Really? Buying LinkedIn connections?
Jade Pluck
Head of Business Development | Passionate about the future of our planet & building relationships | Goldman Sachs 10KSB Alumni
I have not written a controversial post before, as I have never felt the need. (Well actually, I almost came close when someone was using LinkedIn to sell a piano and my thought was ‘this is for Facebook!’ but I held off and kept my thoughts to myself.) Anyway, I have now been prompted to, after recently being contacted by a company who have created software to automate actions on LinkedIn. I couldn’t stand this when people did it on Twitter and Facebook but now LinkedIn? I feel a bit sad about this.
I am sure this is not the first company to offer this, however it is the first time I have come across a company which effectively ‘buys’ you connections on LinkedIn.
To me, LinkedIn is a network of people made up of people you know, work with, used to work with, have met, and so on. These people know you and what you do, and therefore your business grows (not quite as simple as that I know, but you get the gist). Your connections should be built over time while building a lasting relationship with key people. And yes, I know that having more connections gets you more exposure, but this is also down to the content you put on LinkedIn and it getting liked and shared.
Do we really want to start automating contact requests on LinkedIn? Automating the visits of “people you may know” to generate quick connections? Do you want to start receiving this type of automated request, generated by a computer programme rather than a real person who has seen what you do and wants to make contact? I am hoping your answer is NO.
(This is of course just my opinion; this may be something that really works for you.)
What are your thoughts on this?
Business Owner at Kathy's Team House Cleaners Service and Management
8yWhen I first signed up for Li I didn’t know much about networking. I battle with my profile for a while before I asked for help. To my surprise, I started to get requests to join. Then, I started to send request too. Before I knew, lots of people were reading my profile and started to get business from my connections. If I try to sell to anyone my services most of the people are turned away, but when they get to read my profile by choice, it’s like magic. Not everyone befriends me and I respect their decision, not everyone can use my services. I think that to buy leads may be a good idea for some business but my business is very personal and people would want to get to know me better before they would want to hire me.
Embedded Franchise Partner @ Franchise-Prospecting
8yYou write: "Do we really want to start automating contact requests on LinkedIn?" Well, it depends upon what you mean by "automating". Here is an article describing a type of automation -- https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-i-rocked-linkedin-1-profile-views-chuck-bankoff In short, the pitch is this: "The more profiles I look at, the more people will look back. The more people who look back at my profile, the more likely I am to connect. The more connections I make, the larger my network and opportunities to do business." Yeah, that is roughly true. So, assuming that the automation here doesn't violate the LinkedIn TOS, would you be better off automating this process instead of manually looking at 250 profiles a day? If you have a good list, you are probably better off doing it manually. But, if you don't, I can see using automation.
English to French Technical Translator
8yThanks for this very enlightening post. I'm very new to LinkedIn and to social networking in general and I'm sure it might actually sound stupid to admit that, but I had no idea such practices existed. As far as I'm concerned, I'm trying to connect with people one at a time by personalizing my requests because what fascinates me is the opportunity it gives me to get to know people I might never have met otherwise and who could teach me so much about things I don't know. I'm aware it might sound naive, but I'm confident (especially when reading the comments on this post) that there really are people on LinkedIn who are not only thinking in terms of number of connections, but really of the quality of it. Thanks again!