- Image by Tojosan via Flickr
Here’s something … to think about: stop importing your Twitter feed into LinkedIn indiscriminately. If LinkedIn is meant for business networking, what do you think these updates (pulled at random) are doing to help your business?
by Chris Brogan
Pet peeve of LinkedIn? This tops the list.
Recent updates to LinkedIn allowed importing Twitter tweets into LinkedIn status updates. Business value of status updates took a plummet.
Updating LinkedIn status required an intentional step until Twitter integration. Enabling dumping of tweets results in requests for help being replaced by retweets, random quotes, and out of context replies.
Relatively harmless? Not to your potential business.
Imagine that client interested in your services finds out you visited a gay bar and they’re staunch conservatives? Worse yet, imagine that reply to @violetblue, the notorious open sex blogger, and there goes Children’s Home client.
It’s not just pollution or spam; those tweets are smack in the face of LinkedIn users visiting your profile. Beyond that, those tweets appear in update emails.
LinkedIn might be more than business and networking contacts to you, for many though it’s exactly that, a place to find like minded folks to connect and do business with. Most are not interested in your non-work habits more than on a cursory level. This exposure to more could be a turn off.
Risked as well is brand damage. A brand is more than your resume. Branding yourself requires constant vigilance about how each thing you share in a public form fits in. Maybe folks won’t be offended that you’re a devil worshipper but if that’s not part of your brand or image, perhaps it’s better that come up after they hire you.
A recent incident happened right here in St. Louis where a worker was fired over the discovery she ran an explicit blog. Missouri employment law allows firing an employee without cause. It was an old link via her Twitter profile that got her nailed.
This could happen to you over something much more common place, such as attending demonstrations, speaking out against unions, or supporting abortion.
Transparency isn’t about sharing everything. It’s about being honest and open when it counts, in relationships, be they business or personal.
Go. Unlink Twitter from LinkedIn. Breathe easier.
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Tags: brand, Business networking, Chris Brogan, connection, downside, employment, LinkedIn, Missouri, negatives, sharing, social network, tweet, tweeting, Twitter
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[...] Diluting LinkedIn with Twitter (toddrjordan.com) [...]
[...] I am especally honored that after mentioning this issues to Chris Brogan he wrote a blog post about it. See that post at: http://www.toddrjordan.com/thebroadbrush/2010/05/diluting-linkedin-with-twitter/ [...]
I am so honored that you chose to write this post after I passed on my concerns to you about pushing all twitter over to Linkedin. I will also reference this on my orgional blog about the concern that I share with you ( http://bit.ly/twitter2linkedin ). Well done!
Thanks for your support.
Martin Brossman
I think you nailed it with this article.
Until last week, I never bothered with status updates on LinkedIn. Twitter and Facebook kept me busy enough, and I just don't think that most people would go to LinkedIn when looking for a real estate agent.
However, there was a part of me that worried that I might be ignoring an avenue to reach new clients or to stay in touch with old clients. The change which allows tweets to be pushed to LinkedIn is a good one in my opinion, as long as it is used sparingly. Now that Tweetdeck lets me toggle on the LI account when I write a tweet that would be appropriate for LI, I'm starting to occasionally post here. But since I think the real value I get from Twitter and FB is in interaction, I'm not sure if it will really help me. We'll see.
Thanks David.
LinkedIn may have some years but many are still struggling to make it useful. Why make it more difficult right?
So glad you stopped by.
Great post. The value of LinkedIn for me has definitely dropped since some of my connections have started pushing their Tweets to LinkedIn. In one individual's case, all the tweets are generally business related, but getting 8-10 tweets per day that are of the variety “Hey, a great shout out goes to… for her great post about branding” doesn't really help me or help me help my clients.
Spot on David. What you describe is the very problem area. I'm experiencing the same thing to a limited amount but others are being flooded with those stray tweets.
Thanks for commenting and stopping by.
Thanks for your comment and the visit.
Love that you've developed the discipline to choose and chosen a Twitter client that lets you fine tune your posting.
Martin,
Thanks for stopping by and especially for commenting.
Your feedback and ideas are welcome any time.
Todd
To be honest, I don't see the problem of marrying the two AS LONG AS they are being used sensibly, and the tweets you link to LinkedIn are appropriate.
That's why I have recently started to use the #in hashtag with my Twitter posts; this ensures only the very few business-oriented tweets I make each day (sometimes only one, other days a few more, yet other days none) will appear on my LI profile. Also, I only tweet things I think would be useful or interesting to my LI connections.
That said, I'm still learning how best to make my social-media space a more helpful/pleasant environment for my 'audience'.
Actually, I think that's key: Each networking platform has its own unique purpose, so be aware of what that is and tailor that to the preferences of YOUR specific network.
Alternatively you can just go to your Twitter settings on LinkedIn and select “Share only tweets that contain #in” – it's a pretty straightforward option. Then, you choose which tweets to display on your LinkedIn profile. I find this works pretty well.
It's unfortunate that more folks don't realize each network has it's own best use. Truth is it varies by individual just what best use might be.
In my case cross-posting to LinkedIn status would be very selective, as your seems to be. This makes those updates more useful.
LinkedIn is definitely more passive listening than active. My settings is for daily digest, which allows review and ignore.
Nothing inherently wrong with cross-posting but as with Facebook, folks are still cross-posting many irrelevant items.
Yep. #in works. If it only made folks screen what they send anyway, life would be better. As I mentioned before, there are many out there that don't understand how each network has a different ecosystem and 'best practice' approach to updates and the like.
We could all do better but the ease of increasing noise has just lead to more noise.
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