Stop F**king Up LinkedIn | Get Fact Up #96

Transcript

Chris: Hello world! Chris Hogan coming to you live from MeMedia studio here at Burleigh Heads for episode 96 of 'Get Fact Up'. And today there is a explicit words warning, okay.

Something's happened to me this week, and I know I'm not alone in this situation. And I have the absolute need to share/rant and–here you go.

So the title is 'stop fucking up LinkedIn' people, stop it, okay.

Now I know that's not all of you, but there're many of you that are going to share my sentiment here.

So this week, just to frame, it I've had nine inbound connection requests, which is good I suppose. And every one of those connection requests has been a pitch–a sales pitch–straight off the bat. So I'm gonna start with–I'm just going to highlight three. Okay that should be enough. I don't need to go through all nine and send you sleep, but let's start with number three.

Patrick actually reaches out to me he says, 'hi Chris, I can see you're passionate about what you do and would like to invite you to connect with me and share my connections. If there's anyone you're interested in meeting, let me know so I can help. Regards, Patrick.'

Beautiful! On its own, you would think that is absolutely, you know, a nice way to do an intro. And look, he wants to help me–he wants to connect with new people. Fantastic, that's what good networkers do, right?

But straight away–connection–and, you know, I accepted this connection request, and then boom! In my LinkedIn message inbox I get the, 'hi Chris, thanks for accepting. I appreciate, you know, having you in my professional network. Then there comes–basically–one, two, three, four, five, six–six paragraphs of everything about him.

There is a question in there, but to be honest–you know–we'll talk about that in a second.

And then, basically, I'm out.

If anyone sends me one of those messages with six paragraphs–one question in it, and it's all about them, obviously heavily weighted about them–I'm out. I'm done. You've absolutely screwed up your relationship and your reputation with me.

First impressions count. You're out. So, not to mention, he sends another one.

Patrick says, 'hi Chris, this is–what–a week later. Haven't heard back from you in a while, it tells me one of two things:

1) you've already chosen a different company for this, or–

2) you're still interested, but haven't had the time to get back to me yet.'

Okay, you know what? Sometimes these softer messages can actually be really helpful because I can just go 'boom one' or boom two'.

You know what? We are all very busy people, but in the context of–I guess–the relationship that we've had. With, you know, Patrick and I having developed over three messages. It's been all about him. The majority has been heavily weighted about him.

Now, if you haven't learned anything in sales, then the number one thing that you need to learn is, 'build a relationship, never sell on first interaction'. Never.

And, 'why do we have two ears and one mouth? It's so that we listen twice as much as we speak.'

When you listen to somebody speaking, don't just use that opportunity as soon as they have a break in conversation, then start talking about yourself.

That clearly shows that you do not give a crap about me and what I just told you about.

All you were doing was waiting for a break in conversation.

So, you could have the chance to tell me about your life problems, or your sales problems.

So, let's let's look at 'direct connection requests: fail number two'. Working backwards here.

Deb says, 'hi Chris, I can see you're passionate about what you do, and I would like to invite you to connect with me and share my connections. If there's anyone you're interested in meeting, let me know so I can help. Regards, Deb.'

Whoever heard that before? Oh, that's right–that came from Patrick. Oh, hang on a minute. Oh, there's something going on here. Bit of a cookie-cutter approach, do you think?

Oh why's that? Oh that's the corners of the internet to help you create leads–build leads–for you.

And they're all using cookie-cutter approaches. So, how is this going to help me, and make me want to use LinkedIn? If I'm getting all of these inbound messages–all cookie-cutter approaches–am I going to even want to stay on this network?

The answer is pretty clear, isn't it?

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight paragraphs in her message–inbound message–straight after the connection.

And there was one question in there, but obviously she was just waiting for her opportunity to speak, so that essentially, you know, it could be all about her. And then the follow-up message is 'I wasn't sure whether you received my message below. If you are concerned that old-school bookkeeping is putting your business at risk, we need to talk.

Again, it's all about her. I do not care–no one cares–about your business. Why? Because you haven't shown that you give a crap about mine, okay. You haven't done any research.

So let's go on to 'direct connection requests: fail number one' now. This is my absolute favourite. This is pure gold. And Jason says, 'I came across your profile and noticed we both have mutual interests. I loved love to connect if you're open to it. Thanks in advance, Jason.'

You know what? Great! He's done–he's actually looked at some of my activity. Oh boy, oh wow, he's showing he really cares. That's really nice. That's cool, I'm getting noticed. He's stroking my ego. Beautiful–nice one Jason.

Straightaway connection. No problems Jason–nice to meet–nice to connect with you.

You know, that's my sentiment. But no message back to him I haven't sent anything back–and bam!

'Hey Chris, I just had a little deep dive into your profile and noticed you were doing e-commerce,'–okay, yes, looking through my previous thoughts. And then he's going in to the sales pitch.

One, two, three, four, five, six paragraphs–all about how he's got all these proven–you know–methods on–you know–increasing sales and guaranteed money back. All this sort of stuff. Sell sell sell. Clearly his own cookie-cutter message approach to actually connecting with people.

And how is he doing this? Well, there is such a thing as LinkedIn sales navigator that's–you know–being pushed very hard by LinkedIn at the moment, albeit, everyone can sign up for a minimal amount per month, and they be they can become their own lead generation–you know–experts and use their cookie-cutter approaches to gather more leads on LinkedIn.

Guess what? You're fucking LinkedIn up.

LinkedIn–you're fucking it up too, by allowing everybody to do this.

So yeah, guess what? I'm starting to opt out of LinkedIn, and more and more people are doing that. So I hope you're listening.

So I just write back, 'I've had enough by this stage, this is the ninth one this week. For a second there I thought'–this is what I said–'for a second there, I thought you actually had done your research and then I read your cookie-cutter copy. So sick of these bullshit intros.'

And then his helms back, 'ah come on man we all have hundreds of lead generations–doesn't mean I ain't going to pay proper attention when we chat. I apologise if this upset you dude.'

You know–he's using soft language–friendly language. That's really nice of him, but you know, mate, you've already screwed up the relationship. You can't back(track) now–no–first impressions count, right?

And anyway, he goes on and he appreciates my frustration, but basically, he's an agency. I expected him to be better than these cookie-cutter approaches.

So peeps, if you're gonna use LinkedIn–simple thing–simple tasks to do–is to actually do some research on people's activity, their bio, what the content they've been writing is, what they've been commenting on. And maybe actually reach out based on those things–produce some content. Absolutely make sure your content on your profile is awesome and you are going to have a much better time on LinkedIn.

If you're like me, tell the people who are putting out these bullshit cookie-cutter copy intros–what you think. And let's clean up LinkedIn together. And LinkedIn, maybe you need to do some work yourselves.

Thanks for watching. Sorry for the rant.

I'm, Chris Hogan from MeMedia.

We're a content marketing agency that absolutely cares about how your reputation is online. You can contact us on memedia.com.au and check out the rest of 'Get Fact Up'.

Cheers for listening.