By Steve Moran
It is unfortunate that LinkedIn has become a bit of a cesspool where members are using spamish tools to blast other users with messages. While I am sympathetic to the reality that everyone is simply trying to get ahead, build their networks, and grow their businesses, I am baffled at how terrible the execution is.
The following is just over a week’s worth of direct messages to me.
This guy’s post is what triggered this article. He wants me to take time to read and respond to his message, and yet he has not bothered to even look at my profile, where he would see this message is not a fit for me at all.
This guy says that he can solve all my problems, simply throwing everything at me. And he presumes that I would be willing, based on this one message, to jump on a call. He does nothing to particularly impress me with his ability to do anything except perhaps send spam.
This one suggests that maybe he looked at my profile but more likely scraped my title from my profile. I actually half know what he is trying to sell.
How does he know what I am interested in?
These are the most frustrating. I have no idea what he wants to collaborate about. It screams sales pitch, even though he intends it to sound different.
Politics?
She is asking me to read this message, the first I have heard from her, where she is promising to make my life perfect by joining something, but she doesn’t tell me what that something is.
Just because I accepted your connection request does not mean I am issuing an RFP for you to sell me something. He also tells me that he can help businesses “like mine” make their phone systems better, which is hard to imagine when we have no phone system.
Last but not least, Kimberly messaged me four times in less than two weeks. I finally responded NO, but I promise she never bothered to actually look at my profile.
Getting It Right
I am not opposed to using LinkedIn DMs to promote products and services when it is done right. The format always looks like this:
- Here is who I am/we are.
- Here is what I am selling, what I would like to talk about.
- A call to action: Can we book a call? Would you be willing to have a conversation?
A couple of good examples:
Amen Steve. It is mind boggling that people who are supposedly selling a product, don’t even bother to do the legwork to determine if the oeople they are reaching out to are actually a fit for their product. A total waste of yours and my time. Thanks.
Casey
You are so right. I get maybe a dozen of these a week.
100% agree Steve! Linked In is a wonderful tool for our industry to collaborate and learn from each other. Yet, the regular occurance of spammy DM’s deters folks from connecting with a wider network, and thus limits learning capacity across our industry.
I normally would not hide the identities of companies but people need to be called out. It is sad these people are abusing relationships.