Here is a valuable update on LinkedIn, courtesy of Mic Johnson, relevant to all interested in social media strategy and social media marketing. See below for our brief comment (and go to the LinkedIn ‘Tag’).
20 reasons your business should not be on LinkedIn
2. You think you can only do business face-to-face, even though people build relationships online all the time. (Isn’t business about relationships?)
3. You don’t think your incomplete profile reflects poorly on you or your business.
4. You don’t have time to spend a couple of hours a week on LinkedIn to research prospects because you’re too busy doing the same sales techniques you used throughout your career.
5. You don’t want to participate in forums that make you or your business look like an expert.
6. You don’t want to read articles from people in your professional network that may help you or your business.
7. You don’t want to take the time to recommend former co-workers because there isn’t anything in it for you.
8. You want to make sure customers can’t find you when they search for you on LinkedIn. And if they do, you don’t want them to find anything of value on your personal or company profile.
9. You know for a fact that none of the 150 million LinkedIn members are your customers or potential customers.
10. You know two people join LinkedIn every second, but those people probably won’t want to buy anything from you.
11. You don’t want to share your personal and professional brand with people, even though they want to know about it. Everyone knows it’s always better to not give people what they want in business.
12. You don’t want to know more about the people you do business with or would like to do business with.
13. You believe there is no value in keeping up with your professional network, especially regarding new business deals, hires, products and services.
14. You have all the business you will ever need and aren’t interested in getting any more.
15. You prefer to limit your sales activity to the two networking groups you belong to and the five coffees and lunches you attend each week.
16. You don’t see any value in updating your LinkedIn status to tell the people in your professional network things that may help them.
17. You think tools like LinkedIn can’t fundamentally change the way people do business.
18. You don’t want your employees to spend time on a tool that can enhance your brand and open up the lines of communication.
19. You don’t want to find talented people to work for you, nor do you want to receive anyone’s recommendations of them. A two-page resume and a one-hour interview give you all you need to make a $50,000 decision.
20. You think it’s OK to have a mediocre profile “just so you’re out there,” and see nothing wrong with having an inbox full of invitations and messages you haven’t responded to.
Mic Johnson is a social media and business coach at Blue Gurus. This article first appeared onBlueGurus.com.
Our comment: As followers will know, we (like so many others) are still working out how to optimise our use of LinkedIn, but we use it every day, sometimes to check out clients or colleagues, sometimes to pass on ideas we think might be useful, mostly to learn from the contributions by others more expert than ourselves. It is the business person’s Facebook. As the Virtual Landscape becomes more complex, and time becomes more precious, many people are finding that choosing a couple of channels (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, etc) that suit their personal needs is the best use of precious time.
