I’m a fan of LinkedIn. It’s a great networking platform, and really good for staying in touch with people as they move around the place. Also, people tell me the Navigator premium enhancement is worth it for prospecting. Furthermore, I’ve found the LinkedIn Adwords more expensive than Google Adwords but better quality in terms of leads that go somewhere.

I tend to connect with people I either know or have worked with, at least on some level. I generally don’t connect with someone who I’ve never heard of, although I must confess that very occasionally I might try and reach out to someone influential that I don’t know, which I admit is hypocritical.

Then there’s the LinkedIn news feed. That’s another story. It’s hard to see the value of that. The majority of the news feed items are of the Facebook-type, Look-at-me! variety. Most posts come under the heading of:

  • Here I am at this event
  • Here’s a presenter from an event I’m associated directly with
  • Aren’t we great? We just got shortlisted/awarded/commended for this thing
  • Come to my event
  • And so on

There’s very little helpful content along the lines of here’s how to do something, here’s the inside track on something, here’s an introduction to something, here’s a resource you might find useful.

Good marketing is about putting out content that’s useful to the people you’re trying to reach, via a place that you know they hang out in. The direction is pulling interested people to you, not blasting out stuff to people who aren’t interested.

The majority take the me, me, me approach, or the us, us, us approach, when they should be talking you, you, you.