
1. Send marketing emails without permission
Last week I received an invite to connect with a trainer on LinkedIn. Nothing unusual about that, except that I didn’t know the person. I’m fairly open about connecting with people I don’t know, and have recently got into the good habit of asking them their motivation for connecting with me. I received a message back saying that we probably have complementary skills so worth connecting. So far, so good – but no invite to have a phone call or really kick start the relationship properly. Alarm bells should have started to ring for me here. The next thing I know is I receive marketing from this person inviting me to attend an expensive NLP course which they were advertising. At no point in this process of connecting on LinkedIn had I opted into their marketing list. After sending a message to the trainer explaining why I was disconnecting from them on LinkedIn, I then disconnected. When you connect with someone on LinkedIn, you do so with an openness and willingness to start a relationship, NOT to become just a name on a mailing list.2. Send inappropriate messages about events via LinkedIn
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been sent e-mails about LinkedIn events. Mostly this isn’t a problem, but there are times when I feel that I’ve just become another name on a mailing list. 3. Post “sales messages” to groups
Many poorly-moderated groups quickly become filled with discussions that are primarily sales messages, which quickly devalue the quality of the posts in the group. Recruiters (my apologies if you personally don’t do this) are renowned for posting up adverts for jobs in groups. Don’t do this – use the jobs part of the group if you want to do it. Unless the group has been set up as an open trading point, don’t post up advertising for your group. If you do post up a blog post, make sure it is actually valuable content rather than a thinly disguised advert for your business.4. Put all your tweets through your Linkedin status
Twitter is not LinkedIn and LinkedIn is not Twitter. Got it? But more importantly, if I’m seeing all your tweets on LinkedIn, the chances are that I’m missing out on other people’s LinkedIn status updates, and even more importantly, am only seeing one side of the conversation.5. Excessive and regularly auto-tweet on twitter
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