"This belongs on Facebook!"

I wanted to write about something that is very topical at the moment. I am sure you have all been witness to the various posts on LinkedIn – “solve this equation”, “name a country beginning with ‘A’”, “99% of people cannot solve this”, and so on and so on.

Whether or not you take a laid back approach to this or fume at the very mention of something that doesn’t appear to be professional, there is no doubt we all have an opinion. I have largely let posts go by and not been baited enough to comment. However, one time I couldn’t ignore it.

It was about three months ago and I spotted a post with a picture of a US Marine that had fought in Afghanistan. Sadly, the Marine was killed in action and the LinkedIn user that had posted it was asking to “honour his memory” by liking the post. On its own it was a respectable post and fair enough it was sharing the memory of someone who gave their life for what they believed in. However, the image of the Marine was not the same person as the LinkedIn user said it was. It was a Marine that had passed away two years before. From my point of view, I couldn’t resist but make a firm (but polite) comment that the user should either get the information right, or take it down or do something that doesn’t dishonour either Marine’s memory.

You could say that by simply posting the picture whether it was the right person or not, was still telling a story to the world and therefore honouring their lives. However, this LinkedIn user’s recent activity was full of similar posts, with similar inaccuracies. So why do some people post such images, or maths puzzles, or quiz questions?

Get more LinkedIn profile views

Unfortunately, this can be the case. The more people that like your post, the more visible you are to the LinkedIn community. This can be gold to some people in their profession. However, please do not suggest for one minute that I am angry at people doing this. I work in a sales role and would love to get a post to go viral, but I do try and not cross the ‘professional line’ when posting. Perhaps you remember the boy who beat cancer posting? That was something I did like the first time I saw the post. However, over the next year or so there were numerous users posting the same picture asking for a like. Personally, it did dilute the achievement somewhat but more worryingly it shows a timeline where a user has 1) seen and/or liked the original post of the boy, 2) copied the image, and 3) posted it for themselves in order to get the 1m likes. Have they done this to truly share the boy’s courageous story? Or to share their own ‘courageous’ LinkedIn profile. I will let you decide.

Who is worse? The people that post, or the people that comment?

You cannot help what some people will post, and as it is a free-willed networking site it means you shouldn’t. So is there any point in posting the comment “this belongs on Facebook”? Will it do anything? Probably not. If anything you will make the post more visible to people in your network and thus compound any effort made to get rid of it. I do understand it is easy to ‘bite’ on these things, and as with my story above about the US Marine this proved the case. Following my comment, I received some really irate and largely obtuse responses?stating that I was the bad guy for not being patriotic enough (which was missing the point completely but hey ho). I won’t go into too much detail but I am sure you can use your imagination. I didn’t respond, I wasn’t going to get dragged into something I couldn’t get out of.

There is also a self-righteous attitude portrayed to people who do comment. Even without mentioning the war of words that will ensue as a result of commenting, it doesn’t help anyone. So if you do see ‘repeat offenders’ of posting heretic nonsense, remove them or block them if it makes you that wound up.?

Is anyone really to blame?

Should we really find someone to blame for this? Should we find someone to blame because, well, that’s what we are good at doing?! Should we not be surprised that an online networking community that mirrors mainstream social media sites such as Facebook or Twitter is slowly morphing into them? Someone once said that a human’s thirst to be recognised (or in this case ‘liked’) is what drives us. LinkedIn is the perfect portal to demonstrate this, so all this fallout cannot be a massive surprise. We also have things called ‘ego’s’ and this means that there is a need for recognition from our peers.

The irony of this post is that I am writing to share with my LinkedIn community and because I want to highlight a very relevant issue. Perhaps also to open up dialogue with other members of the LinkedIn community to share thoughts as well. However, if by posting this article leads me to receive 1,000+ likes and shares and profile views, then so much for the better :)

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Michael Chapman is a Founder and MD at Sydney Brookes, specialists in Sales Recruitment. Contact Mike for a confidential discussion about your recruitment needs if you are a client, or to discuss new sales opportunities if you are a candidate.