Don’t boast too much. Although LinkedIn was primarily built as a business networking tool, no one likes to see you constantly talking about yourself or your company. Every now and then is OK. Like other “social” sites, sharing interesting information you’ve found is appreciated – even if you didn’t write it yourself. And don’t forget to credit your source.
Don’t overdo your status updates. Your status updates appear in the newsfeed of all your connections, so if you constantly add status updates through the day, it’s going to annoy those who are regularly on LinkedIn. My personal recommendation would be a maximum of three per day – spaced out over time. Try using the Buffer App to schedule your updates if necessary.
Don’t add ALL your tweets to your LinkedIn status update. If you share all your tweets on LinkedIn during the day, we get back to my point about over-sharing updates and it will irritate your connections. Secondly, many tweets will contain people’s Twitter handles, or hashtags: this might irritate people. Having said that, LinkedIn can pick up ‘@’ handles and link them to Twitter profiles, while hashtags may show up in LinkedIn searches, which can be quite handy. However, my advice is to make an effort to customise what you’d like to say on LinkedIn to encourage engagement and sharing.
Don’t post links or your updates to every single group you belong to. Think about what you are posting and decide which groups would be interested in what you have to say or joining in a discussion. Warning: many groups don’t like members posting links to other blogs/websites. It comes across as a promotion masquerading as discussion. Some prefer pure discussions/questions. Have a read of the group rules to make sure what you are posting is appropriate.
Don’t forget to check your spelling and grammar. Think of Twitter as a “cocktail party” and LinkedIn as a business conference and customise your messages accordingly. On LinkedIn, you are expected to use good grammar and not make spelling mistakes. And using “u”, “r” or “gr8” doesn’t cut it. You can get away with this a little on Twitter because of the character limit, but trust me – you will be “professionally” judged on LinkedIn.
Don’t believe all LinkedIn recommendations. Seriously, at the best of times, LinkedIn recommendations are dodgy. To quote Firebrand CEO Greg Savage in a post he wrote on LinkedIn: “How can we possibly take LinkedIn recommendations seriously when they are mostly solicited, reciprocal, and worst of all, self-published! If you don’t like what they say, even in nuance, you don’t approve it.” Savage says recommendations tend to be a “tit-for-tat recommendation love-in” — simply reciprocal requests. If you’re doing a reference check on someone, don’t go by their LinkedIn recommendations; call their referees instead and ask all the right questions.
Don’t add a connection’s email address to your email database without asking permission. Just because they agree to connect with you, it doesn’t mean they want to receive your email marketing. They will report you and your company as a spammer. Likewise, don’t treat LinkedIn as an email database and email your connections every bit of news you can think of. They will remove you as a connection.
Carolyn Hyams is the global marketing director for Firebrand Talent Search, responsible for Firebrand’s brand strategy and execution in the UK, Europe and Asia-Pacific.
This article first appeared at Firebrand Ideas Ignition.
