LinkedIn has gained serious momentum in recent years, with a large section of the professional community abandoning their Facebook and Twitter feeds in favour of the specifically business-focused social media platform. Unfortunately, there are still a great many hopeful businessmen and women hindering their own progress by making these basic LinkedIn faux pas.
Being too keen
If you’re a LinkedIn user, you’ve probably been a victim of this one at some point – someone sends you a connection request, you accept and your inbox is instantly assaulted with an abrupt business proposition. No real introduction, no informal chit chat, no interest in you or your business. Zero to sale in 0.5 seconds.
If this is your approach then you’re unlikely to generate much business, if any at all. Instead all you’re going to do is annoy people and lose a bunch of connections.
Appearing unprofessional
While it’s important to be yourself on LinkedIn, don’t forget that it’s not the same as Facebook. LinkedIn is ‘Facebook for professionals’. In other words, be informal but don’t be unprofessional. A casual profile photo is fine, but a photo of you on a night out with a drink in each hand is probably a bad idea.
Being inconsistent
No matter what platform(s) you’re using, keeping up appearances is generally important across all social media. If you want to build a strong relationship with your connections then regularly posting content is crucial, as is engaging with other people’s content.
Failure to keep up this regular activity can result in you becoming less visible by falling to the bottom of other user’s feeds. And the less visible you are, the less interest you’re going to get from potential leads.
Being careless
Every time you post on LinkedIn, your professional competency is being judged, whether those judging you realise it or not. But it’s not only your knowledge that is being scrutinised; everything down to your spelling and punctuation is being measured.
Of course, there are plenty of highly skilled men and women out there who fall short in the grammar department. If written English isn’t your strongest suit then using assistance software like Grammarly is highly advisable.
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