Unlike Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, LinkedIn is a different animal altogether. Since it is the place where almost all modern professionals are hanging out online, you may want to be extremely careful there. The platform can either make you or break your online presence big time.
Why?
You see, LinkedIn is the place where professionals are establishing their personal branding, hoping to generate leads for them. LinkedIn is the place where professionals wish to monetise their online presence as quickly as possible. LinkedIn is also the place where professionals are working very hard to expand their network beyond their present circles. There’s no other place like LinkedIn.
These are 4 reasons why you should think twice about managing your own LinkedIn presence;
- You’re not sure how to build a personal brand on your own. This is a fact. You are built for something else, but not this. Establishing your personal brand on LinkedIn takes more than just sending out a couple of postings per day. Training, that doesn’t cut it too. A few months back, I was observing from afar several Kuala Lumpur-based professionals registered and went through a 1-day workshop organised by a company, took a nice discussion photo and group photos, paid thousands of dollars for it and came out with two type of results. One, everything was still the same despite attending the workshop. And two, there were improvements but went back to ‘normal’ after losing steam due to lack of stamina.
- You’re not familiar with LinkedIn. You are very familiar with WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram but not LinkedIn. The platform is completely out of your league. You find yourself struggling to learn it. You find it difficult to catch up with the rest as you’re late in the game. End up, your LinkedIn timeline looks exactly like your Facebook.
- You don’t have the time for it. Being one of the important persons in the company, your job is to ensure there are results at the end of the day. You realise that social media is not just a waste of time, but it will stray your attention away from the tasks you’re supposed to deliver. The last thing you need while at work is a distraction. You know that to run a successful presence online in a platform like LinkedIn, it is a full-time job altogether.
- You just have two hands and a brain. Every professional should continue improvising themselves on something they’re good at, and try to counter their set of weaknesses through leveraging. There is only so much that you can do, and the rest you need to leverage out. This how winners keep winning their game.
Sometimes, you don’t need to know everything. You just simply have to find those who know how to play it effectively and be patience while they’re winning it on your behalf.
