Sometimes I wonder what people are thinking about business marketing on LinkedIn and other social media sites. The key concepts here are business marketing and social media. To me, it’s marketing my business by being social. Nothing too complicated.

A couple of weeks ago, I went to a networking meeting and met a couple of guys from the same company. Later in the day, I got an email from one of guys telling me to keep the other one in mind if I ever needed the product they were selling. He said he enjoyed talking to me even though we didn’t really talk. The other guy did the talking. It was a nice email, nothing pushy or too in my face but I thought it was a bit odd. Why didn’t the first guy send me an email himself?

Lesson 1 – When you are marketing your business, you are also marketing yourself. If you are going to have someone handle your communications, be sure they do it under your name.

Today, I received a LinkedIn invitation from the guy who had the other person send the email for him. He didn’t use his last name. Let’s just say he called himself Joe B.

Joe B wrote “Since you are a person I trust, I wanted to invite you to join my network on LinkedIn. I’m using it to discover inside connections I didn’t know I had. It’s interesting to see the level of access you can have with only a few people in your network. It’s free to join and only takes a minute to sign up and join my network.

Lesson 2 for Joe B.

Remember, it’s marketing and social. He tells me he trusts me (but not enough to give his last name). He’s discovering inside connections he didn’t know he had so he can build his business (nothing about me or my business). Even though I’ve been on LinkedIn for a couple of years, he tells me it’s free to join. Since he contacted me through my profile, it seems somewhat evident I’m already on LinkedIn.

Did I accept him into my network? No. Will I remember him and his company? Yes (for his unusual approach). Would I recommend him to any of my contacts? Not likely. If I’m not important enough for him to write me  personally or to be trusted with his last name, why would I tell others about him?  To him, I’m a business card and a prospect.

In general, people who approach networking and social media like this will say, “It doesn’t work.” Either that or they finally figure out that good marketing and good social media strategies are built on relationships and trust and change their approach. Social media is changing the face of business and the rules are changing.

Anyway, that’s my take on it.