Bye-Bye LinkedIn

What’s this ‘LinkedIn’? Is that like Facebook for old people?

Someecards

I’ve been on LinkedIn since it was in beta. In the early days it really was an online business networking site, but that didn’t last too long. Social media became a numbers game – whoever has the most, wins! And so a new crop of LinkedIn members devoted themselves to gaming the system – connecting with the most people, joining the most groups (this was later capped at 50) ... It’s value as a business networking site quickly became diluted.

Gradually LinkedIn morphed into a quasi-Facebook site full of political commentary and feel good stories. Instead of fulfilling its promise as a business networking site, it became a site of shameless self-promotion. And it became a fertile hunting ground for recruiters who make up the lion share of LinkedIn’s revenue. In addition to recruiters, LinkedIn became very attractive to cybercriminals using fake LinkedIn profiles to connect with legitimate business people; many with access to sensitive information. In fact it’s estimated that LinkedIn has over 35 million fake profiles. LinkedIn does absolutely nothing about this large and growing problem. Over the years I reported fake profiles, with proof that they were fake, to no avail. Remember, it's a numbers game and the more members that LinkedIn has (even if they are fake), the better it looks.

Like it or not, it’s necessary to maintain a LinkedIn profile for credibility purposes, especially if you’re job hunting. Unfortunately LinkedIn’s job board has a very poor relational database; it just spews jobs that have no bearing on the parameters or time frames you select. And none of the jobs posted are exclusive to LinkedIn. They can be found on other sites like Indeed and Workopolis which are much easier to use and have much more effective relational databases.

The death knell for LinkedIn came after the purchase by Microsoft. They immediately changed the user interface and made a cumbersome site now impossible to use. I could collect pension by the time it loads; when it finally loads it doesn’t recognize me and many of the search features that actually had some value no longer exist. I’ve spoken with friends and colleagues who have all had the same experience. If you’re using Chrome apparently there is a work-around to get you back to the original interface but not for any other browser yet (I use Firefox).

All I have to say is Bye-Bye LinkedIn. I’ll leave my profile up but not waste my time on the site anymore. I can do my job hunting on Indeed and Workopolis.

I wish all social media was as non-addictive as LinkedIn.

someecards

Make someone smile today.

Geri

Don’t Get Sucked Into Social Media Hype!

Everyone's like sheep on social media; like, one person starts making noise, and everyone's like, 'Hey, yeah!' and then you got a whole bunch of people making noise at you.

Earl Sweatshirt

It always amazes me when I see headlines like the ones below:

• More than 80% of B2B leads come from LinkedIn

• Become a marketing superstar by generating leads with social media

• Tapping into social media can transform your lead generation

That’s all fine and well but these headlines don’t tell the real story. In fact social media is the least effective way to generate B2B leads. According to www.placester.com this diagram demonstrates the most effective methods for generating B2B leads.

 

                                                                                           

As you can see, social media effectively generates leads 5% of the time. So, LinkedIn accounts for 80% of 5% - Big Whoop! How much time and effort are you wasting on social media platforms when you could actually be devoting your efforts on strategies that may actually work? To add insult to injury there is a whole cottage industry of companies out there who (for a fee of course) will show you how to improve your LinkedIn profile, how to get more LinkedIn connections, etc. Have you been sucked in?

The reality is that social media doesn’t work as a B2B lead generation tool and LinkedIn is still no more than Mecca for recruiters. Would you really have invested your time and effort into attempting to generate leads on LinkedIn if you knew that the headlines were all deceptive and the rate of effectiveness was 80% of 5%?

Speaking of LinkedIn, I came across this article by Robert Hennessey. The study surveyed 200 B2B marketing professionals in the U.S. who were screened based on their experience with various lead generation channels, tactics and metrics. The study was conducted by lead generation technology reviewer Software Advice a Gartner company. Here are the highlights of the study:

• Marketers found trade shows, referral marketing and in-house email marketing to be the best channels for generating large numbers of high-quality leads

• Videos were not only the most-used type of content (used by 92%); they were most commonly cited as producing a very high volume of leads

• Most B2B marketers (79%) use at least 11 different marketing software applications, with 97% using email marketing software

Don’t get sucked into social media hype and don’t be seduced by salacious headlines. Do your homework and make sound business decisions.

Social media has given us this idea that we should all have a posse of friends when in reality, if we have one or two really good friends, we are lucky.

Brene Brown

Make someone smile today.

Geri