Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Imagine arriving to a party.
You just want to have fun.
Maybe you want to celebrate.
Your goal is to kick back, relax and have a good time.
As soon as you walk in the front door someone walks up to you and hands you their business card while saying:
“Hi I am John Doe (never mind that a dead guy runs a business). I am a backlink specialist. For $10 I can drop 1000 blog comments which point 1000 backlinks directly to your blog. Reply if you are interested.”
Of course you are not interested; you are there to party. If you feel good, you politely nod and move on. If you feel bad, you may call the guy a douche bag and move on. If you feel really bad, you may call the guy an asshole and ream him a new one with a few choice words before heading off in a huff.
5 minutes later, you come across him again and even looking askance to avert your eyes, the dullard misses the hint. He asks you once again if you are interested or maybe he even asks if you’ve made a decision yet.
At that point you either leave the party in disgust or tell the guy to STFU and trudge forward.
2 minutes later, another guy reaches out to shake your hand as he introduces himself but instead of just the hand, he extends his business card. He has a real game changer called crypto. Or maybe it’s AI? Maybe its trimming canine anal hair with a groundbreaking application letting you give Fido a fade while dodging his dingleberries.
Genuinely enraged, you leave the party instantly.
That party sucks.
It wasn’t even a party.
It was a business pitch fest.
Even worse, you could feel the desperation, the greed and pure egoic manipulation seething through the environment. Nobody had a fun time there. Everything appeared to be an orgy of business pitches, everyone being out for themselves as they stalked, chased, manipulated and basically dehumanized each person they came across.
No genuine human interaction occurred at the “party”.
People simply perceived other people as objects to use to reach business goals.
Like paper towels, if someone did not reply with a “yes” they were tossed in the trash after a single use. Perhaps you checked in a few times for some multi-use, towel action. But if the prospect did not eventually respond favorably they wound up in the trash, too.
Welcome to the average LinkedIn experience for most bloggers.
Why Most Bloggers Do Not Get LinkedIn
Most bloggers do not get LinkedIn because they use the platform to squeeze money out of human beings from an intent of fear.
Blogging from fear influences you to do stupid things that lead to struggles, failure and eventual quitting.
LinkedIn works well for:
- value providers
- genuine chatters
- bloggers who take an authentic interest in people
- generous bloggers
- attraction marketers
For example, someone who shares valuable updates and chats genuinely with targeted users draws traffic, comments and income to their blog through LinkedIn. Wise bloggers drive LinkedIn traffic and income organically by sharing helpful content, building relationships and attracting success.
What Not to Do
I am not singling this individual out because I want to humiliate him; he knows not what he does.
But sharing an explicit example of why most bloggers do not understand LinkedIn may point you in the right direction if you currently make the same mistake.
Note; this scenario unfolded many times for me on LinkedIn over the years.
Someone reached out to me with a LinkedIn Message telling me what I did wrong and what I needed help with on my blog. He proceeded to tell me about the service he offers that filled the exact need I had, since I’d been making a serious blogging mistake over the prior 15 years that he spotted, the stranger on LinkedIn who builds his business by pitching strangers and providing sophisticated consultation services.
He reached out to me two days later to ask if I had made a decision.
I did make a decision at that point: I blocked his profile to prevent him from messaging me anymore.
Of course, the decision he asked me to make was based on:
- the expertise of someone who struggled enough with business to cold pitch utter strangers
- the lack of a tribe, friend network and community to the point of working a job (not a passive business) based on cold pitching strangers your business opportunity by pointing out what they did wrong (based on their expert opinion) and claiming to be the business expert to fill that gaping void
- a follow up cold pitch to someone who had zero interest in his services but with his finger on the block button
Of course, this guy will be kicked off LinkedIn when enough users block him and/or mark his messages and comments as spam.
Then he will need to create a burner account that has even less credibility.
That experience is fun, I am sure; then a faceless avatar with a fictitious name will need to build a business from messages that go directly to spam folders.
LinkedIn Is About Helping People and Chatting Casually with People to Build Relationships
Targeted traffic, blogging income and referral business flow to bloggers who use LinkedIn to:
- help people
- chat casually
- build relationships
I follow:
- the #blogging hashtag
- the #bloggingtips hashtag
- LinkedIn Groups related to blogging
I:
- Like updates
- publish genuine comments in response to updates
- answer blogging questions
- share Blogging From Paradise posts
- share text-only blogging tips
- record and publish videos
on LinkedIn through my profile, LinkedIn Groups and by following the #blogging and #bloggingtips hashtags.
Leading with helpful, free content and helping targeted people by Liking their updates and commenting genuinely on their updates draws interested people to me, my profile and my blog.
People drawn to my blog from LinkedIn may follow my blog, drop a blog comment, buy a blogging course or buy a blogging eBook.
That’s how to succeed on LinkedIn as a blogger.
Conclusion
Be patient, persistent and generous on LinkedIn.
Target people to help by following niche specific hashtags and niche specific groups.
Most bloggers get LinkedIn all wrong because they use it improperly to get business from an intent of fear versus helping targeted people and chatting ’em up from an intent of love, abundance and generosity.
Be helpful and social in the right spots.
Use LinkedIn to drive traffic and income to your blog through your good deeds and genuine chats.
