If you know Social Media, then the name Chris Brogan is familiar to you. Chris is an author, journalist, marketing consultant, and frequent speaker about social media marketing and is considered one of the leading authorities in all things Social Media. Recently Chris wrote a blog about why he chose to delete his LinkedIn account <Read Chris’s blog post here>. He had a number of reasons, but primarily it was because of LinkedIn’s poor customer service.
LinkedIn’s customer service is horrible, no doubt. I don’t disagree with Chris on how bad it is. But that aside, LinkedIn is a platform with over 170 million users to date, and growing over 5 million a month. If Chris believes that platform does not have any business opportunities for him sufficient enough to overcome the customer service issues, then I don’t think he understands how to use the platform appropriately and either has been misinformed, misguided, or ignorant to the Power of LinkedIn, especially for the type of business he is in.
LinkedIn is a different platform than other Social Media networks. LinkedIn is NOT Twitter, it is NOT Facebook, it is NOT YouTube or Google Plus. It is an entirely different animal. Its members are different. They act differently. They behave differently. Conversations on LinkedIn are not about vacations, favorite pets or the minutia of life. That’s not happening on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is a professional network, not a social network (as it’s typically described). Professionals are on the platform for a reason; to find jobs, to find new business leads, to find new business partnerships, and for various other business related reasons.
After readings Chris’s blog, I posted a comment directly to him along with a challenge which he did not pursue. You can read that and his comment below:
Consider this: What if you found someone that was interested in talking to you specifically about your offer and you could tell that person fit your specific target market, they were the right company size and they were the decision maker?
LinkedIn allows this sort of action to take place daily for thousands of professionals. You can experience this too, all via LinkedIn. It allows anyone the opportunity to connect with those they need to talk with. It allows you to initiate “Relationship-Centered” conversations. It allows you to get in front of the right people at the right time providing you the opportunity to have a conversation with the exact person you need to talk with.
Add to this an optimized LinkedIn profile that reflects your credibility and authority, and warm interests will begin to get hot.
Now if you were able to systemize that process, you would be able to virtually eliminate the prospecting process of sales and consistently be talking with relevant, targeted people that wanted to talk with you about your services or programs. Essentially, with a system like this, you can generate almost an endless amount of inbound leads for you and/or your organization.
I believe that Chris Brogan made a very poor business decision by deleting his account. Here is my 2nd public challenge to Chris Brogan: Contact me in the next 30 days, inquiry@linkedstrategies.com, and within 30 days of you agreeing to work together on a test project, I can help you generate a significant amount of business opportunities for your business through LinkedIn. You pick the target market. You will experience interested business owners that would like to discuss your “Muddy” offers (as you described them Chris).
You can get somewhere between 50 to 100 new interested prospects for your business identified by title, industry, company size and many other customized identifiers within a couple weeks. Now, I don’t know what that’s worth to you. I would suspect that you charge somewhere between $5,000 to $100,000 per deal that you offer. The beauty of my process is we’re helping you establish and build a good relationship with the market that you need and want to talk with … specifically for a discussion around your business.
Socially, I understand why Chris Brogan deleted his LinkedIn account. It is frustrating dealing with the LinkedIn Corporation (I think this is universally understood amongst LinkedIn’s power users). I’m frustrated with them just about every day as well. That aside, the possibilities and the opportunities that LinkedIn provides far outweigh any negative experience caused by the company in their ignorance to the customer experience.
Chris, let’s get your LinkedIn account back up, let’s run a campaign, let’s test this out, and I will show you the power of LinkedIn! Or, if you don’t want to run the campaign, I will do it for you without you having to reestablish your account, to prove to you it’s powerful impact on YOUR business. All you have to do is email my team and we can get you started! The challenge is on the table. It’s up to you now to be ok with being wrong.
Nate, I understand what you are saying and I have met Chris. He is not a someone that quits platforms like LinkedIn without checking all the pros and cons.
Major corporations spend good money to get Chris’ opinion and expertise on social media, building community and relationships so he may know a few things….
He also hangs with the rest of the top social media crowd like Liz Strauss and Guy Kawasaki and many more, plus everything he does gets reported on so I am sure he did his homework on this one.
Leo Laporte left Facebook and with the largest population of connections on the planet that sounds ridiculous for someone so tied to technology, but he has his reasons and they are well thought out by him.
I checked a few things out. Chris Brogan Website Alexa rating compared to yours and mine. Twitter followers compared to yours and mine. Blog rating compared to yours and mine. We both combined cannot beat Chris so give the man some slack…
I know your focus is on LinkedIn and I am impressed, envious and happy for your success on LinkedIn. Maybe, however, you are a hammer and thus everyone is a nail.
I like LinkedIn. I joined early on and run several super groups on LinkedIn. I have have many problems with LinkedIn and not all were customer service. Design, implementation and a seeming lack of knowledge of who or what they are all other reasons for some people to want to leave LinkedIn.
Sorry here is the corrected edit….
I like LinkedIn. I joined early on and run several super groups on LinkedIn. I have have many problems with LinkedIn and not all were customer service. Design, implementation and a seeming lack of knowledge of who or what they are. All good reasons for some people to want to leave LinkedIn.
JW, no need to cut himm slack here. I perfectly understand his why, his reasons, etc, however he has not worked with us to establish consistent inbound lead flow so he couldn’t know the power of the platform as we see it. I totally respect Chris and everything he does. I’m friends with many of his friends. Our paths haven’t crossed personally yet, but this is a legitimate call out. a challenge to him to face up and see the power of this platform. It’s really no skin off my back. One of our clients, offering similar solutions to Chris’s organization just created 300 inbound leads from CEO’s in San Francisco in 3 months netting him several hundred thousands in immediate new business and millions in his pipeline. This example and many others are the reason i feel so bad for Chris’ decision and want to help him. On his blog, he didn’t reply to the challenge, I don’t expect him too, nonetheless, this IS his biggest social media failure as I see it. Especially for the line of work he is in.
nate
Nate – sorry – but to assume you “perfectly understand his why, his reasons, etc,” – of anyone’s decision is either naive or arrogant. You can never perfectly understand someone’s decision unless you are actually them.
Here’s one thing it seems you’re missing from what you’ve written: Chris has better alternatives.
Sure, there may be plenty of opportunities on Linkedin. But Chris doesn’t need them.
With the sort of business model Chris runs, his limited resource is his time. A great opportunity is only great if it not only brings him business – but does so better than other uses of his time.
He’s no fool – he doesn’t think Linkedin brings him no value. It that he’s figured out that with the issues he has with it, there are other beteer uses of his time.
As JW said, his traffic is waaay higher than yours. For that matter, my traffic is waaay higher than yours. And Chris’s is exponentially higher than mine. He doesn’t need Linkedin.
Obviously, you offering to “help” him is at least partially designed to bring you some good PR (otherwise you’d have made the offer in private and not made a big deal about it on your blog/Linkedin) so I understand why you’re saying this.
But I’d back Brogan’s judgement on this one.
Hi Nate,
I am a huge open networker and love all things internet. I use, analyze, and teach social media tools including LinkedIn.
Chris Brogan is very successful, well respected, and highly sought after – seems to me that the tool didn’t work for him because it’s not his style. Sounds like it works for you and that’s great, but i wouldn’t call his actions an Enormous Social Media Failure.
It’s been my experience that LinkedIn is the perfect platform for business and sales professionals that learned older selling styles. People like Chris and Guy Kawasaki are a part of a movement to open eyes and minds to a new selling style and they truly understand how to harness the power of selling online.
I would have messaged him as a connection on LinkedIn privately, but he doesn’t have an account.
PR… sure that will come, but it’s because his company is exactly like the hundreds of companies I’ve helped generate thousands of leads and millions of dollars. It’s so insane the approach taken, I have to talk about it publicly.
Follow the money. Christ Bogan is now flogging Google+ webinars. He has a Google+ tab on his website. And Google is much bigger sugar daddy than LinkedIn with a need for a hero to promote it. My guess is its all about the $$$$$
Nate,
You did. This article is one of the most brilliant LinkedIn marketing tactics every.
First, you singled-out one of the most well-known B2C social media consultants, then, you challenged him. I am certain Chris is a great guy. And, I understand his reason for not being here. When he responded “I am not a widget seller”, he positioned you as a B2B social consultant, [which Chris is not].
Second, you aired your dirty laundry on LinkedIn, which not only helps the platform, [especially with it's new design], but, puts you in front of the 170+ million people on here for professional gain, not best friend relationships.
Way to go … I wish I would have thought of it first.
@Rob LOL… you presume I am that smart!
Fair comment. My challenge to Chris is honest, fair and direct. I’m not messing around. He hasn’t responded, not sure why. No risk to him. He either gets real leads and significant business from LinkedIn or he doesn’t. He serves a B2C market, but his own marketing is B2B to get them, thus LinkedIn, our programs, and our strategies are what he’s been missing. You can say what I’ve done is genius or not, really doesn’t matter. His stance against LinkedIn is symbolic for the MASS IGNORANCE about the true power of LinkedIn. If i don’t stand up for it, who will? Especially against someone who SUPPOSEDLY “Knows it all” regarding social media. Hardly. He’s great at what he knows, he clearly doesn’t know it all, especially related to LinkedIn.
Hi Nate…also posted this comment on the LI group:
Very good article…great comments…he also made a claim he was leaving in 2010 which prompted Lewis Howes to write this article: http://lewishowes.com/featured-articles/chris-brogan-should-stay-on-linkedin/. He still has his profile up: http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=4016561&locale=en_US&trk=tyah
I do agree he like many not fully understand LinkedIn’s potential and if it’s not working for him so be it. If he thinks Google+ is the greatest thing since sliced bread good for him. It will be interesting to see if G+ plus weathers the storm.
LinkedIn is a unique network because of its business orientation and capabilities compare to Twitter, Facebook, G+. So what if G+has business pages. That still doesn’t mean that it is a business oriented network. I am sure it has other interesting features.
It’s a great tool….have made lots of contacts and gotten several clients from LinkedIn and get lots of visits and notes from being featured in Mike O’Neil & Lori Ruff’s “Rock The World” LinkedIn book. Get lots of visits to my site because of it. To each his/her own.
He probably got overwhelmed with it. I had 17,000 connections and decided to start over as most of the connections sucked. He should have just did a do over instead of quitting altogether.
This is a fascinating thread. I’m a huge fan of LinkedIn for my executive branding clients. It is the ultimate tool for promoting their expertise in a professional, engaging fashion. So, it does surprise me that a social media thought-leader has denounced it.
I look forward to seeing how it plays out. In the meantime, I’ll be encouraging my C-suite Insiders to keep their profiles.
Thanks for sharing.
Nate – I have a much more basic challenge to YOU. You are obviously very connected at LinkedIn, yet you acknowledge how they are seriously lacking in the customer service area. Yet you (Obviously) put up with it….why don’t you use all your influence and LI connections to do something about it?? Surely LinkedIn would “listen” to you, because they obviously aren’t listening to the rest of us. I recently hired a Recruiter to my team and signed her up on LI. She has an issue with her account and tried to contact LI (4) days ago…..while she got the obligatory form letter back, no one has contacted her YET – and we are 4 days and counting….. not only did LI lose Chris, but they are going to lose more members if they don’t start paying attention to the basics.
Nathan,
There’s room for both you and Chris in this debate. I see you as an incredible Linked-In strategist.
Chris is an expert in something else: a total engagement strategy independent of platform. Chris has a unique genius; a particular ethos about online social interaction and community building transcends any one platform. He built is blog and his influence (he’s #1 on the Ad Age influence list). Trust Agents, his NYT best seller, lays out his point of view.
Here’s one way I see Chris’s world and yours intersecting: strategy takes precedence over any one platform.
On that point, Gini Dietrich and Geoff Livingston’s new book, Marketing in the Round, provides several models for creating a multi-platform marketing campaigns depending on a company’s current marketing presence and goals.
I would therefore argue that Linked-In as a stand-alone platform doesn’t make millions. Integrating it with web landing pages, e-mail campaigns, Twitter, newsletters, ebooks, etc. is where the profit lies.
No one platform is right for everyone: for one of highly successful my B2B colleagues, Pintrest is her #2 lead gen source. Go figure. Social is a moving target.
Brogan quite Facebook too, then hopped back on it, and perhaps will hop back off. He marches to his own drummer, and it’s a tune many thousands of people pay to hear. Where you see failure, I am intensely curious about his reasoning. It doesn’t matter if he changes his mind — his mind is one that I (and thousands of others) always learn something from.