My colleague is complaining about people swamping his LinkedIn feed with too many updates. He showed me his screen and two people posted five pieces each before lunchtime. The worst part is the content wasn’t even that good – you can forgive excessive posting of great content, but you can’t forgive salesy, irrelevant content right? Apparently this is not the first time these particular connections have done this and he’s feeling extremely annoyed, talking about de-friending them. I don’t blame him, because for one, these connections are not thinking about their ‘customer’ – the people on the receiving end of these posts. Their very own LinkedIn community.
As a rule of thumb, when people ask me “how often should I post on LinkedIn?” I always suggest three pieces of content across a day is maximum, and I mean across the whole day – breakfast, lunch and before you go home for the day. Twitter, knock yourself out, share away, but please, heed this rule for LinkedIn. Also consistency is vital on social media. This means that if you are consistently posting three times a day, your community won’t get annoyed if you find one more great piece of amazing content you’ve just got to share right NOW. Ten pieces, 15 pieces, no, too much my friends!
Of course, you don’t have to post three times a day. In one conversation I had with a very senior VP, he told me he posts once a month and that is enough for him. It all depends on who you are, what you want to achieve, and where you are in your career cycle. I like to share, no, I love to share, but I am very very aware of not overwhelming my community on LinkedIn. So I try to stick to the three posts a day rule – my own rule. It also makes me think more about what I post – a bit of self-censorship I suppose, which means I’m only sharing the best stuff.
But let’s face it, we’re all different, and social media participation is all about finding your own way, and while I hate rules, being aware of the negative impact of excessive sharing is something to think about. Seriously, all you have to do is put yourself in the shoes of your community. You might have 1,000s of carefully collected connections. Awesome. But not everyone does. So if you’re posting more often than three times, the chances are your connections jump on LinkedIn and all they see is your face. That’s not good for you. Really, it’s not.
So please, stop my colleague moaning and contain your sharing enthusiasm. It’s good for your personal branding goals and it’s good for the rest of us too 🙂
There are other annoyances on LinkedIn – like people connecting and then immediately pitching me, which drives me nuts. Or the requests for romantic relationships, which amuses me more than anything else. But that’s for another day.
Does this get one of these?
What annoys the hell out of you?
Cheers
Andrea
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This post originally appeared on LinkedIn.