Have you ever been blocked– or even locked out of LinkedIn and do not know why? About 4-5 times a week I get this email: “Help! I have been locked out of LinkedIn! What can I do about it?” If your business is serviced by your connections and activity on LinkedIn, this can be a huge headache – costing you a bit time and money.
While there are a couple of things that can get you limited on LinkedIn (something other than your name in the last name field, specific content, duplicate accounts), it has been my experience that most people have their accounts blocked because they automated too many processes on LinkedIn.
Now do not get me wrong, I do automate some of my activities – and even recommend it. But you must work on LinkedIn’s End User Agreement, and you must be conservative in your activities!
Here are some LinkedIn automation DO NOTs and what to DO instead!
Do not automate SPAM.
By this I mean:
LinkedIn does not want you to use any 3rd party automation tools at all – and has been actively using both the software tools and the users of many of these tools, coming down particularly hard on what it thinks “data scraping tools.” I do automate some of my LinkedIn activity, at the very least, if you overuse these automation tools, your account can be blocked or shut down completely!
Do automate repeated activities.
I do utilize a tool to automatically send messages to particular LinkedIn connections (Linked Helper Chrome Extension). But I delicately curate these connections, I delicately curate the content I post them, (I never “sell” them anything in these messages) and I never do more than 100 private messages a day. My practice of thumb is: I make sure every message I send utilizing this automated process, I would have sent manually. I usually only send my delicately curated list:
I utilize the tool because it saves my assistant's time and my money!
Do repetitive delegate activities.
I have my partner do some of the more repeated daily activities on LinkedIn for me. Since I get tons of invitations a week, she goes through and manually messages each would-be connection. Since I'm at my 35K connection limit, I have to choose who I accept into my network delicately.
My partner goes through every connection request, sends a different message to each person, and leaves the material and/or personalized invitations for me to respond to. He also manages my inbox alerting me to urgent posts and messages my contact as updates and (when needed) to Publisher for me.
This is a process I could fully automate, but choose not to because I think it is essential that human eyes are laid on each and every person who invited me to connect.
Do not automatically add everyone to whom you connect to your email automation list.
One method (that drives me insane) is when people connect with me on LinkedIn and then attach me to their email lists. Just because I approve to connect with you doesn't give you permission to spam me with your newsletter that I did not sign up for! I'm already signed up to all the newsletters I can handle. If you automatically add me to your newsletter I won't only unsubscribe from it – I'll also report you! (And disconnect from you on LinkedIn – another issue my assistant does for me.) If you want to use LinkedIn to drive traffic to your automated email marketing process, then ask me to opt in! Which brings me to.
Do respond to every invite with a free lead/offer magnet.
When I respond to requests and new connections, I always give them a variation of free resources. I assume that people are connecting with me because they want to learn more about LinkedIn. So, I'm happy to provide them with information! I would highly recommend building a “lead magnet,” a piece of content that your connections would find highly valuable and offering it to them for free.
I add about 60 people a week to my email list- because they OPT IN to get my information! Yes, I would be adding tons if I just shoved every unsuspecting contact into my email list – but not only is that a bad practice, it is illegal in some countries (like Canada). So I would rather have fewer people who wanted to hear from me, rather than a bigger list that could get me to shut down on LinkedIn, get my website blacklisted or get me sued!
Conclusion.
LinkedIn automation can be helpful but only done in moderation with highly curated content and connections. LinkedIn can be a great site for driving people to your automated marketing list, but only when you give them the option of opting in – otherwise you risk getting your account blocked and possibly sued! So carefully consider what, and how you'll automate on LinkedIn!
There are tons of software tools for LinkedIn, which help to automate even more accurate and prompt. As an example, you can use Orca to automate email sequences with LinkedIn profile visits, which will increase leads amount.
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