THE 3 BIGGEST SCAMS TO LOOK OUT FOR ON LINKEDIN

Now more than ever, people are falling for some pretty slimy and scammy marketing tactics on social media, and LinkedIn more specifically.

3 big scams are going on right now that you need to be aware of, but also, how can you spot them, so you don't waste your money:

1. The "100s of leads a month" scam:

DO NOT buy into the marketing scam that a company can get you "100s" of monthly leads. This, in my opinion, is the biggest lie.

For those that don't realize it, it is 100% impossible to generate hundreds of leads per month, let alone per week.

You can only send 100 connection requests per week on LinkedIn. With that in mind, you can only send 400 connection requests monthly.

For those who didn't know this, the average acceptance rate of connections sent out on the high end is 35%. So, if you do the math and 35% of the connection requests you send out are accepted, you will have 140 new connections per month.

The other misconception is that people think and are told that a connection is a lead.

That is not true. A new connection is just that, it's a new connection.

So if you break the math down even further, if you are generating on a high end 140 new connections per month, that means 100 out of the 140 agree to a phone call.

That is impossible.

We focus on the quality of the leads generated over the quantity. If you book five new connection calls per week, which breaks down to 20 per month, and close only 20% of those calls booked, you will have four new sales into your business.

That is how it's done.

2. The "20k a month in 3 months" scam:

Now just read that bullet point again. "20k a month starting from scratch in only 12 weeks!"

Sounds bogus, doesn't it? That's because it is. If something sounds too good to be true, that means it typically is. I am seeing more and more of these false promises from "coaches" and "consultants", making these ostentatious statements.

It is a sad and spammy marketing tactic that is robbing many people of their hard-earned money. To grow and scale any business, it takes a few things to have it very profitable:

• Time - years and years of expertise
• A proven product/good/service
• An engaged social media audience
• A viable and healthy email list
• A proper sales funnel
• An optimized website with a great lead magnet
• Testimonials for social proof

.....Just to name a few

For someone to say to you that they can take you from ground zero to $20k per month with non of the above in place is a pure lie.

Taking a shortcut is a one-way ticket to nowhere, but when you can shorten the learning curve properly by understanding you need to have patience and you will fail way more often than you will succeed, you are then on the right path to achieving your monetary and business goals.

3. The "increased LinkedIn engagement" scam:

This topic by itself has always been a trigger for me. I don't understand why people it's best to try and beat the LinkedIn algorithm by getting "forced engagement".

Forced engagement is having a common agreement with a group of people, whether paid or free, to all like and comment on each other's content to drive up the analytics and create more visibility.

But is it worth it?

As Matt Dooley previously stated:

CONS:

"It’s only half the battle:

The posts that get the pod treatment can still be downgraded in that first trial step (if it’s determined to be spam) and the third step (if a LinkedIn “human” decides to diminish its placement).

It’s not always genuine:

The worst pods can act like performance-enhancing steroids, juicing your numbers as an artificial attempt to inflate quality scores. In these cases, pods act like shortcuts for those who do not want to spend the time or resources to give their followers anything useful.

Superficial engagement can hurt your credibility:

A simple comment (for comment’s sake) may not add much value to your LinkedIn community. A comment that says simply?“I agree. Thanks for sharing!”?is akin to all of the Instagram comments you see with flame emojis or?“love this pic!”?with heart emojis. The savvy LinkedIn user can see right through this. So instead of building credibility (with lots of comments), people question your credibility.

It can take a lot of time to do it right?:

If you’re actually going to uphold your end of the bargain, participating in an engagement pod is a serious commitment. Between liking, commenting, and back-and-forth conversations on others’ posts (not to mention your own posts) you have to really weigh the costs and benefits to determine if it’s worth the time commitment.

LinkedIn could react:

The LinkedIn team probably doesn’t love the idea of pods, so there’s a good chance that they will take (or are already taking) measures to diminish the ROI of being part of one. It’s been reported that Facebook hates Instagram pods, and some groups were actually?removed?from the platform. With this in mind, there’s a decent chance LinkedIn takes similar steps to dissuade people from joining pods in bad faith."

Which have you seen most often promoted on LinkedIn or social media in general?