There’s been a lot of talk lately on LinkedIn about bad habits. Of course, “bad” like “beauty” is in the eye of the beholder and some folks might disagree with what I say in this month’s newsletter and that’s OKAY.

They have different reasons for doing what they do and in the end, it is up to each of us to decide. There are over 815 million people on LinkedIn and there are bound to be some who will disagree with what I have said here.

However, since I have been doing and teaching this for over 14 years now I wanted to give my version of “What NOT to do on LinkedIn”. Take it for what it is worth and make your own decisions.

I can promise you one thing… every one of these things has helped make me more effective in building a strong network and many of the people I know, like, and trust approach LinkedIn in a very similar manner.

So here goes with… drum roll… what NOT to do on LinkedIn!

Thing Number 1 – Don’t Post Too Often

I started with this one because everyone places such weight on CONTENT. There are many folks in my network that DO post every day. My advice has always been QUALITY and VALUE over QUANTITY wins every time.

IMHO there is no ONE answer to this. All of what follows WORKS great for me. Will it work for you? I have no idea. It is up to each of us to find our “tribe” and find our sweet spot.

Some say to post once a day.

That might work, but not for me. First of all, I doubt most folks have time to see my stuff every day in the first place. Since my goal is to provide the best tips I can, I publish regularly twice a week. Quality and consistency are the keys. Provide that and people will come LOOKING for your content!

Some say post every five hours.

Ridiculous. You can’t do that without automation and I hate BOTS!

Some say to post early in the morning or only on certain days.

Due to the “global” nature of this platform, I don’t really think that time of day has a huge effect and I publish on Monday and Friday (two notoriously bad days), but it works for me. It is more important to post when you have time to TAKE CARE of your post for the next few hours to make sure you engage with comments and reactions as soon as possible.

Is it purely about quality content?

Not “purely”. It is about quality, but engaging with others and commenting probably starts more conversations than publishing a post. So I spend far more time commenting than I do posting.

Thing Number 2 – Don’t Join an “Engagement POD”

There are certain groups of people out on LinkedIn who promise to regularly like and comment on each other’s posts. In some instances, I have even heard that the “pod” of people even PAY for the “privilege” of belonging to one of these groups.

The intent is to fool the algorithm into thinking a post is extremely popular and therefore will get an increase in reach.

First of all, this is a very short-sighted strategy. It might gain you some reach for a while, but it doesn’t help you find your real audience because it is arbitrary and not REAL engagement.

Secondly, the LinkedIn Algorithm has caught on to this tactic and has changed over time to monitor comments such as “great post” or any short automated response and ignore them. In addition, a reaction (like support, etc.) is given far less weight than a real comment (some say a valid comment is worth 5 times more than just a reaction).

Thirdly, your content’s quality and usefulness should be good enough to stand on its own merit. If you add value people will gravitate to your content and (more importantly) tell OTHERS how good it is!

And finally, personally, whenever I see this I am reminded of the “POD people” from a certain 1956 movie… and we all know how that turned out… 😉

Thing Number 3 – Don’t Resort to a “Tag Wall”

Mentioning someone is a great way to say thank you or give someone else credit for an idea or quote. And, I don’t mind being mentioned in a group of people if the author has asked if it is okay. I almost always tag the original author in a comment so there is a chance that they will be notified that I joined the conversation.

However, in a post, if you create a “wall” of people that you mention without asking their permission you are just “gaming the system” (the Almighty Algorithm) to increase the reach of your post. At a minimum, you might annoy the other person, which I doubt you had in mind. Worst case, if you annoy them often enough they might unfollow you or even disconnect (or even block) you in the future.

So a “Tag Wall” might have a short-term win, but in the long run, it could have the exact opposite effect.