Do You Ever Get the LinkedIn Blues?

If you ever find LinkedIn frustrating or annoying, if you suffer from time to time from the LinkedIn blues, be sure you are not alone.

Successive surveys in the USA about how much various companies are liked or disliked have found that among some 40 sampled industries, social media companies come consistently in the lower third of likeability. Yes, below banks and cell phone companies!

And get this: LinkedIn is the least liked of the social media companies.

Here are some of the things about LinkedIn that make people cranky:

  • too many unwanted connection requests
  • it’s laborious and hard to use
  • being swamped with spam and useless updates
  • lack of privacy
  • endorsements by people who don’t really know us
  • finding somehow you have multiple profiles
  • the spam in LinkedIn Groups
  • help is slow and often not really helpful

Can you relate to any of those? I bet you can. I know I can!

And there’s another problem with LinkedIn. It’s pretty boring when you get down to it. It’s not sexy. It’s not fun, whereas Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and others can be great fun as well as valuable tools for business building.

So Why Bother?

The basic reason for using LinkedIn is that, for many aspects of business and career-building, it’s the only game in town.

To put that more formally, With its 770 million registered members in over 200 countries, and with 24 languages, LinkedIn is the leading social media platform for business professionals worldwide, especially in the business-to-business (B2B) sector.

Unlike many other social networking sites, where the objective seems to be one of getting the maximum possible number of people signed up, LinkedIn has been from the outset a specialized, business networking site aimed at attracting and connecting professional people.

It is much more a business site than a social site, although in recent times there have been more social elements introduced.

Because LinkedIn is structured as a business contact and referral site and has powerful search tools, it is a logical place to be when you want people to know about your services or products.

It has also become a professional publishing site, with dramatically expanded scope for you to promote your brand and expertise.

So for many of us, even if we don’t love LinkedIn, and even if some of us hate it, there is not a real option of ignoring it.

And so we use it effectively and don’t let ourselves get the LinkedIn blues too often, we need to be smart about how we use the platform. And we need to get serious – because as I said above, it’s not a fun platform.

Getting Serious

Here’s the thing.

LinkedIn works best for people who take it seriously, are consistent in using it, and don’t let themselves get distracted and cranky about the things they don’t like.

II you’re open to the idea of getting serious about using LinkedIn to grow your business or career, I can help you.

De-Mystifying and Empowering

Because I know how valuable LinkedIn can be for businesses and also know how difficult the platform can be to use effectively, I’m passionate about demystifying LinkedIn for business professionals, most of whom don’t have the time or patience to sort through all the complexities of the platform.

It’s not boasting, just a fact that I have the knowledge, experience and skill to explain the basics in plain language and then provide a strategy to help business people become comfortable and capable in using LinkedIn to grow their businesses.

Over many years I’ve given presentations on social media and especially LinkedIn, to business groups, technology specialists, and Chambers of Commerce.

I co-authored the first book ever published on LinkedIn, the best-selling, two edition, recruiters’ guide LinkedIn for Recruiting. Over the past fourteen years, virtually since LinkedIn started, I’ve managed groups dedicated to using LinkedIn more effectively. I was the founding manager in 2005 of the LinkedIn Bloggers Group on Yahoo! Groups, then founder of the bi-annual, not for profit 30 Day Linking Blitz project and the related 30 Day Linking Blitz Group, which later became the Linking Business Professionals Group on LinkedIn.

I’ve actually lost count of the number of LinkedIn presentations, webinars and trainings.

In my presentations and LinkedIn coaching I share simple but powerful techniques and “insider” knowledge, free of hype and jargon, to help you get to grips quickly with making LinkedIn work for you. Those techniques and knowledge include:

  • Optimising your LinkedIn Profile for search results that convert to business
  • How to build your professional LinkedIn network strategically (Hint: most don’t)
  • How to get great Recommendations to improve your authority on LinkedIn
  • Finding your ideal clients locally, regionally, nationally
  • LinkedIn Company page – whether you need it and how you could use it
  • How to choose whether Premium or Basic (free) membership is right for you
  • Using LinkedIn Groups and authorship to grow your connections and influence
  • Turning LinkedIn into a powerful market research tool through Advanced Search

A Short List of LinkedIn Services

  • LinkedIn keynote or panel membership
  • LinkedIn profile makeover
  • Personal LinkedIn strategy
  • Corporate workshops

What Others Say

Over the years I have known Des he has always impressed me with his down-to-earth style and genuine desire to help others. I recently had the great pleasure of partnering with Des at a Brand Slam event and was further impressed by his depth of knowledge and understanding of the nuances of LinkedIn. If you get the opportunity to attend an event where Des is speaking or training then go for it, because what you learn from Des will totally clarify how you can use this impressive on-line marketing tool to build and develop a very strong personal brand for yourself.
Lauren Clemett    Gold Coast, Australia
Personal Branding Specialist | Neurobranding Speaker | Best Selling Author