At the time, I experimented. After a few months, I realised Twitter was OK but not something I wanted to spend a lot of time on, whereas I liked that FB at least showed posts for a bit longer than a few seconds. It was useful to read about others who were saying most people ended up preferring one over the other - it's just what works for you.
Since then, FB has changed the way it works to the point I almost can't be bothered because of all the sales stuff that ends up in my feed. Very soon, FB is going to start making itself irrelevant.
I continued with my blogs and websites - I'd set things up there that also mostly worked for me. And I reviewed LinkedIn and decided to use it more, setting up a better profile and entering more information so anyone searching for me about my editing and writing services would find me.
So what has gone "wrong" with LinkedIn? I am getting more and more requests to connect from people I have never heard of, who are in industries that have no connection to writing and editing and books whatsoever. Recently I've had requests from people who only use their first names, again with no connection to my work areas at all. That's so far from being professional, I don't where to start with it!
From the small information I've been able to glean (by wasting time looking at profiles), all of the people who ask to connect for no obvious reason are one of the following:
a) they want to sell me something (and anyone who I connect with who immediately sends me a message wanting to promote something to me has their message deleted)
b) they think I can be useful for something but I can't see what
c) it's about connecting for other reasons (like "romance") - before you think I'm paranoid, I can tell you I have now deleted FB Messenger on my phone after trying it twice and being spammed by males wanting to hook up.
I also have to say that I can't see the point of connecting to writers from the USA and UK whom I have never heard of, and who clearly have no idea who I am or what I do. We're unlikely to connect any other way, so more and more I am deleting their requests (and again, often if I say yes, I get a message asking me to buy their book).
I think there are good things about LinkedIn - it sends me jobs I might be interested in (even though I'm not really looking ... yet), and it allows me to have a CV on my page that may lead to work opportunities. But saying yes, willy-nilly, to all requests, defeats the purpose of it, I think.
What do you think? What's your experience of LinkedIn been?
2 comments:
You make some very relevant points, especially for someone with the author occupation. My social media experience probably parallels yours chronologically. I'm not an editor, so I'm not looking for that kind of work. Linked In just provides another PR window for my speaking and workshop activities. They seemed to keep changing their access to add news or articles and that's frustrating. Twitter is the most useful for me as long as there's a relevant visual to a book launch or cover and a link back to my website. Hashtags save time.Facebook is mainly photos and just ongoing author profile. G+ has a wider reach for search engines so titles matter. Since all self employed solo practitioners are short of time, we all need to update our social media periodically. I've scrapped my newsletter, only blog on high profile hosts and have taken the e-shop off my site. My major complaint is being flooded on my phone with bitcom and other irrelevant emails and I'd like advice on how to stop these. The difficulty for an author is juggling being accessible with brand PR and being swamped with administrivia,
Thanks for your comments, Hazel - you make some great points. Yes, we do get swamped by the administrivia, don't we? And trying to be our own marketers just gets exhausting. I am about to hassle my ISP about the amount of spam I am getting. I use their "spam marker" function but it never seems to make any difference!
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