When the world was first introduced to LinkedIn, many people were put off by the idea of how a business social media network could actually become popular in the upcoming of major social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. However, LinkedIn had grown to become extremely popular within the business world as a place where “career-focused people could connect with likeminded people and businesses”. During LinkedIn’s initial popularity, B2B businesses and advertisers had found that LinkedIn was a “different” and more targeted channel for running promotions to other business owners, and in-the-biz users. In the recent years, LinkedIn has become a cesspool of spam, robots, and automated responses that create a real problem for users who want to determine what’s genuine and what’s not.
Over-Automation Lacks A Genuine Approach
Although LinkedIn is not to blame for how users use the platform, users of the platform need to understand how and when to use automation. For those who don’t understand what this automation is, let me clarify. There are automated responses that you can create for each person that you add to your network, and there are automation sequences used to systematically add users to your network. This can increase the size of your network drastically, and can be very useful in many situations. However, when your business is auto-adding hundreds of people every day and flooding them with spam messages like “Hi {insert your name}, we are a company that can help your brand grow. We have checked out your company online. Do you mind if we setup a call with one of our sales representatives?”, you are not only annoying business owners with robotic spam messages, you are ruining the credibility of your company. Companies using this type of automation lack a genuine approach, and their tactics prove they are lazy and are probably selling a garbage product or service.
If you look at the screenshots below, this is my personal LinkedIn profile. On the left screenshot, you’ll see my messages. On the right screenshot, you’ll see a view of what the full message looks like from one of the messages from the left screenshot.
As you can see, no person in their right mind is going to respond to these people, as their over-automation tactics lack any genuine approach and I’ll never give any of these people the time of day because of it.
How Your Business Can Dominate in this Robotic Environment
We are firm believers that in order to succeed you have to be different. Taking a robotic approach to getting leads and new customers is not genuine, and makes your company look lazy and desperate. If you are using LinkedIn to find clients or customers, the best thing you can do is separate yourself by being unique and genuine while in a robotic spam-filled environment. Instead of trying to send 400 messages that are robotic, maybe you send 2-3 genuine messages per day. Before even thinking about sending a message to someone, actually look up their company, read their profile, and do some research. You may find out that they aren’t even anyone you’d like to work with anyways. When you do the research and decide to send them a message, make yourself stand out by using information about their profile or their company that can’t be found just by reading the first three lines of their profile. Be genuine, be engaging, and separate yourself from the crowd. You’re always better with a ‘quality-over-quantity’ approach. You’ll land more business, get more responses, start more conversations, and you’ll be miles away from the crowd.
As digital tools evolve, many companies and users will overuse these tools, which will result in disaster. Remember, developing a business relationship should be genuine and as a close to a personal relationship as possible. We agree that automated business tools can be useful when done in moderation, but this cannot be the foundation of your company’s strategy.
Save the robots for math equations, not for leading your business.
