How to annoy me on LinkedIn

10 comments // Jul 12th, 2010 // Social Media Rants

I got this message on LinkedIn yesterday:

linkedin-spam

I laughed out loud. Got a few laughs on Twitter when I posted it, too. Why? Because I’m pretty positive I’ve got a strong - good or bad - presence online. Google me real quick. I producing content and ranking just fine for my purposes.

So why did I get this message? Because I have “social media” used as a keyword on my LinkedIn profile.

…mmk, so your marketing plan is to target people already ON a social network who are claiming to be experienced IN social media, with the offering of spammy/scammy social media management? Brilliant. Good luck with that. (Though I am still considering hiring the company and paying them with funds I recently acquired from a Nigerian prince.)

Off the top of my head, three other ways to annoy me on LinkedIn:

  1. Send me a message about your GAME CHANGING WEBINAR/EBOOK/EVENT
  2. Send me an invitation to connect with some variation of ***!!#OPEN NETWORKER#!!*** anywhere in your name or title
  3. Include me in a mass distributes question which has NOTHING to do with my professional background

How have people pissed you off in social media lately? Vent in the comments, lovelies.

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10 responses so far, want to say something?

  1. Haley Weaver says:

    I AGREE! THERE’S A WHOLE LOT OF WAYS TO BE ANNOYING ON FACEBOOK TOO. I THINK THE OATMEAL SUMS IT UP WELL-http://theoatmeal.com/comics/facebook_suck
    OH, AND ALL CAPS…THAT’S DEFINITELY ANNOYING :@

    Jul 12, 2010, 1:35 pm
  2. Cheryl says:

    Haha Haley, thank you for illustrating the value of lower-case letters. :)

    Jul 12, 2010, 1:42 pm
  3. Chris Olson says:

    Yes!!! I can relate to your post. I once posted a question on LinkedIn about FBML pages and Facebook. And (in all fairness) I got some really nice, helpful replies. HOWEVER, I had one guy, based overseas, who connected with me. At first, I thought okay, someone who wants to help, also wants to connect, this is great! However, he also found me on facebook and gmail where he constantly kept trying to chat with me and get me to purchase his services. It got to the point where I couldn’t even check my e-mail with him popping up wanting to “chat”.

    It was very annoying.

    Jul 12, 2010, 2:15 pm
  4. Chris Olson says:

    Essentially, he was a virtual stalker.. it was kind of creepy honestly.

    Jul 12, 2010, 2:16 pm
  5. Cheryl says:

    I’m with ya, Chris. In my experience (not to completely degrade the value of LinkedIn or the people I’ve connected with on there), most people who “connect” to be “helpful” on LinkedIn really just want to spam the crap out of you. Sigh!

    Jul 12, 2010, 2:16 pm
  6. Chris Olson says:

    Yeah, I work in the field of internet marketing and graphic design… and one of the biggest pet peeves I have is predatory connections. There are ways that you can market yourself via new media without being a predator.

    Thanks for making a place to vent LOL!

    Jul 12, 2010, 2:23 pm
  7. Phyllis says:

    Cheryl,
    Nice post. I hope whoever sent you the LI message sees it and heeds your helpful advice. Cracks me up that they didn’t even attempt to learn a tiny bit more about you!

    Jul 12, 2010, 3:38 pm
  8. Sara Barton says:

    I hate the spammy DM’s I get in twitter. For example, I was talking to someone yesterday on twitter about iPads and then I got 5 DMs about how I can win a free iPad. And what I really don’t understand is how I can’t DM someone who isn’t following me, but these companies (that I’m not following) can spam me with DM’s. How is this fair??

    Jul 12, 2010, 3:50 pm
  9. Megan Hofmann says:

    Twitter spam DMs. CONSTANT emails about events/books/crap from the same person that has nothing to do with me.
    The Asian, Indian, Albanian, etc spam mail that somehow manages to make it through the filter at work. Oh lots of spammy fake Paypal messages.
    Oh and my favorite are facebook friend requests with the profile pic of some random meat head that doesn’t know me or any of my friends with some message that says, “hey baby, let’s connect.” Classic.

    Jul 12, 2010, 4:00 pm
  10. Ricardo Bueno says:

    Messages like that always seem so dis-ingenuine to me and leads to a quick “ignore”. Personally, I send invitations to folks when I’ve met them at an event and we’ve interacted a little bit. In most cases, I compile photos into an Animoto video and share the event recap with them through my invitation. I can’t begin to tell you how effective that’s been!

    Better approach than this one I can tell you that much…

    Jul 12, 2010, 12:48 am

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