To my fellow esteemed Ladies and Gentleman professionals of LinkedIn,

I write this in haste as this platform is being bastardized by the need for self-gratification.

This post will be about the good, the bad, and the downright despicable posts that “professional” people are using on their LinkedIn.

So what’s the best LinkedIn Marketing Strategy 2019?

If you are posting utter Instagram and Facebook click-bait not related to business, you, sir or madam, are delving into unscrupulous LinkedIn behavior.

Your most bounden and devoted,

Lady Consuela “Connie” Verzon.

What is the Purpose of LinkedIn

This mission of LinkedIn (if you have ever looked at its About Section) is connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful.

It’s vision for us, as users and members, is to create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce.

This means sharing a post of exotic animals cuddling with a teddy bear is not an economic opportunity but a completely unproductive time waster deterring success.

If you think these kinds of posts will grow your business on LinkedIn, you are sorely wrong.

Now, if you are on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, or other soon to be platform put that puff piece(s) there.

These platforms are meant for hours of random fodder.

LinkedIn is for all of us to grow our minds and network.

So, please stop the shiny objects.

LinkedIn Marketing Strategy 2019: Let’s Get Personal

No, I’m not a social media snob.

I have been found somewhat guilty of posting personal items on LinkedIn, but there is a purpose.

Professional speakers usually bring up topics of strategy and working your business, but they will also mention the need for personal time.

In sales, to build relationships, we’ve been trained to go through the FORD questions, Family, Occupation, Recreation, and Dreams.

Finding mutual connections are key fundamentals in human interaction.

But posting online about your child pooping on a potty, or how you are planning a surprise for your spouse is not business commerce.

One of my favorite hobbies is Ballroom Dancing.

It was a challenge, in my opinion, for myself to grow as a person.

It was one of those dreams I had growing up as a child, but circumstances in childhood, lack of support, and disinterest from my former spouse let this dream get away from me.

Posting things where you overcome challenges in your personal life are great inspirations to others.

It is a great LinkedIn profile strategy.

How can one prove they are motivated, determined, and when knocked down, they will come back?

When looking to connect with other professionals on LinkedIn, look for those people who inspire you and will help you grow personally and professionally.

I follow several people I admire on LinkedIn.

I may never get the chance to meet or do business, but their personal stories and how they handle their business gives me the roadmap to grow my business and possible solutions to critical challenges.

The Naughty and Nice List

Delivering a positive message with a lesson should be delivered in a positive, negative, positive sandwich.

So let’s look at some of the people on LinkedIn I admire and post personal yet business-related topics.

Sir Richard Branson is the face of Virgin Group.

I love his back story, his current story with eyes on the future, and would love an invite to one of his islands in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) because one of my favorite spots in the world is Bitter End, Virgin Gorda in the BVI (help a rising entrepreneur out y’all).

He goes personal with some of his posts about his life but they are related and poignant on recognizing the best things he has and how it came to be.

In the connecting blog post, he speaks about the greatest position he ever had is being a father first, grand-dude a close second, then business mogul.

Gold star, Sir Richard.

Let’s look at some not-so-good examples of other real posts of people I follow.

Brace yourselves English teachers, grammar Nazis, and perfectionists – pull out your mark-up red pen.

When creating your LinkedIn marketing strategy, please, oh please, for business promoting and development posts, have a native English speaker and writing specialist review them.

This can be a great challenge in non-English speaking countries and businesses.

But take the time, money, and effort to invest in programs online like Grammarly to attract American or British clients.

In this visual, we can see the need for editing.

The message and call to action (CTA) are incorrect and a run-on thought (no punctuation, so it’s not a sentence).

A preferred and quick way to edit this post is, “Looking for a good digital marketing service? Contact us! We are expert providers in digital marketing services.”

The write up is missing a few incidentals like ‘an’ before affordable, a comma after info, and ‘us’ after contact.

This is what any good copywriter would do.

Think about it this way, if you are touting yourself as a professional marketing company that can create content, words matter.

Get the parts of speech, tone, grammar, and voice correct or it will reflect on the quality of job you’ll do for a customer.

Now, there has been an ongoing laugh about posting food being passé.

In this post, it’s almost there for a business-related topic.

The short video is a sweet story about parents teaching a valuable life skill in both cooking and cleaning.

It’s either cook or clean your clothes, but nothing else regarding how this changed this person’s life.

I question, how is showing the viewer how and what you cook has it improved your life and business?

Tweaking this video or post would make this post more appropriate.

An idea: “Dear Mom and Dad, thank you for making me the gourmet I am today.

You explained to me that balancing life and work was necessary.

My success in the military and being able to eat well and have clean clothes is a testament to the valuable life skills you instilled in me. Thank you.”

This next posting needs no explanation, yet this person gets so many engagements on LinkedIn for nothing related to business, just distraction.

The types of post this person does have to be flagged and removed from LinkedIn to maintain the integrity of the site.

There is not 1 business post in the history of their feed that I can see.

If there is a “Facebook jail” on suspended usage rights for 30 days to violators on that platform, LinkedIn should be doing the same to preserve the mission, vision, and value of their brand.

LinkedIn members will watch this on loop and waste the valuable focus they have on senseless content made for vegetative waiting in a queue on another social media site.

Last of the examples is a simple thank you video after a conference.

This LinkedIn member made a personal connection and business post about her travel and interaction with others.

The off-the-cuff video is humble and grateful, business oriented, and what LinkedIn is all about.

This is a gold star video.

What to Do, What to Do

There are great LinkedIn business strategy, marketing strategy and influencer strategy options out there other than click-bait.

In marketing strategy and sales strategy, be a real person and make connections.

Use the FORD relationship builder I mentioned earlier if you are looking to attract business or receive referrals.

No one likes being sold to, so take the time to ask questions and learn from others.

When you can help solve a problem for someone else, that act of generosity will payback in more referrals.

We all like doing business with people we know, like and trust.

And if you are looking to go straight for the sale, what have you done to earn it?

This attitude is the premise of audience-first marketing.

Think about what is going to be good for the customer, not for you and the business.

Preventing Further Decline

With over 500 million members, only 3 million of us users actually post stuff every week.

It is a very small number relative of the members.

So, this is a very interesting opportunity that drives 50% of click through to websites and blogs.

If LinkedIn allows more and more social trash and unrelated postings on their site, it will be watered down and drown out the possible business traffic this platform wants to promote.

For us daily active users on LinkedIn, we may want to have more monitoring or ability to report posts that are not aligned with the platform.

In the current option for flagging, you can only flag posts that are from fake accounts or offensive.

They ask you to describe the post as either:

Inappropriate for LinkedIn

Fake, Spam or Scam

Other

Under other, the options:

Topic or language is offensive

Pornography or violent

Harassment or threat

Hate Speech

Poster is suicidal

Infringes on my rights

Knowing these options, please fellow users, flag inappropriate posts that do not follow the principle of the platform.

If you want click-bait, visit your other social platforms and vegetate there.

We are on LinkedIn to work and make global commerce a better place.

What ways do you think we can improve the quality of interactions on LinkedIn and protect the business environment it creates?