Even as I write these words, the anguish inside of me is still building. There is a terrible trend polluting the feeds of LinkedIn users everywhere. You have certainly seen it, and unfortunately many of you have been suckered into forgoing your better judgment to buy into a terrible, nonsensical scheme to quickly expand your connections. I’m going to give a special name to the specific types of posts I am referring to: Useless Spam Garbage, which I will refer to as “USG” for the remainder of this post.

Yes, this is a REAL post from my LinkedIn feed.

LinkedIn Can Create Growth: Don’t Abuse It

Everyone wants to grow their network and make new connections. Knowing the right people and having the right connections is an important part of running any business. So when a post pops up that encourages you to leave your email, business name, or LinkedIn ID in the comments section, the promise of rapidly expanding your network seems like an easy trade-off for simply posting your information. Many times these photos contain text that has typos, grammatical errors, and glaring inaccuracies. However, the messages are always the same: share your information here to rapidly expand your business network! These USGs are surely in your own LinkedIn feed right now as you read this.

USGs love when you ignore common sense and buy into the idea! You have helped provide them with an entirely new set of data that they can use for spamming purposes. All they had to do was post a picture of a lion, sunset, or other inspiring stock photo! The multitudes of lemmings who follow you over the cliff help round out the data that these USGs are looking for. The only problem is: it is not going to do a single thing to help you or your business.

Has anyone ever thrown their name into a giant thread and seen their business grow as a result of their blind stab at a get-connected-quick scheme?

You might as well walk outside right now, scream the name of your business at the heavens, and return inside to await the wave of new business that is hurrying to your door. The answer is unequivocally “no“. Why would you putting your information into a thread on someone else’s LinkedIn post, with hundreds of others, do anything for your business. Certainly, no one except the happy USG posters elated with their free data sheets is ever going to sift through that mess of delusion and chaos to garnish any real information about your business. You are not providing any other information about your business or services. There would be no reason to think you were any more special then the dozens of people enveloping your information in the thread.

So why do these things continue to work? I wish I had the answer. Part of me hopes it isn’t because we are all delusional enough to think that 4 seconds of typing will revolutionize our business efforts, but I can’t find a better explanation really. We would all be better served if these USGs would stop cluttering our feeds so we can sort through the things that matter, like things real people are finding business success with.

Join Me In An Effort To Stop The Spamming

This is my call to arms for everyone reading this, any who might find it in the future, and to myself: NO MORE PATRONIZING THESE USG SPAMMERS! No more letting our friends and acquaintances waste their time and hope for results. This has to end! I say this as someone who uses LinkedIn productively every single day. These kinds of posts not only scatter important information, their existence is a constant reminder of how feeble we can be.

We all owe it to ourselves to implement personal, proper marketing techniques. One of the things I’ve seen written in every single post for using LinkedIn for business growth is that it is about personal engagement and nurturing relationships.

There is no shortcut for that step!

Let’s all do our part in helping put this despicable, insulting, and aggravating practice to bed for good.