Can you automate LinkedIn messages? Is that legal? How to do it, if it is? Find out!
There are a lot of tools people use that help them achieve something on LinkedIn. One of those tools is LinkedIn mass messaging tools that are often used and abused to the point of no return.
Using a LinkedIn message bot may seem reasonable at some points, and that’s totally understandable, however, that doesn’t mean that it always is.
Today, I’ve decided to tell you all about those LinkedIn messaging bots, are they legal, how to use them if they are, should you even use them, etc…
If you’ve read something I’ve written before, then you know I’m not the biggest fan of automatization of personal contact with other people and that I strongly advise against using automation tools without thorough research beforehand.
Besides, there are a few things that may endanger your account as well as someone else’s, so keep reading if you’re interested in that at all.
Now that you know what I’m going to talk about for the rest of the article, let’s jump straight in and see what I have in store for you!
What Are LinkedIn Messaging Bots And How Do They Work?
LinkedIn has a wide variety of tools. Taking into consideration that LinkedIn has a built-in messaging system, and that the majority of human contact is done by writing, messaging bots and tools are something that is quite popular.
These bots allow you to write a message in advance in a system that will memorize it; you’ll select a contact or contacts, and the exact message of your liking will be sent to those contacts (or individual contact) at a time that you’ve also set before sending.
LinkedIn message automation tools can seem like something that would never be banned or frowned upon in the community, but you’d be wrong for thinking that.
Some of those bots are prohibited by LinkedIn themselves.
What Is It Used For?
LinkedIn message bot is one of the most popular tools that people use for LinkedIn. All it does is it sends messages that have been written beforehand at a specific time, to a specific person, or set of people.
People that have a wide range of people that they’d like to contact or have to let know something use this kind of tool to help them do exactly that.
There are a few more purposes and uses for these tools, but they’re not used that often and aren’t worth mentioning.
But one thing that needs to be mentioned is that people use messaging bots to spam accounts that they’d like to give a hard time to.
This is a malicious way of using these tools and shouldn’t be done!
Are LinkedIn Bots Allowed?
As I’ve mentioned earlier, there is a certain impression that you’ll have if people find out you’re using messaging bots for LinkedIn.
There isn’t anything bad about it if you use it for good, but if you overdo it, or rely heavily on it to generate leads, that’s not a good look.
Also, according to LinkedIn, any third-party software is prohibited from being used on their platform. This is understandable since they can’t guarantee what that software will do, and what data it will collect.
In addition to that, the software we’re talking about, better known as messaging bots, needs to collect data in order to work. They can’t send messages to certain people if they don’t have access to your contacts list from LinkedIn.
By doing so, they’re putting both you and the person (or people) that you’re texting over these bots.
Maybe the software that you’re using in particular doesn’t have anything wrong with it, and doesn’t permanently collect data from your LinkedIn profile, but some others do, and promoting them doesn’t help.
Should You Use LinkedIn Messaging Bots?
Using one of those bots seems tempting; especially if you know that one that you’re using doesn’t collect data permanently.
But, is there actually any success in doing so? Well, I’d strongly stand behind a negative answer.
These bots are easy to recognize and that’s not good! Especially if you’re trying to generate leads. Leads can become permanent and recurring customers, and it’s not good to leave a bad first impression by using one of these bots.
Also, there are some bots that claim to have a conversation with someone just based on the data collection that they have, recognizing messages that you’ve received, and writing an automatic response instead of you.
These are most often the worst LinkedIn bots that you can use since those kinds of messaging bots often send dumb-sounding and automated-like messages that are easy to spot, even for someone that has never seen one of those automatically generated messages before.
And that’s a realization you don’t want any one of your potential leads to come to. Trust me when I say – even if someone was interested in what you were selling before they got an automated message, they’ll lose interest the moment they realize how the message was written.
This is an extremely bad look for you, and I wouldn’t advise anyone to allow themselves to use unchecked LinkedIn messaging bots.
How To Notice Bot-Generated Messages
Now, enough talking about how not to use these – you’re not the only one that these bots are available to!
You may encounter a bot-generated message that you got yourself, and it’s important you know how to recognize them.
Sadly, I have to tell you that if you’ve got a message that is obviously automated, you should look elsewhere instead of continuing contact with the person that sent you the message in question.
Now, there are a few instances where people don’t have their communicational skills developed yet, so a genuine message can seem like an automated one from time to time.
But, those are some rare exceptions, and I shouldn’t focus on them, but tell you about how to recognize a bot-generated message instead.
The first thing you should look for is a message that doesn’t seem personalized, meaning that it does not contain your name or any personal information that is clearly displayed on your LinkedIn profile.
This usually means that the message is automatized since the majority of bots can’t gather information about your profile, but if they can – that’s a problem.
Second of all, you should look for a message that’s sent at a time that seems preset. Those are messages sent on a full hour or a time that doesn’t seem genuine like 3 PM sharp or times similar to that.
The majority of people tend to send messages without being concerned by the time they’re sending them besides the fact that they shouldn’t send messages early in the morning or late at night.
So, if you continuously get messages from the same person at those sharp times, you should probably look into those messages and try to determine whether they’re bot-generated or not.
At the end of the day, if you don’t feel like there’s another person at the other end of the conversation, the messages are either bot-generated or that person isn’t genuinely interested in the conversation, which are both indicators that you shouldn’t continue further contact.
LinkedIn Message Bot – Conclusion
There are a few things you should keep in mind while talking about bot-message tools and apps for LinkedIn as well as LinkedIn message bot indicators.
Those things are:
- Messaging tools, as well as all third-party tools and software, is prohibited by LinkedIn
- Messaging bots aren’t encouraged by the majority of users
- You can reach your goals without those types of tools
- People that get bot-generated messages usually lose interest
As you can see, these are all serious things to consider while talking about this topic.
When it comes to the legal part of this conversation, you should keep in mind that there are various prohibitions regarding different platforms and social media, but people tend to turn a blind eye to them. Others don’t like to use them, which is completely fine, and recommended.
Also, messaging bots are frowned upon in the LinkedIn community, so if you’re using these kinds of bots, you should be careful about how much and how often you use them because they can hurt your reputation.
All in all, I personally think that you should generate leads organically on LinkedIn as well as on all other platforms that you use for this reason. There’s nothing better than that, and there’s nothing that can beat that in the real world!