“This is not Facebook”
Four words that make me instantly think, “look out, it’s the fun police”.
I understand that people posting pictures of a cheese sandwich saying how great their lunch is can be a bit much, however what if they were having that sandwich during a great business meeting with a client in a nice location (restaurant plug, client brand highlighted, post letting people know they’re out meeting real life people rather than trying to shame people online).
This is LinkedIn’s company mission statement:
“To connect the world’s professionals to enable them to be more productive and successful”
Key words; connect, professionals, productive and successful.
So, for a start you’re connected with them somehow to see their feed so, tick, you’re connected.
Next, they’re obviously a professional (of some sort) as otherwise they wouldn’t be on here. You try asking a ‘yoof’ about their LinkedIn profile and they will literally stare through you like you’re not there. If someone has taken the time to create a profile, they have something to sell and / or a network to do it for them and this leads onto the last key words.
Being productive is about working smarter, not harder, not longer hours or playing a numbers game and what’s more productive than posting copy that gets people talking about you (even if not too favourably) and drawing potential business to your online doorstep ?
Selling stuff makes people successful eventually. There’s no need to hide behind this being one of the key drivers to any professional’s life. If people are coming to you or can easily find you as you’ve appeared on their feed they will talk with you, maybe listen to you and if you convert this, then bingo…you’re successful.
If you truly get upset by someone else posting something (even if they’re selling some sort of miracle product), you can always block, unfollow or worst case, report them.
So, next time you’re about to post a comment as someone has put a picture of them smiling saying they’re having a great work day, think about how tough the world is and is it really worth getting yourself upset and ruining someone’s day over a light-hearted post.
Or in the words of my nephew, take a chill pill.
