Don’t Use LinkedIn – Funny and Sad at the Same Time

ostrich with it's head buried in the sand

Mic Johnson wrote a funny blog article titled “20 Reasons Why Your Business Should NOT be on LinkedIn.” I almost fell out of my chair laughing and then realized he had nailed it –  most companies are resisting or ignoring using new tools, such as LinkedIn. It is the number one business networking and referral tool in existence. It just keeps building in importance.

Are you being a ostrich when it comes to using LinkedIn?

This resistance unfortunately allows your competitors to gain a strategic advantage over you in attracting talent, sales, marketing, lead generation and nurturing, and customer service. These tools are here to stay and the more effective and efficient companies are implementing them through-out their business. The real interesting element of social media is that it levels the playing field for entrepreneurial companies and small businesses to do things that traditionally only a large company with lots of resources could do in the past. Now you can achieve comparable results quicker and easier.

I reprint below the 20 funny reasons why you shouldn’t be on LinkedIn (Mic did a great job in pulling these together):

1. You will take a cold call over a warm, or even hot, call every day of the week. 

2. You think business can only be done face-to-face even though relationship building (isn’t that what business is all about?) happens every single day online. 

3. You believe that you (and your employees) 30% complete profile with no summary, no picture and zero recommendations doesn’t reflect poorly on you or your business.

4. You don’t have time to spend a couple of hours on LinkedIn each week to research prospects because you are too busy doing the same sales techniques you’ve used your entire career. 

5. You don’t want to participate in forums that make you or your business look like subject matter experts in your industry.

6. You don’t want to read blog articles and stories from people in your professional network that may help you or your business.

7. You don’t want to take the time to give recommendations to people that you’ve worked with throughout your career that are awesome because there isn’t anything in it for you.

8. When customers or prospects search for you on LinkedIn, you want to make sure they can’t find you. And if they do, you want to make sure that your personal profile and company page don’t tell them anything of value. 

9. You know for a fact that none of the 150 million people on LinkedIn are your customers or prospects.

10. You know that LinkedIn is adding 2 people every second (up from 1 person a second a year ago) but those people probably won’t ever want to buy anything anyway. 

11. You don’t want to share your personal and professional brand with people because that would be bragging. Even though they want to know. Everyone knows that, in business, it’s always better to not give people what they want.

12. You don’t want to know more about people that you are doing business with or would like to do business with.

13. You believe, with all of your heart, that there is no value in keeping up with what is going on in your professional network (such as new business deals, new hires, new products and services, etc.).

14. You have all the business you will ever need and aren’t interested in generating more.

15. You prefer to limit your prospecting and sales activity to the two networking groups you belong to and the five coffees and lunches you try to set up each week.

16. You don’t see any value in updating your LinkedIn status regularly to tell your professional network about things that may help them. 

17. You think tools like LinkedIn aren’t fundamentally changing the way business is done.

18. You don’t want your employees spending time on a tool that can help enhance your brand, your reach, and open up the lines of communication. 

19. You don’t want to find talented people to work for you or get recommendations from people that they are connected to on LinkedIn. A two-page resume and a 1-hour interview give you all you need to make a $50,000 decision. 

20. You think you’ve done your job on LinkedIn by having an “ok” profile “just so you’re out there” and see nothing wrong with having a LinkedIn inbox full of invitations and messages you haven’t responded to.

 

Here’s my personal example of what LinkedIn has meant to me: LinkedIn has allowed me to expand my executive search practice to new clients by at least 30% over the last 3 years, during tough economic times, and at the same time reduce my costs of conducting a search by 50%. This means I can offer my clients better service, at a substantially reduced fee, while my profit increases, and my efficiency improves at a geometric rate. There are thousands of these examples for every imaginable type of business.

After you laugh or cry when you read these 20 reasons of why you shouldn’t be on LinkedIn, I’d like to consider when you’re going to put a plan in place to integrate the tool in the day-to-day aspects of doing business – in almost every function in your company. One of the greatest ROIs can come from recruiting better talent. Start there, and then expand it into sales, marketing, customer service, and employee engagement.

What’s your biggest hurdle/roadblock in not doing this immediately?

To read Mic’s full article, please click the link below:

20 Reasons Why Your Business Should NOT be on LinkedIn

Barry Deutsch

About the Author

Barry Deutsch is a founding Partner of IMPACT Hiring Solutions, co-author of "You're NOT the Person I Hired", and "This is NOT the Position I Accepted". Barry is an award-winning international speaker, retained executive recruiter, and expert on hiring and retaining top talent, and executive job search.

Comments

  1. Thanks for the kind words and your support, Barry!

  2. Mic is my son and I’m very proud of him. Thank you for noticing one of his many talents.
    Sincerely, Beverly

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