3 Things You Are Doing Wildly Wrong on LinkedIn

LinkedIn has become a powerful tool for job seekers and networkers alike. If you told me 10 years ago there would be one source you could look up almost anything on anybody in business, I would have taken out my wallet so fast there would be fire burns on my fingers. Bottom line – you need to be on LinkedIn in order to be as successful as possible.

At the same time, too many of you are making basic mistakes. Avoid these three glaring errors to maximize your use of this great platform.

Shirtless Selfies

Apparently, some people think this is a dating site, because I’ve seen several executives use a shirtless selfie as their profile picture. Look, whether you are male or female, it’s nice you are proud of your physique, but a shirtless selfie on LinkedIn is not the place to show it off. Save that for Tinder.

Over-Humblebragging

Anytime you start a number of updates or posts with, “For the past three years, it’s been an honor to lead my team to the best sales in the company’s history….,” just stop. Clearly, you are humblebragging about how great you are.

Do it enough, and you might get the LinkedIn Over-Humblebragging Award of the Month, which you would probably also post about, telling us how humbled and honored you are.

LION

LION stand for LinkedIn Open Networker. It’s a moniker for people who basically accept any invitation from others seeking to connect. True LION’s have 20,000 or 30,000 contacts, limited only by LinkedIn’s connection ceiling.

Hey, it’s great you want to meet and greet everyone in the world. But the chances of productive interaction with that many people are around zero. Would you invite them all to your wedding? Well, maybe you would, but you are going to need a much bigger hall, like maybe Dodger Stadium.