In the spirit of Halloween, I’ve put together a few common social media nightmares that I see here on LinkedIn.

They undermine the success of your personal branding and business development efforts on this platform.

Don’t scare your network with these frightening mistakes.

👻 Boastful, self-serving posts (when you say you’re “honored and humbled” you sound the opposite – the focus of your posts should be to help and highlight others)

👻 Mass tagging of people in posts (the equivalent of spamming someone on LinkedIn)

👻 Salesy untargeted solicitations

👻 Hashtag spam and misuse of hashtags

👻 Sharing posts without introductory text (a huge missed opportunity to engage with your network and the equivalent of forwarding an email without context)

👻 Not actively building your network and just passively accepting requests (LinkedIn is a two-way street and you’re missing out on maximizing your network)

👻 Putting any text in all caps on your profile especially your name (this is the equivalent of SHOUTING at someone)

👻 Not customizing your LinkedIn cover image. This is prime real estate on the top of your profile.

👻 Not maximizing your LinkedIn headline (you get 220 characters to brand yourself, why aren’t you?)

I know you can do better – especially with only 1% of users regularly posting on the platform.

Come to my free LinkedIn webinar next week to find out how.

And happy Halloween!

Learn more about these LinkedIn nightmares in this video.