As an earlier adopter and loyal (paying) LinkedIn fan I believe that in general LinkedIn has their act together. They have offered a wonderful venue for professional networking never before seen. I am extremely active with this tool and will continue to be so. With that said, however, there are a couple of penalty items that can cripple how you work with LinkedIn that for the life of me I can’t figure out why LinkedIn does them.
LinkedIn is a lot of different things to a lot of different users. Arguably the most powerful place to make connections with business owners, executives, decision makers, recruiters, job seekers and the like. With more than 610 million users, many of whom are executives and decision makers, it is a very powerful but congested venue for building relationships and credibility. This is where having a basic understanding of LinkedIn SEO is very useful.
I’m cruising along thinking things are going well when a call comes into my office. “Chris, can you come see me”. Entering my bosses office I can immediately sense this is not going to be a normal meeting. I am right. After the “you have been laid-off” statement my mind went numb. Wow, I did not see that coming. They didn’t replace my position and I received a wonderful letter of recommendation but reality was sinking in fast. I was unemployed and job hunting sucks.
You’ve finally built a relationship with a potential customer and are getting pretty chummy. Thinking a social media customer connection is a great next step you start in with… “Hey let’s connect” you say. “Great!, LinkedIn?” says the customer. “No, I was thinking Facebook networking.” you blurt out. Silence [cricket noise]. Things just got awkward. Why?