LinkedIn Dirty Little Secrets.
As an earlier adopter and loyal (paying) LinkedIn fan I believe that in general LinkedIn has their act together. They have offered a wonderful venue for professional networking never before seen. I am extremely active with this tool and will continue to be so. With that said, however, there are a couple of penalty items that can cripple how you work with LinkedIn that for the life of me I can’t figure out why LinkedIn does them.
Secret #1
In an effort to grow my connections I thought I would selectively invite members from a local LinkedIn group that I have been with for a while. Makes sense right? Basic Networking 101. As it turns out this is a real problem for LinkedIn.
In fairness to LinkedIn they do tell you to only except invitations from those that you know. What they don’t tell you is if your invitee clicks on “I don’t know this person” you’re penalized severely. If they had clicked the archive button instead there would not have been a problem. No one knows this however.
If 5 people say they don’t know you, LinkedIn blacklists you, and you can no longer invite people by name.
After three invitees chose “I don’t know you”, unaware, I tried to invite someone new. A message pops up that says I am about to lose my name invite privileges. What the…
After doing some research I find that once blacklisted you have pretty much just two choices:
- Ask the folks to invite you back that clicked “I don’t know you”. Yeah like that’s going to happen. Right?
- Beg LinkedIn for mercy.
One of LinkedIn’s tag lines is “Discover inside connections when you’re looking for a job or new business opportunity.” LinkedIn should add …as long as you already know them, which we understand is not really discovering anything, or we’re going to penalize you. Pretty disappointing.
Secret #2
I have been an active participant in LinkedIn’s groups for years. Many times being considered a top contributor with loads of productive comments and discussions upon submitting a question or one of my articles. I have never spammed any group. So this (see below) came as a big surprise.
The above warning simply appeared and came with no warning or email from the “offended group” to me personally. As it turns out all the group manager had to do was flag my contribution to LinkedIn. And they do this anonymously. Now I have to get permission on all my other groups to post anything. Even those that have me marked as a top contributor. Insane.
The real issue here is I have no idea what I did or how to correct it. I have been put in their penalty box as they monitor my activity going forward. Again disappointing.
Chris Lott
Chris has over 15 year’s Sales Management experience including Business Ownership, Product Management and Web Design/Marketing. He’s a national sales team strategist and trainer. Chris is the designer of the popular totallysales™ sales playbook with thousands of copies downloaded. He’s a nationally syndicated author with his articles on SalesBlog! rated as a “top must-read” on consultative selling.
I no longer archived people because, after several months in the archive, LinkedIn sends you the list of people for your approval with no option of continuing the Archive. You either have to approve individuals or DNKT.
I have never received this list. Interesting.
Insightful article, Chris. Lately, LinkedIn is becoming more and more like facebook, at least judging from the comments and posts they allow, mostly political. I am also a paying customer, but I’ve wondering whether it’s worth it. Having said that, i agree with you about groups so i guess I’ll stay.
Chris, what I seee as strange is the different “standards”, between their on line and app based, systems. Have found various disrepancys on how they operate
I REALLY have to question the power of LinkedIn as a social force. I joined, just to sort of see what it was about but rarely login or find much use for the network itself. With so many other social sites ( I am becoming a big fan of tumblr) to choose from I guess I've just come to expect more. Probably my biggest peeve with LinkedIn is that you have to "know" someone to invite them into your network; it's like well if you already know them it's not REALLY growing your network much is it?
Who knows, maybe that's changed since I was last on there (a few months now), but isn't the whole point of having these networks to network? 🙂
Good post, thanks for outing another of their nasty little hidden policies that likely many weren't aware of!
Linkedin has made some changes which help… The whole "power" of this resource is their groups in my opinion. Great comment… Thanks!
I've found that joining the maximum number of groups (I think it is 50) allows me to meet new people and ask them to link with me.
Carolyn you are exactly right. LinkedIn groups are a great way to get new connections without the worry of IDKs.