It’s been said a thousand times before, but I’m going to go ahead and post it here one more time.

Please think before posting to social media.

This is particularly true where LinkedIn is concerned. Let me give LinkedIn posters some “food for thought” concerning why they ought to be careful what they post:

1. Chances are, your boss (present or future) is watching—Like it or not, an associate on LinkedIn might be or become your boss. When you associate with folks on LinkedIn, one of the most important reasons for your associations ought to be to gain friends, and keep in touch with people with whom you share professional interests. I know a bunch of folks “branch out” and add folks who have nothing to do with what they do. Even so, almost everybody on LinkedIn connects with people who are or might become part of their “professional circle.”
2. Boss or not, others see what you post—Even if you don’t manage to alienate a future “boss.” You may find that people who would otherwise be happy  to do something like, recommend you for a position or endorse you for skills they know you possess, will be less likely to do so if they come to the conclusion you cannot understand and stick with simple “rules of use” for some particular tool. Maybe that’s important to you, maybe not, but keep in mind, at some point in the future, its importance may change.
3. Sheer volume of posts—I have commented before, on the idea that I already find many of LinkedIn’s posts to be irrelevant for my uses and purposes. Imagine what it feels like when people post things that don’t match LinkedIn’s “charter” as most understand it to LinkedIn. When folks post things that would be accepted without question on other social media platforms, on LinkedIn, much of the time, they seem to assume it’s acceptable to post them on LinkedIn either as well, or, worse yet, exclusively. LinkedIn in a professional social networking site, it’s not a place for recipes, expressions of faith, or funny anecdotes to make folks chuckle. People are posting things like, job openings or information about their skills for other people to look at. When people post unrelated things, they increase the volume of posts on the platform, making it far more likely that others will miss important data.

I could talk about other things here (like the fact that the Internet does not have unlimited bandwidth, as many seem to suppose), but for now, I’ll leave it at that.

Thanks for reading.