LinkedIn – Keep it Professional!
LinkedIn is a place where you may showcase your professional achievements and ambitions. You should be careful about what you write on the site. It’s a great place to share your professional accomplishments and look for new job prospects. Because of this, you should take care to present yourself in the most professional light possible. You don’t want to scare off potential employers or alienate your present ones by writing dubious posts.
15 Things to Stop Doing on LinkedIn Immediately
When it comes to posting information on LinkedIn, here are some guidelines to follow:
- Posting about personal information
- Posting social issues that are irrelevant to job, business & employment
- Confidential information about businesses
- Revealing secrets of a workplace after leaving it
- Endorsing people you cannot vouch for
- Avoid posting controversial content
- Avoid posting any complaints
- Biased opinions and racial remarks
- Avoid spelling mistakes
- Don’t publicize your job search
- Frequent sales pitch posts
- Inappropriate or unprofessional photos
- Tagging irrelevant people in your posts for exposure
- Don’t use abusive language
- Avoid large walls of text
Personal Information
LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site. You may be both social and professional at the same time. No cat memes, no posts about what you ate at lunch (unless it’s relevant to your job), no partying photos, and absolutely no negativity.
When using LinkedIn, do not post personal information such as your phone number or email address, or any other personal information. Many firms will approach you personally if they’re interested in employing you, even if you’re looking for a job on the platform.
You may believe that posting personal information online isn’t a big problem, yet it can be exploited against you. This information can be sold for a profit from a variety of sources. It’s also possible that scammers or spammers could use your email address to send you hazardous links. Another personal data to keep private is your income. Some managers will treat you differently than the rest of the staff if they have access to this information. Additionally, you run the risk of enraging LinkedIn users with lower incomes.
Posting Social Issues That are Irrelevant to Job, Business & Employment
Posting about social issues on Linkedin does not help. Anything that is irrelevant to jobs, business, and employment makes little impact if posted on Linkedin. It simply does not align well with this platform and will pose a bad impact on your connections.
Confidential Information About Businesses
Confidential information generated by a company can only be used, obtained, or held on to by employees while they are employed there. An employee is bound to not share any information about businesses that they don’t want to get public. It creates a bad impression on your connections and may even pose legal issues.
Revealing Secrets of a Workplace After Leaving it
For an employer, the secret of the workplace must be protected and nurtured at all costs even after employees leave. Job switchers who see their jobs as dead-end must not reveal secrets of their workplace on LinkedIn. As is the case with confidential information, secrets of any company are bound to remain within the company. Revealing them with your connections in return makes your connections lose trust in you.
Endorsing People You Cannot Vouch For
LinkedIn endorsements have lost their credibility because users are promoting the abilities of their connections that they can’t verify. This type of reference is referred to as an endorsement. Don’t endorse someone if you’re not sure whether they’re good at something. Refrain from checking a box or doing a favor for someone in the hopes that they would return the favor and recommend you.
Avoid Posting Controversial Content
Remember, LinkedIn is not a place for religious conflicts. There is little interest in debating religion or disputing religious beliefs among most users. People may ignore or ban your postings if you share religious material on LinkedIn since it may be perceived as disrespectful or off-putting by your contacts. You could possibly lose access to your account if you don’t follow these guidelines.
Keep in mind that LinkedIn is a worldwide network. LinkedIn Posts about religion may not be relevant in other nations, so stick to themes that most of your contacts can understand.
Avoid Posting Any Complaints
Posting negative comments about a current or past employer, coworkers, or place of employment is strictly prohibited here. Don’t post negative comments about persons or organizations on LinkedIn. It’s possible that your previous employer was a mess. It’s possible that your old boss is a jerk. However, making a public announcement about it is a bad idea.
On LinkedIn, there is a section for posting nuanced posts regarding less-than-satisfactory employment situations. In some situations, you may be justified in alerting your network to a predatory or toxic work environment. LinkedIn, however, is not the best place to expose or slam a bad boss.
Biased Opinions & Racial Remarks
It’s crucial to remember that when you use LinkedIn, you are representing yourself and your professional brand. To avoid unwanted attention and resentment from your followers, it is essential to avoid posting anything that is contentious.
In the same way that contentious posts about politics or religion might elicit strong reactions and a lot of debate, they can also fail to produce useful dialogue. Additionally, companies will be less inclined to employ you if they discover that you have a history of publishing defamatory material on LinkedIn. Many of the businesses you’re interested in working for may have tight rules about what their workers can and cannot publish online.
Controversial political and social subjects should be avoided in some posts. There are several topics that should never be discussed, including abortion, gun control, and the rights of people with disabilities. Maintain a steady stream of interesting information that demonstrates your uniqueness. A smart place to start is by providing your target audience with useful information and engaging them in meaningful conversation. Try to present an objective and balanced take on the problem instead of taking a strong stance when you feel driven to share an interesting article with your professional network. As a result, the discussion will remain civil and fruitful.
Avoid Spelling Mistakes
Posting something with a spelling error will be deleted. Every time you post something on LinkedIn you double-check to make sure there aren’t any errors. Spelling mistakes might nonetheless tarnish the impression you’re trying to make in an online post or job application. Visitors to your profile may be distracted from your qualifications if you make mistakes like these. Furthermore, you’ll come across as careless if your writing is riddled with obvious typos and grammatical errors.
Don’t Publicize Your Job Search
In the situation that you’re currently working and looking for a new position, you’ll want to keep it quiet. It’s recommended that you keep your job hunt private by turning off “sharing profile edits,” blocking and hiding updates from certain LinkedIn contacts, and checking the box in the job-seeking section next to “Let Recruiters Know You’re Open to Opportunities”.
It’s better to be safe than sorry. You can use LinkedIn to connect with others and look for new opportunities. However, you don’t have to make it very obvious.
Frequent Sales Pitch Posts
Despite the fact that LinkedIn is the ideal platform for B2B, it is most effective when used to build relationships, rather than broadcast sales material. Despite the fact that some firms may be able to make sales directly on the platform, most will need to create connections with clients before they can have a sales conversation, which is generally done offline. Status updates that include adverts or sales pitches are likely to be ignored by your followers and may even harm their perception of your company. Be the first person your ideal clients think of when they need someone to perform what you do by offering value and being the go-to resource for them.
On top of that, LinkedIn sales pitches don’t work; they’re time-consuming and don’t generate many leads. This strategy, even if you manage to convince a few individuals to buy what you’re selling, will likely not be worth the time and effort required to produce a well-crafted LinkedIn article. LinkedIn is a perfect platform to share useful information, so make sure your posts are focused on providing your audience with solutions to their problems. It’s a great method to expand your professional network and produce new sales leads on LinkedIn.
Inappropriate or Unprofessional Photos
LinkedIn is a site for professional networking and relationship building, not a place to brag about your crazy night out. Your work ethic could be tarnished if your social life is documented on camera. Additionally, images of you dressed inappropriately can harm your reputation and prevent you from being recruited. Even if you’re not looking for a new job, it’s a bad idea to post all of your personal images online. Social difficulty and uncomfortable interactions with coworkers can also result from the sharing of suggestive photos. Furthermore, your LinkedIn account may be suspended if you submit inappropriate images that violate the company’s regulations.
Tagging Irrelevant People for Exposure
You can use this method to raise awareness and dialogue by writing articles about famous people or sending a query to someone you know in a comment. However, some LinkedIn users try to boost their postings’ visibility by tagging unrelated persons with large followings in their posts. This is comparable to the practice of ending a post with so many hashtags.
When tagging people, it’s fine to do so as long as the people you’re tagging have a connection to your content. The more people you tag who have nothing to do with what you’re posting, the less valuable your content will be to other readers and the less credible you will appear to them. There’s a chance that the person you’re tagging will untag themself or perhaps remove you from their connections.
Don’t Use Abusive Language
Abusing language and swear words may be your go-to style when chatting with pals, but avoid doing so on professional networking sites like LinkedIn and Facebook. Even if its anti-abuse standards are repeatedly breached, Facebook and Twitter maintain a strict stance. Such posts on LinkedIn could cost you a job or clients in the future.
Avoid Large Walls of Text
If you are posting something, you would want your connections to read it. Make your Linkedin as readable as possible by posting something with an eye toward formatting. You don’t want to make people unforgettable while they are trying to go through that post. It is recommended to leave enough white space and bullets and make it short.
Wrapping Up
Keep Calm and Stay Professional
LinkedIn is a social networking platform that can be useful for individuals wishing to connect with other like-minded individuals. However, there are numerous things you should never post on the site if you want to remain on the right side of professionalism. From personal information to political posts to bad comments about co-workers, you’ll need to avoid these types of posts to prevent possible disasters and preserve a favorable image on LinkedIn.
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