I accept nearly all LinkedIn invites…and what’s my reward?
The very next thing my new “trusted colleague” does is send me an unasked-for MARKETING PITCH for their services.
“Thanks for connecting with me. I am a motivational speaker, author, extreme weight loss coach and star of…Please let me know if you ever need my services…”
Why are you spamming me with junk mail? This is not how trusted professional colleagues treat each other.
If you look at my profile, it’s clear Radial doesn’t hire motivational speakers. We’re a consulting and marketing firm! I didn’t ask you about your services. I didn’t ask you to “tell me more.”
This may have felt good to the sender — “Ooooh, I MARKETED today!” — but really, it’s just annoying. And even if you miraculously stumble across someone on LinkedIn who just happens to be looking for an extreme weight loss motivation speaker, darn few event managers are going to hire you based on this kind of approach.
(By the way, being a successful health and wellness speaker is about a lot more than just your personal success story.)
I am a new grad who majored in Fitness & Wellness. Do you have any advice or contacts?
To be honest, there is no way I am going to give any total stranger contact information for folks in my network. I know nothing about you. You haven’t given me even one reason to take that chance. Why would I even consider doing this?
“Would you be interested to talk about the Chiropractic email marketing list solution?”
No, no, I wouldn’t. Buying lists of emails is dumb. It doesn’t work. You’re spamming people who never heard of you and didn’t ask you to contact them. (And don’t tell me it’s opt-in, because opting-in to email from businesses you never heard of is meaningless.)
“I am in the pre-development stage of building a solution…if you’d like to have a brief 10 minute chat about what I am building please let me know.”
This one is a pitch, very thinly disguised as a combination of information sharing and informational interviewing.
But since all the info shared is stuff like product mockup screen shots, it’s basically nothing but advance marketing for a to-be-developed nutrition application. The links to the “information I’ve gathered” aren’t to data that might be interesting or useful to me…it’s just a list of product features.
Aside from the fact that it is, yet again, a pitch in response to a LinkedIn connection, it commits another sin: raising one set of expectations (I will share interesting information with you) and then failing to deliver (here’s my list of product features).
“Final co-author selection for new international book…contact [us] for interview before 1/23.”
Puh-leeze. I am quite sure that this “interview” designed to create the illusion of a highly selective and competitive process is nothing more than a solicitation for pay-to-play participation in this “new international book.”
It’s like those internet TV shows where participation is FREE! But you have to pay thousands for their production crew. Yeah, my cell phone was “free” too.
Folks who pay to be co-authors or contributors or Internet radio/tv hosts as a marketing strategy are being played for suckers. If you’ve got a book in you, write the darn book YOURSELF! Then hire people with expertise in professional editing, layout and cover design. We’ve worked with authors who sell on Amazon. It doesn’t get more international than that.
The bottom line:
One of my core beliefs is that you EARN the right to pitch yourself and your stuff, by demonstrating exceptional value to people who are qualified prospects.
Until and unless I’m a qualified prospect, don’t pitch me.
