Following the steps of Instagram and Facebook, LinkedIn allows us to share glimpses of our work life in 20-second-long videos and photos with LinkedIn Stories. The stories on LinkedIn may be longer, but they do lack most of our beloved tools for creating stories – polls, location tags, question boxes, filters, etc. So what can we post? Everything. Well, maybe not literally.
Some things are better kept away from your LinkedIn Stories and I made a list with 3 of the most alluring deadly sins.
I admit I was indeed going for the catchy title. To be honest, none of those “sins” will send you to LinkedIn Purgatory, but you may provoke eyebrow rise or concerns amongst your connections if you’re not careful. Especially with swipe-up links rolling out this week.
Sin 1: Sharing inappropriate content
LinkedIn implied some very strict rules against bullying, abuse and inappropriate content, but this is not what this sin is about.
One of the key things we need to understand and remember about LinkedIn Stories is not to treat them like Facebook or Instagram stories. Keeping that in mind, your LinkedIn profile is maybe not the best place to post how cute your dog is or how artsy your brunch looks. Not that people would hate it, we all love cute puppies, but you won’t score many points with a potential recruiter or а future partner.
The goal of a LinkedIn Story is to start a “lightweight conversation related to your work-life”, so unless it is a dog you have in your office or a brunch with a client or your team, maybe keep the content out of LinkedIn.
Sin 2: Oversharing – posting way too much
Lynn Taylor, the author of “Tame Your Terrible Office Tyrant: How to Manage Childish Boss Behavior and Thrive in Your Job”, advises users to consider LinkedIn and the content here “as a living résumé or a living business card”. You don’t just go around, passing one to everyone every time you enter a room. That would be very inappropriate. Then why would you post 10 pictures one after another on your LinkedIn Stories?
Now there is a difference between posting seemingly random photos or videos from your day every two hours and posting 5 or more connected Stories to give value or make a point. Harvard Business Review recently did the latter with a series of Stories about the 5 questions you should ask when starting a new job and they were awesome!
Posting too much makes people think you may be a bit too greedy for attention or even worse – make them wonder when you find time to work.
ProTip: If you genuinely love and want to share many things on LinkedIn, divide them info different formats. Be creative!
Sin 3: Promoting only yourself, your brand, your products
To use a social platform without its values and its audience, is like wearing a three-piece suit to a garden party – “We see you just fine, but you missed the mark”. LinkedIn is a platform where professionals come together to cooperate and to share not just their brand, products and achievements, but also inspiring examples from others.
Sharing only “Me!”-oriented content is boring for your audience and would also make you look self-absorbed.
Thank you for reading this article! Feel free to share some of the LinkedIn sins you consider “deadly”.
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