Poll: Should you go ziplining on LinkedIn?
“Why did you mention ziplining on LinkedIn? It’s not business.” This comment by my husband made me think about
what’s appropriate for sharing on social media. It also prompted the poll questions below.
LinkedIn is the most business-oriented of the social media channels I use. I estimate that 95% of my status updates there are strictly business. But I believe it pays to show an occasional glimpse into my personal style. My LinkedIn status update about ziplining, along with updates elsewhere, prompted quite a few responses.
YOUR opinion?
Please answer my two-question survey about whether it’s okay to share non-business information on LinkedIn. I’ll share the results in a future issue of my newsletter.
Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world’s leading questionnaire tool.
We are voting no on this, even though I imagine ziplining is fantastic.
LinkedIn bubbles up updates from your network, typically of title changes, jobs being posted, or business connections being made. When business connections are made in your network, it bubbles up the name of that person and their job title as well. LinkedIn Today, their news portal, has a great focus on business stories and articles by industry leaders. With all of these features hyper-focused on a person’s professional persona, sharing personal updates would be a jarring disconnect from the types of stories being presented on LinkedIn.
For that blend of the personal and the professional, Facebook and Twitter are better suited for this. Acknowledging that our stance is rather hardline, sharing a personal update on the weekends only makes sense. It’s a good reminder that if you’re logging into LinkedIn on Sunday and a colleague is going ziplining, perhaps it’s time to go outside and take a break.
Christine,
Thank you for explaining your take on this issue. It’s good to get all of the different viewpoints out there. Thanks for sharing the poll on Twitter, too!
Susan, I mentioned in the survey that I try to maintain a business orientation, although how that’s defined can be a moving target. I may pay respects to people I admire that have passed on, or I may share an entertainment or political link that’s particularly thought provoking or simply enjoyable. That said, I resist the temptation to talk about myself as I’m not that interesting, and there’s little value in calling attention to it!
Bennett,
That’s a great point about “business orientation” being a moving target. Things sure have changed, even over the past five years. I think it is possible to show some personality, even while sticking to that “business orientation.”