SCOTT MURRAY ONLINE
  • Home
  • About Me
  • Blog
  • Podcast
  • Speaking
  • Contact
  • Home
  • About Me
  • Blog
  • Podcast
  • Speaking
  • Contact
Search

Is Your LinkedIn Profile a Used Car Lot?

3/27/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
​If I was new to the planet and asked you how humans feel about the car buying experience, what would you tell them? I assume you wouldn't describe it the same way you would a Caribbean cruise. However, there are too many people that don't mind infusing the annoyances of car buying to their LinkedIn marketing strategy.

When you walk onto a car lot, you know you're going to have someone approach you and talk to you about buying a car, but why is that so bad? Marcus Sheridan points out:

"Imagine you walk onto a car dealership lot and a salesman comes striding out. Do you expect that salesman to have your best interests at heart, or are you anticipating the whole 'Have I got the perfect car for you' routine?"

In other words, you feel like the conversation is going to be driven (no pun intended) by what benefits them - not you. 

How are people getting a similar experience on LinkedIn? You can find plenty of promotion-filled sales lots filled with robotic salespeople communicating through canned and repeatable rhetoric.

​There are Lots of Waving Tube Men

PictureFamily Guy/20th Television
Many LinkedIn profiles are full of brands talking about themselves and their perfect things for the audience. Their pages are the equivalent of having a bunch of wacky waving inflatable arm men in a used car lot, and both are about equally as effective in inspiring someone to buy.

​
​You'll notice that when 
LinkedIn announces their best page announcement winners, it's all about the ways brands are providing value and building trust. For example:
  1. ​Teleperformance shares "quick-hit content that is short, snackable, and easily digested even without sound. They humanize their brand by featuring company leaders in the video content and establish credible thought leadership through the use of third-party stats."
  2. CVENT proves it is "not product-first in their content — they genuinely want their content to be useful and relevant to their audience."
If you're wondering how to evolve your LinkedIn page away from a "car salesy" theme to a value-based and trust-building one, you can find several ideas for unique LinkedIn posts. You just have to decide which ones are right for your brand.

​The Staff Follows a Script

​Poor Bert Healy. He just wanted his script to sound like a natural conversation, but it's more than evident that Mr. Warbucks is reading a prepared set of sentences. It didn't help matters when Warbucks closed with, "Did I just do a commercial?"

However, Bert had a good excuse. It was the 1930s, radio was big, and he had a captive audience. Yet today, people are willing to follow a similar formula using LinkedIn messages, and it's not as funny as this scene. In fact, it's annoying, lazy, unprofessional and sad.

Like a stereotypical used car salesman, they may greet you in a way that seems like it's an attempt to get to know you, but once you respond, it's all about their benefit. 

It starts with a disingenuous connection request
Disingenuous reasons for wanting to connect generally include an interest in "expanding a personal network and wanting to connect with like-minded people." Or the more amusing invitations to connect are the ones where they tell you upfront that they think you're stupid. 

For example, they tell you your recent "great blog or post" that "showed up on their feed," drew them to you. Granted, they aren't going to tell you specifically which post it is because this is a  cut and paste script that goes to several people. It's the car lot greeting before things go into sales mode. Once you connect, you'll get more cut and paste messages that signal no real interest in connection, conversation, value or trust.

Because it's not about you. If it was, things would sound a lot less scripted and the conversation could be very different. As Marcus said in his blog, your content (or communication) could say:

“Why HubSpot is right for you.”
or
“Is HubSpot the right fit for you?”

One shows bias, one does not.


Creating value, starting a conversation or building trust means avoiding what Chris Brogan would call treating people like purses and wallets. One of the simplest pieces of advice I've ever gotten about social media marketing is - You have to give to get.
  • You have to give value to get value.
  • You have to earn trust to get trust.
People assume a car buying experience is going to be more frustrating than fulfilling. They expect similar frustrations while spending time on LinkedIn.

Prove them wrong.  It will benefit you both.
0 Comments

    Sparketer
    Blog

    Sharing a variety of  sparketing ideas and insights to help generate results.

      Stay Updated

    Subscribe

    Archives

    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    April 2020
    February 2020

    Categories

    All
    Attention Spans
    Audience
    Blogging
    Branding
    Chris Brogan
    Competition
    Content Marketing
    Content Strategy
    Copywriting
    Customer Experience
    Donald Miller
    Excellence Theory
    Internal Communication
    Interviews
    LinkedIn
    Messaging
    Miracle On 34th Street
    Podcast Appearances
    Podcasting
    Podcasting Advice
    Podcast Interviews
    Podcast Movement
    Pop Culture
    SEO
    Small Business
    Social Media
    Storybrand
    Tacos
    Target Audience
    Television
    Twitter
    YouTube

    RSS Feed

LET'S CONNECT!
​
1-800-842-1123
  • Home
  • About Me
  • Blog
  • Podcast
  • Speaking
  • Contact