I don’t have any quantitative data to prove or disprove my
hypothesis that a vast user base of linkedin
don’t get it. They don’t understand the purpose of linkedin and how to use it
effectively. Let me try and list out the major annoyance that affect me.
- Confusing linkedin and social networking sites like facebook
Maybe in some industries the distinction between
social networking and professional networking is blurred but it is certainly
not in my industry and I would assume most of my network. Posts on politics, sports etc. really have no
place on linkedin. I would go one step further and say that is downright annoying. The problem is that if one
your connections “likes” the post, it comes up in the news feed. It is not a very big job to unfollow the
perpetrator but then what is the purpose of being connected?
- Cryptic “I would like to add you to my professional network”.
This actually belongs as cardinal sin one.
Now if I don’t know you why would I want to add you to my network unless I know
something about how this connection would be beneficial to me. If you are
trying to tap my network, you are not going to succeed since this is hidden. I
initially used to not add anyone I didn’t know personally but had to abandon
this after realizing that I forget names of people who resurface after years
and decades. Now there is no algorithm to decide which invitations to accept
and which ones to reject and it is quite random.
Glancing through this post a bit, I thought this is a good
excuse to start cleaning up the connection list and removing people I personally
don’t know but had to abandon this planned action seeing the amount of work
involved.
So how does one use linkedin in way to get benefit. ?
I don’t fully don’t know the answer to this one. I find the
noise to signal ratio just to high.
My rough cut estimate is that 10-20% of my connection list
post something of interest to me. So what works now is that as I am glancing
through my connection list, I just unfollow the remaining 80% as when I see
some posts. Another technique is to use
tags constructively. I add a tag as soon
as I add a connection. I have not yet found out what to do which this tagged
information but assume it will help me at a later date.
If anyone reads this post and can comment on how they use
linkedin effectively and get some benefit out of it – it would be appreciated.
