Last updated on July 6th, 2015 at 03:01 pm
Jason Alba critiqued Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly’s LinkedIn profile for not matching how great his company is.
There seems to be a trend among leaders of great companies to have very dull LinkedIn profiles. I see three reasons for this.
- Demographics. Some of these guys are baby boomers, so it will take a while for brand “me” thinking to get to them (if ever). Not all Boomers suffer from this condition, but many Type A males are wired that way.
- They are busy building great companies. So is their LinkedIn profile adding value to them personally or corporately? I think a unified marketing message is helped by a profile in keeping with the CEO and company value proposition.
- STP (Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning). LinkedIn is not the key audience for these CEO’s, so expending effort to reach that market is a low priority.
- Bagging Big Game. The world – or at least anybody who matters in it – knows who these guys are. They don’t need to tell us who they are.
I think Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh falls into that 4th category. Talk about your sparse profile. But with a track record like his, it’s a case of “if you have to ask, you can’t afford”. He’s sold two companies for combined $1 Billion USD over the last 11 years.
