I’m seeing a disturbing trend of late: people using LinkedIn to blatantly self-promote and hawk their wares.
It started with a trickle: An occasional e-mail suggesting I might be interested in a Webinar, a conference, or a book. Then it progressed to group owners sending regular “updates” (yes, you can ask click off “allow group manager to send me an e-mail”–but should you really have to?). Now it seems at least once a week someone’s offering me something I can’t refuse. Oh, but I can.
It’s rare that I delink from someone, but it’s happened occasionally. The first time was a person who decided to use my contacts as their personal prospecting list. The most recent was someone whose response to my polite query to take me off their LinkedIn e-mail list was “this comes through LI. In order to stop them disconnect me from your list.” (By the way, you can target your lists if you want to.)
Do We Need to Rethink Our Connections?
Like many people, my use of LinkedIn has shifted over time. Where I once linked only to people I knew personally, I’m now connecting to people I interact with on other social networks, have met at a conference, or with whom I otherwise have a “weaker” starting connection. Perhaps because these connections are weak, some people don’t mind adopting a scattershot approach to promoting their business.
What’s been your experience?
Photo by Ray MacLean (Flickr).
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How can you accomplish anything unless people know what you are trying to do?.Face it. It can be as local as a conversation with a neighbor but a lot of people are not comfortable with those types of conversations. Similarly I am sure we all know people who are so full of their own sense of self-importance that all they can do is talk about themselves even though they have little to say that really has any merit..Self-promotion requires that we perform a balancing act.
Mohamed–You make a great point that we all have to toot our own horns to be heard. But, as you so correctly point out, how and where we have these conversations is equally important. I love your line that “self-promotion requires that we perform a balancing act.” It does indeed.