The news this morning of LinkedIn’s alleged password breach seemed like a good endpoint for a two-month experiment I’ve performed on LinkedIn. I’ve had a LinkedIn profile for several years, but it wasn’t providing much value to me. I’d log in every few months, accept the connection requests from folks that I knew, and log out. I occasionally dipped into some groups but found them mostly cesspools of spamlike things.
Yet I kept hearing how LinkedIn was a big important social network.
Surely, someone must be getting value from it.
Time for an Experiment
After chatting with some others whom are knowledgeable both with social media in general and also specifically for photographers, I decided I’d change my LinkedIn practices for a couple months. Starting in mid-March, I logged into LinkedIn almost daily. I requested to join about a dozen groups (a mix of photography, marketing, and local topics). My theory was that perhaps I would gain a lot more value from LinkedIn if I were an active participant.
Once I got accepted to the groups, I started participating. I would answer questions where I could provide insight and I posed the occasional question. I continued to accept connection requests, which continued to be about 50% people that I knew and about 50% random overseas spam.
The various groups I belonged to, even ones affiliated with reputable organizations that extend far beyond LinkedIn (such as the Professional Photographers of America), were about half spam and promotional posts. The signal-to-noise ratio was very low.
Frankly, the only group that provided interesting discussions was the Marketing Over Coffee group that accompanies Christoper S. Penn and John Wall’s venture.
Over the past week, I’d been debating whether there was any value to continue participating on LinkedIn.
Should I Stay or Should I Go?
It doesn’t make sense to spend significant amounts of time on something that isn’t providing a meaningful return on that investment of time.
It’s tempting to simply delete my LinkedIn account. I don’t believe that I’ve ever met a future client, secured a deal, or fostered any sort of meaningful relationship on LinkedIn.
Should I go back to a stale presence, where the only thing I do is build connections? Perhaps I can continue to check in on the Marketing Over Coffee group. As someone who often writes and speaks about social media, it is probably wise to maintain a shell presence there even if it’s not providing much actual value…
How do you decide when to dump a social network that’s not living up to expectations?
I’ve had the same basic result there… the only groups I’m a part of that seem to be very active are dominated by one or two people, and the majority of their posts are very self-serving/spammy. I’ve found the service useful enough for making contact with people, but the discussion groups have been poo.
In short, I’m underwhelmed. I don’t see so much spam, but for the few sections I actively participate in what I’m mostly seeing is each product vendor sending a representative to shill their wares rather than contribute much to the discussion. Right now it’s only useful to my company and our vendor relationship (long story) for me to be there, it’s utterly useless for me personally.
I like having the online resume in a known location (vs. a personal web site), and it’s a good way for me to find former coworkers who might be interested in work, or to see posts of new opportunities. One downside of that is when candidates I interview want to connect before they have the job – I get that the person is showing interest, initiative, etc., but I’m fairly protective of my list of contacts and keep it trimmed to only people I know or have actually worked with. The social part of LinkedIn, where folks post thoughts, articles and such, for some reason really annoys me and I rarely if ever pay attention to that.
I did have the most bizarre social media experience there yet: A security group that I was a member of (emphasis on “was”) was run by a guy who apparently found religion during his tenure as group admin, and out of the blue started broadcasting messages of hate to westerners. He adopted a new name and began sending out messages of condemnation to the group (around 5k users at the time). At first it seemed like a hoax, and maybe it was, but I didn’t stick around to find out. He seemed to know people in the group as he attacked them personally. Pretty weird.
Forgot to mention: I also keep my personal social media separate for the most part from purely business, and find that many of the people I’d like to connect with professionally do the same. LinkedIn provides a natural division for that, and an easy way to find former coworkers on the basis of company, industry, etc.
I have a LinkedIn profile now for several years, work as a self employed consultant and use the LinkedIn site more or less as my personal website. I take part in several groups, closely related to the field I work in, and do not encounter much spam there. For me LinkedIn is a valuable resource of keeping in contact I once worked with or who work in the same fields of interests I do. But I also only let people into my network that I really know ;-). You see, I am more positive about LinkedIn than you are.