//
you're reading...
Career

Here’s One Of The Worst Mistakes People Make On LinkedIn

Tim Caynes

If you’re only talking about yourself, there’s probably few people listening.

Whether you’re searching for a job or just want to learn more about your industry, LinkedIn is a great place for meeting other professionals and maintaining relationships. 

But if you start every conversation by talking about yourself and your own projects, chances are you’re losing more connections than you’re gaining. 

“Linkedin [is] all about making the conversation about others,” says Patrick Mayoh, an analyst for Euromonitor International, in a LinkedIn post. “What they do, what their career goals are, how you can help them.”

Mayoh recalls a recent interaction in which he introduced himself to a potential connection, hoping to start a conversation. “The person did accept to connect but added a message about this start-up project he was involved in, asking me to donate some money on a crowd-funding platform,” he says. “Not once did I sense this was mutually beneficial.”

Mayoh came away completely turned-off by the conversation, with no desire to help.

Networking through LinkedIn should involve the same two-way dialogue as face-to-face conversations. Simply boasting about yourself and your accomplishments won’t inspire anyone to want to help you.

Mayoh recommends thinking of how you can help every connection, instead of concentrating on what they can do for you. Going out of your way by showing interest in their projects and careers will motivate others to return the favor much more than asking for help point-blank would. 

In the end, you’ll both get something out of the interaction.

Click here to read the full LinkedIn post.

Want your business advice featured in Instant MBA? Submit your tips to tipoftheday@businessinsider.com. Be sure to include your name, your job title, and a photo of yourself in your email.

The post Here’s One Of The Worst Mistakes People Make On LinkedIn appeared first on Business Insider.


from Business Insider » Careers http://ift.tt/1zd672B
via IFTTT
About these ads

Discussion

No comments yet.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out / Change )

Google+ photo

You are commenting using your Google+ account. Log Out / Change )

Connecting to %s

View By Month

View By Date

August 2014
M T W T F S S
    Sep »
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
25262728293031

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 66 other followers

Blog Stats

  • 8,313 hits
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 66 other followers

%d bloggers like this: