I'm Not As Stupid As I Look (Nobody Could Be)

My friend, Hank Barnes, didn't write a #FridayFails today. I hope he doesn't mind my co-opting the #FridayFails hashtag.

Categorize this post as,"I'm not as stupid or gullible as I may look." 

I just got an invitation to connect from someone who claims to be a "LinkedIn Branding & Profile Makeover, B2B Lead Generation & Conversion" expert.  

The invitation said: "Hi David, I just discovered and read your LinkedIn profile. I would like to connect with you on LinkedIn if you are open to it. Let's merge our networks! Thank you and I look forward to knowing you better and building a mutually beneficial relationship." 

First, I am grateful/impressed whenever I get a note in an invitation to connect. 99% of those I get never have a note.  

But that great first impression was short lived. As is my custom, with these types of intros, I looked at the people who had looked at my profile in the past week, she was nowhere to be found, even the small number of anonymous viewers didn't have profiles close to her profile. 

So the very first sentence in this invitation is a lie.

I wondered, "She says she is a LinkedIn Profile/Branding expert, perhaps this is a new 'best practice' in LinkedIn. Maybe I have something I can learn....."

I look at her profile, expecting to see a demonstration of her expertise in her LinkedIn Profiles. The summary, was very long, oddly formatted, basically a "here's what I sell, buy my product," pitch. 

Her current job profile was a word for word copy of the summary---which ended up being not so summarized.

 "Hmmm," I think, "I'm getting this LinkedIn profile thing completely wrong. I didn't realize the summary was supposed to be an "in your face sales pitch."

I examined her profile further, again, since she is an expert in LinkedIn Branding, certainly I could learn a lot from her profile and her own utilization of LinkedIn.

Here, I made another interesting discovery. There was absolutely no activity in her profile. She had never published an article, she had never made an observation, she never commented on someone else's articles or feeds. She had never even liked anything!

Boy, I've had this LinkedIn thing totally wrong. I had always thought of LinkedIn as a platform for engaging others, to learn about them, to interact and engage, to share insights, and ideas.

Based on this expert's profile, clearly I have everything about LinkedIn wrong!

At this point, I'm really curious. she's also an expert in B2B Lead Gen, Conversion, and Marketing. She has several other current jobs on her profile, all having to do with these disciplines.

I Google her company names. For the first company, I went through the first 9 pages of Google, I couldn't find her company anywhere. For the second company, a rather unusual name, Google couldn't find a thing! (I thought Google could find everything).

Apparently, having a web presence has very little to do with B2B Lead Gen, Conversion, and Marketing.

Boy, do I have so much to learn! Everything I have been doing is completely the opposite of what this expert does with her profile and her businesses. I'd been doing pretty well with my approaches, but I'm going to rethink everything now.

To be honest, I'm really confused. But she must know a lot--her profile kept declaring how much of an expert she is. And, she must practice what she preaches........

(For those who haven't read my articles, please realize, my tongue is deeply planted in my cheek.)

Happy #FridayFails, thanks Hank!