Back to Basics Tuesday: don't do the "dead cat bounce"

Animal lovers, forgive me, but I have been looking for a name to a rather infrequent, yet disturbing LinkedIn phenomenon that I see, and finally found it: the “dead cat bounce.”

Wikipedia defines it generally, rather than the specific financial market term it originally is, as:

any case where a subject experiences a brief resurgence during or following a severe decline.

Here’s what I define as the “LinkedIn dead cat bounce:” an announcement on my Home page: (the yellow highlighting is due to my use of the search function for this obscure specimen that crept across my screen a few days ago and slunk away):

Am I to be excited? Is there a scout merit badge for reawakening? Like that announcement’s supposed to entice me to read the post, which I will likely not, since they spent no time heretofore on brandishing a LinkedIn brand, much less polishing it!

So like observing a formerly-bounced now-dead cat, I avert my attention, not really wanting to see what that looks like.

And I can count on there being no brief resurgence of interest from that person later regularly contributing to LinkedIn, beyond the whimper that I just saw.

That type of reemergence from an absence is only forgivable if they just came back to earth from another dimension or a distant galaxy, and then I bet they will have lots to tell us.

But that’s not the case, is it?

Bounce like you are a live professional, on your toes no matter how far you leapt, and spring like a living, contributing professional, adding to the conversation of LinkedIn going on continually, not just once and then to disappear.

Contribute, opine, add, share, congratulate, be a giver.

No one does business with a dead cat. Don’t fall out of the sky and bounce just once, your last thud.