Your LinkedIn Profile Has Been Suspended
I tried to log in to my LinkedIn account as I do every day and to my surprise I read “Your LinkedIn Profile Has Been Suspended”. Oh my god!
My account, my contacts, my groups, my business and my marketing are all suspended. Yes, I do a lot of business on LinkedIn and use it every single day. How what? What happened? Did I do something wrong? Can this happen to you? YES!
Immediately I visited the FAQ in LinkedIn and under “suspended accounts” I read every single question and answer. No, I did not send unrequested emails or invitations, no, I did not spam, no, I did not do anything wrong. What happened?
After reading the FAQ portion I quickly submitted an email through the web form in the suspended account section of the professional social network. I waited 2 days and nothing. No account and no response. Now I visited the social network again and read all pertinent information I could find. Finally, I found a customer service email. I quickly send an email explaining my situation and asking for clarification, an explanation or any response. Even apologizing for whatever unintentionally I could have done to merit a suspended account.
Next day I received a response and my account was activated. What happened?
New Rule! You may only use the “First Name” and “Last Name” section of your LinkedIn profile for your first name and last name. You can’t add anything else. What does this mean? Well, as a marketing tool I wrote clever messages after my last name on my profile. This is a marketing headline strategy to get more attention, more click-troughs and more exposure. This is what I had:
Jorge Olson - Just Published a Beverage Book
When you do a search on the site for “beverage”, or “book” my name always came up. Furthermore when someone invited me to join their network or just browned my name they would know I just published a beverage book. I did this by simply going into my profile and writing the text after my last name. Now LinkedIn does not permit any messages at all; just your name.
How can this affect you? Simple, you can’t use this strategy anymore. It also affects “open networkers”, the people who accept all invitations and want to expand their network as they can’t announce they are open networkers anymore. May people belong to groups like LION or TopLinked and other groups of open networkers who require you write their name after you last name; you can’t do it anymore. Many more of you might write your email after your name to invite people to network, remove it. These are some of the common uses of your profile name that are being cracked down:
Jorge Olson - jorge@ jorgeolson.com
Jorge Olson - LION
Jorge Olson - TopLinked
Jorge Olson - Phone: (619) 852 6942
Jorge Olson - Any marketing message
If you have something after your last name remove it today before you get a surprise next time you log in to your profile.
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You will read some extremely hands-on, step-by-step, practical how-to advice and you will also read a bit of philosophical, motivational and hopefully life-changing views (I just can’t help myself). After all, we are not just physical, not just emotional, or not just thinking beings, we are all of the above. To imprint who we really are on others we will have to see ourselves from the inside out, and then communicate this to others in an unselfish self promotion kind of way.