Episode 93: Get Out of LinkedIn Jail (Do Not Pass Go!)
The Social Sales Link team is out to give listeners the closest thing to a Get Out of LinkedIn Jail card — foresight!
Find out what dos and don’ts LinkedIn has on its user agreement so you can avoid being sent to the LinkedIn slammer without your knowledge. And if you do find yourself in that dreaded situation, what are your next steps? Our hosts Brynne Tillman and Bob Woods will guide you through the process in an engaging way.
View Transcript
Bob Woods 00:00
Welcome to Making Sales Social Live. I’m Bob Woods and with me, today, as always, is Brynne Tillman. What’s going on, Brynne?
Brynne Tillman 00:09
Hi, Bob, great things are going on. It’s just a beautiful day.
Bob Woods 00:10
Great things are always going on, absolutely. So today we’re going to talk about something a little bit different, but it’s something that everybody really should know about.
Intro: 00:20
Welcome to Making Sales Social Live! As we share LinkedIn and social selling training strategies and tips that will have an immediate impact on your business. Join Brynne Tillman, and me, Bob Woods, every week, Making Sales Social Live!
Bob Wood 00:37
When it comes to the proper use of a social media service, LinkedIn is just like any of those other social media services. They have dos and they have don’ts. If LinkedIn detects activity on an account that violates its user agreement, a user can be you, in other words, can be limited in your access, or even shut out of LinkedIn entirely. And that’s what we call LinkedIn jail.
So Brynne and I are here to help. We don’t want to see anyone in the slam, in the pokey, however you want to put it. So today we’re going to examine the dos and don’ts of using LinkedIn. And we’ll even share what to do if you find yourself in that proverbial LinkedIn jail, although we aren’t attorneys, and we don’t play them on TV. So first of all, let’s talk a little bit about what can you do or what is it that you can do that would get you busted and put into LinkedIn jail?
Brynne Tillman 01:32
That’s the perfect way to start this right. So when you find yourself in LinkedIn jail, sometimes you’re not aware of it. There are different levels of LinkedIn jail and sometimes you may not be aware of it. So I’m just gonna first go through how do you identify that you’ve gone into jail? So interesting, there are times that you’re in a LinkedIn jail because… and we will give you the because in a little bit, but you can log in, you can see everything as normal, but other people can’t find you. If they search your name, it doesn’t appear. If you were in a chat with someone, it now says LinkedIn member, your name is gone and they can’t click through. So there are lots of, there are many times where people don’t even realize that they’ve been put in LinkedIn jail. So that’s number one.
Number two, you can’t log in. So there is a message that comes up that says you have to either prove with your ID or submit an appeal to be locked down. Now, the interesting thing is LinkedIn will never tell you why you were locked out, why they put you in jail but there are five reasons that we’ve identified that are absolutely putting people in jail. The first one is an unusually large number of page views. The reason I think they do this, so this means that you’re looking at, you know, hundreds of profiles.
Bob Woods 03:03
Yeah, it’s actually profile views and not page views. It’s specifically profile views that this affects, you can look at anything you want, and that won’t affect you but when you start popping too many profiles, that’s when you kind of cross over.
Brynne Tillman 03:17
Talk about why that’s a thing. Why do they care that you’re looking at so many profiles?
Bob Woods 03:22
That’s a thing because, at least in my opinion, that indicates to their algorithm that you’re about ready to do something that they don’t think is cool and more often than not, they’re thinking that it’s because you’re about ready to reach out to a bunch of people who you don’t know and that’s bad obviously because ideally, you should be connecting with people that you know, just like LinkedIn says.
Brynne Tillman 03:45
Yeah, and another reason I think, is because they think it’s automation.
Bob Woods 03:48
Automations. Yeah, yeah, automation is huge, huge, bad, bad, bad.
Brynne Tillman 03:53
Yeah, and LinkedIn to Bob’s point, really does want us only connecting with people that we know, which kind of is hypocritical to the networking concept around LinkedIn but you know, they definitely looked down on bulk actions necessarily. Oh, so Gunnar, hi, Gunnar.
Bob Woods 04:14
They also think you’re… Yeah, hi, Gunnar, yeah, scraping info is definitely another one, whether that’s automated or manual. That’s definitely another big one, too. They may think that however you’re doing it that you’re scraping info and that is definitely a part of LinkedIn’s don’ts.
Brynne Tillman 04:31
Yeah. So Tom Pounder asked, “Don’t they need to inform you that you’re in LinkedIn jail?” They don’t. It’s amazing. Like I can see, we are in some group text messages inside of LinkedIn, it’s not really text messages through messaging and somebody that we’re communicating with automatically, it’ll come up as LinkedIn member and you know, they’ve been shut down but if I reach out to them because sometimes I know exactly who it is, I’ve been communicating with them. They don’t even know that that’s happened. So, you know, they log in and everything looks normal to them.
Now, in some cases, within 24 hours, your account will just be restored. In other cases, they’re going to ask you for your ID to prove that it’s you and you have to agree to never do the bad behavior, again, even when they didn’t tell you what the bad behavior was, which is pretty frustrating. So Jan says, “Be careful about the third parties you use, that might be scraping, LinkedIn won’t tell you about them, you have to figure it out.” Absolutely. Do not use any third-party outreach, auto bots, anything, it will shut you down. There are some things that we use along with LinkedIn, like, we’ll use Calendly, we use Magical, which is an auto text expander but we are not scraping data and that is what LinkedIn does not want.
Bob Woods 05:55
Actually, before we go to that, LinkedIn has its user agreement up. Anyone can read it, just google “LinkedIn user agreement.” And they very helpfully have a section — and I’m not being sarcastic about this, I absolutely mean this. There is a section, section eight that’s called LinkedIn “Dos and Don’ts.” That’s what it’s called. (Brynne: 8.2.2.) Yeah, well, yeah, it’s yeah, 8 point — I think that changes a little bit because now 8.1 is dos and 8.2 is don’ts. And you could tell that they’re serious about it because there are 18 different points under don’ts.
So I would highly recommend you read that. A lot of that does have to do with automation because LinkedIn hates automation, as well, it should, because you can’t build an authentic relationship with automation. We are obviously against automation but LinkedIn is of the exact same mindset there as well. Using automation will likely get you into LinkedIn jail, it’s not a definite thing but why risk it?
Brynne Tillman 06:59
Yeah. And so you know, it’s just important that you use LinkedIn as that relationship-building tool.
The second way to get shut down is, someone that reports your content. So if you have content, there’s a few things. Number one, if you actually take someone else’s content and they report it as that you’ve violated IP of somebody. If you have content that someone, content, or even through messaging, or a connection request, if they report you, as a spammer through connection requests, enough of those can get you shut down.
So we have from a LinkedIn user, we don’t know who this is, “This makes it difficult for job seekers when you’re told to reach out and expand your network. You’re limited to a specific amount of use you’re allowed each month when they lock you out telling you you have viewed too many profiles. It’s frustrating.”
Now, that’s different. So what you’re getting is hitting the commercial search limits. So what’s happening is they viewed X number of profiles, we do not know what the number is, we’ve tried to test it, we can’t get a hold and I’m not even sure it’s consistent across the board. But when you look at a lot of profiles, that’s not actually going to LinkedIn jail that’s hitting the commercial search limit. And what that means is LinkedIn is saying, “Hey, we know that you’re using this either for job seeking or for sales, and we want you to pay.” So they’re trying to upsell you, and then the first of the month, you’ll get all of those searches back. It’s a little you know, the way I look at it is Microsoft invested a lot of money in purchasing LinkedIn, and they want some of that back.
The other thing that can happen, that can get you shut down is if they think your account has been compromised. So, I was shut down maybe two months ago, and it was all — I had to go through hoops to prove that I was me because they thought I had been compromised. Now the interesting thing is, I think someone tried to log in to me and they may have even compromised my passwords because I had changed them everywhere but I have two-step verification. So I got a text, they never got into my account but because I don’t know how many times they tried, LinkedIn actually shut my account down. So I had to send my photo ID and wait 24 hours to get turned back on and it’s a little nauseous because you know, that’s what I do for a living but I think I’d rather that happen than actually be compromised.
So we actually said four things and I put two together. So wait, let’s just review again, the first way you can get shut down, oh, automation. (Bob: Automation, yeah.) The second way is if someone reports your content. The third way is if someone reports you, in your connection request, as a spammer. The next way is if your account has been compromised. The fifth way, which I think is crazy interesting, is, and there may be more, these are just the five that I thought of. If you actually use your name inappropriately, so they will shut you down if you put your phone number in your name. The only thing you’re allowed in your name is your name and any legal designations, if you’re a PhD, or a CFP, you have those after your name, but anything else is actually breaking their (Bob: Their user agreement.) user agreement.
Bob Woods 10:40
And then actually the other thing is, sometimes what people do is in the first name field, they’ll put their first and last name, and then they’ll put some kind of marketing thing in their last name. That also violates the agreement because it’s supposed to be first name only in first name, last name only in last name, and then those designations and that’s it. And that also messes with the search algorithm too because it searches from first name and last name too, so also be aware of that, but that type of thing also violates the user agreement.
Brynne Tillman 11:13
So Steven says, “Beware of the newer social Saturday parties…” I don’t know what these are, (Bob: I’ve never heard of those) “…where everyone connects with everyone. You can get your profile locked.” Okay, so they’re probably thinking that’s a mass connection. There’s very little value in mass connecting. It’s like collecting business cards with people you’ve never had a conversation with. How good is that connection? Yeah. So I’m sure there are many other ways to…(crosstalk) and I think it’s really important that we’re very careful in using LinkedIn the right way because when we do, it becomes the most powerful tool but if we break that user agreement, particularly so it’s user agreement, the 8.2 section, the second one down is on automation. But so, Tom…
Bob Woods 12:07
Yeah, speaking of automation.
Brynne Tillman 12:10
“You would think LinkedIn jail would be overloaded based on the number of messages I receive daily.” They’re not catching them all. The ones they’re catching are often Chrome extensions. And, you know, the automated companies are constantly changing the pace and the rate of views and connections but it’s, you know, it’s really deceiving because, especially when they try to really hyper personalize it, and they’re trying to fool you to think that it’s really them reaching out. And for me, it’s such an icky way to start a relationship. It’s insincere.
Bob Woods 12:47
If you start out as a bot, you’re a bot. I mean, that’s just the way people are going to view you. You know, and it’s not bad, quote-unquote, yes, it’s automation. But still, you know, if you start out as this inhuman kind of, you know, “Welcome to my network, blah, blah, blah…” that’s how you’re going to be viewed as by that person who is receiving your, you know, the person that is using automations there, that communication. So, Brynne, let’s talk about what to do if you find yourself in the slammer?
Brynne Tillman 13:20
So there are a few things that you can do, you can submit a help ticket at help.linkedin.com and just put in there “restricted account” and it’ll take you through the motions but if you want a faster response, tweet LinkedIn Help at @LinkedInHelp they are better —
Bob Woods 13:39
Yeah, it is nuts that you have to use Twitter to get a faster response from LinkedIn help than their own system, but that’s the way it is.
Brynne Tillman 13:48
Yeah, absolutely. So you can tweet them. The other thing is if you log in, and it’s asking for your ID, submit it because there’s a high chance that that will get, the faster you submitted, the faster you’ll get reinstated, potentially. “Any around 100 connection requests sent out?” Bill asks that. Interesting, Bill. So what he’s talking about is in the last few months to limit the spam, LinkedIn has about a hundred accounts that you can connect with a week.
The chances of you actually communicating well with more than a hundred people is low. So I don’t think it’s a terrible number. But the way around it in my mind is to engage on people’s content, start conversations in their content and they’ll reach out to connect with you. And I think that that becomes even more powerful when they ask to connect with you, they’re more interested in starting a conversation than if you’re just out there connecting with lots of people.
So, attract them to you through engaging on their content, engaging with them. I think that’s important. We’ve covered almost everything. There was one more thing I wanted to mention and this is LinkedIn jail not necessarily for you but if you have a fake account, that will get you to jail as well.
Bob Woods 15:11
Yes. Yeah, yeah, fake accounts. And again, also, if you create a LinkedIn profile, which is supposed to be personal, but you do it as a company, that will also get you to shut down too. if you have a company make that as a page and not as a profile, I still see that out there. And that’s just, that’s just not good to do at all.
Brynne Tillman 15:36
If you have created it as a company page, and you’ve got lots and lots of followers, and that’s your primary, you can actually make that your account as a person, so you don’t lose all those connections and then merge the two together so that all of your connections come together. I’ve done that with a couple of people because you’re like, I have all these connections now on this company profile that’s supposed to be a person, so you don’t have to lose it all but it is breaking their user agreement.
Bob Woods 16:07
Yup, profiles are people, companies are pages. There you go. And on that note — (Brynne: Alright, let’s wrap this baby up!) … that’s where I was going. We have gone a little longer than usual. So thanks again for joining us on Making Sales Social Live! If you’re with us on LinkedIn right now, live, we do this every week, so keep an eye out for our sessions. If you’re listening to this recorded on our podcast and you’re not subscribing already, give us a subscribe, we’d appreciate it. We actually do two shows weekly, we do this one live and then we have a Making Sales Social interview series where we talk with leaders and experts in sales, marketing, business, and many, many more areas.
You want more info, socialsaleslink.com/podcast is where you want to go. And always remember and never forget, when you’re out and about, make sure that you’re making your sales… (Brynne: Social!) Hey, we’re getting that down pretty good. Thanks, everyone. We appreciate it. Have a great day. Bye-bye.
Outro 17:03
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