedIn site does a horrible job of letting users know how to use its features. It's not only the polite-use-of-LinkedIn guidelines that are left to each user's imagination.
Virtually no instruction on how to use LinkedIn is published on LinkedIn itself, a bewildering lapse that I cannot help but think correlates to the very large number of users who create a LinkedIn profile and then never return.
Why should those poor, confused users return? They took a lot of time to create a profile, and nothing happened. They thought their LinkedIn profile was going to bring in recruiters and job offers on its own. We cannot blame them for that misunderstanding.
They don't know how or why to use LinkedIn's features, because LinkedIn gives almost them no guidance on either topic.
You can meet fascinating people, get business or life ideas, share your thoughts in a blog post, get inspiration or get a new job or client using LinkedIn. At the same time, you can inadvertently trash your professional reputation and brand yourself as a badly-brought-up person on LinkedIn.
That's the wrong way to use the site!
Here are eight ways to be rude and unprofessional on LinkedIn. Take care not to make these mistakes!
Eight Ways to Be Rude and Unprofessional on LinkedIn
Misrepresent Yourself
Several times a week we hear from unhappy business leaders and owners who ask us "What can I do about a former employee of mine who is misrepresenting what he did in my company, and casting me and my business in an unflattering light?" We have to tell them "Chalk it up to experience and be very careful whom you hire."
People can say pretty much whatever they want in their LinkedIn profiles, and that makes sense -- how could LinkedIn possibly verify the accuracy of the information people type into their profile pages? There is a reporting function here if you want to try it.
In my experience, skeevy people soon give away their skeeviness to anyone they meet, so your best bet if someone misrepresents their work with you (whether as an employee, co-worker or client) is to forget it and move on.
Be sure you're not exaggerating your credentials or misrepresenting yourself on LinkedIn, too!
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A headhunter friend of ours, Mickey, told us that he regularly calls prospective candidates on the phone after spotting their LinkedIn profiles. Once in a while as Mickey talks with candidate, he realizes that almost nothing the job-seeker says about his or her background is accurate.
Why lie? People are going to find out what you know and what you don't, so why not tell your human story and let the people who are interested in meeting the real you do just that?
Misuse LinkedIn's Features
The folks at LinkedIn make a huge amount of their functionality free to anyone. The more you dig into the honestly amazing capabilities that LinkedIn provides for its users, the more impressive they are. That's why I advise you not to take advantage of LinkedIn's come-one-come-all philosophy by misusing the site's features.
You're not supposed to put your phone number or email address, for instance, in your headline field. I understand why LinkedIn has that rule. What if every LinkedIn headline field said "Call Now for Best Re-fi Rates!" or "Store Closing Sale THIS WEEKEND ONLY!"?
Spam People
It's easy to spam people using LinkedIn. Once you are connected to them you can pelt them with unwanted, cheezy marketing pitches. I always feel a rush of pity for a person whose marketing strategy is to assault their friends' and acquaintances' LinkedIn inboxes with sales pitches.
Don't spam people using LinkedIn. It will hurt your reputation and accomplish nothing except make your friends snip you as a first-degree connection. Sending broadcast marketing communications to your connections' LinkedIn inboxes is a crass and repellent activity.
It is critical to remember that you and your LinkedIn shadow don't have separate reputations. You are one person. Your integrity is at stake.
Add Them to Your Newsletter Mailing List
When someone connects to you on LinkedIn it's a great thing, but it doesn't mean that you also have permission to add them to your newsletter subscriber list. That is a separate request. You can send a quick email message (right through LinkedIn, since you are first-degree connections, or via email) to say
Dear Sarah,
Thanks for accepting my LinkedIn invitation. I'm honored to be part of your network. Please let me know how I can help you reach your goals!
I have a question for you. May I have your permission to send you my monthly newsletter? In the newsletter, I write about the latest developments in the zircon-encrusted tweezer industry.
If that sort of thing is not your cup of tea, I'll understand completely.
Thanks and have a great day Sarah,
Marcus
Send Them Your Latest Blog Post
It is a wonderful thing, as I mentioned earlier, that every LinkedIn user can write articles, fiction, poetry or whatever he or she likes and publish it on LinkedIn. It's a very exciting thing -- to share our stories and observations with people all over the world and grow our understanding of one another.
It's a great way to share ideas and meet wonderful people. People have had individual blogs for years, but every blogger was separate, like an island. Bloggers had to build their audiences all by themselves, for the most part. It's hard to be a blogger, much less one with a following.
LinkedIn essentially eradicated that problem for bloggers. Bloggers, your audience is already here! Three hundred million people use LinkedIn. You want to talk about an audience?
Now that you're excited about blogging on LinkedIn, here's a quick tip from Auntie Liz. Do not make a habit of sending each of your LinkedIn connections a private email message when you post something new. It's lovely that you've written something new and everyone is beyond overjoyed for you, but if someone follows your blog on LinkedIn, then LinkedIn has already sent that person a message about your new post.
That's how it works when you Follow a LinkedIn blogger.
Connect with People to Invade Their Networks
Rhea told us "I have always been very careful about which people I connected to on LinkedIn. That's why I was shocked when first one and then another of my connections, which is to say friends, started to send me introduction requests right away, immediately after we joined our networks.
"I'm not talking about one introduction request apiece but rather four, five, six of them in a rapid-fire barrage on my inbox. I think people don't know how to use their networks."
Of course Rhea is right. People don't know how to network. When we become fearful -- for instance, during a job search - it's easy to forget that relationships mean much more than leads and introductions.
We tend to focus on transactional things when we are stressed and freaked out, and no one could blame us for that.
Still, it's not appropriate to ask a friend for instant LinkedIn introductions, especially immediately after they accepted your connection invitation.
It's impolite. The better thing to do is to talk to your friend on the phone or in person and fill them in on your job search.
Ask them whether they would be comfortable thinking about anyone they know who'd be a good person for you to meet.
That's their choice. It's rude to join someone's network and then start hitting up their friends for introductions without first asking permission.
That's what you'll do. You'll ask "Would you be comfortable introducing me to anyone that you think might be a good person for me to meet?"
Your friend, of course, will be able to think of lots of people for you to meet if you are already polite, thoughtful, fun, well-spoken and focused on relationships rather than on turning your friends into means to an end.
Steal Introductions
We just talked about new LinkedIn connections sending volleys of introduction requests. That's a bad thing to do.
A much worse thing to do is not to waste time with the introduction request, and jump right over your new connection to reach out to his or her first-degree connections directly.
It happened to our friend Darragh.
"A guy I used to work with sent me a LinkedIn invitation," he said. "The guy's name is Will. I accepted Will's invitation and I started composing an email message to him to hear about what he's up to, but then I got distracted with something.
"My teammate asked me a question and we got into a discussion. About fours later I got a phone call from an old friend of mine, a former boss from ten years ago. His name is Kurt. Kurt said 'Who is this guy Will that just called me?"
"I was trying to figure out what Kurt meant, and then it hit me. I'd just accepted Will's LinkedIn invitation. I had that open email message to Will half-composed on my screen. Will had called Kurt and said 'Yeah, you and I are both friends of Darragh, and he suggested I call you.' No joke.
"Then another woman I worked with said the same thing. Will called her too, and told her that I told him to call her. She was completely confused. I was glad she called me."
This is called introduction-stealing, and it's vile. Take the time to reconnect with the people you know. Take the time to make your connection the key, not the transactions that might spring from that connection.
Forget What Powers LinkedIn, and Every Community
If you ever want to read something wonky but interesting look up the term 'tragedy of the commons.' That's the thing where people can't easily share resources because somebody hogs more than their share. That's the simplified version.
It happens in communities. It isn't something that the authorities - LinkedIn in this case - can easily police. How could they? We have to help our fellow community members know how to interact online.
When people use LinkedIn as a spam machine or misuse the resource in other ways, they don't see that they are hurting themselves. They are missing the forest for a one-inch square patch of tree bark.
