Sat, 3 November 2018
Welcome back to another show. This week I’m chatting with Andy Foote about the talk given by a LinkedIn executive called ‘creator-side optimization and incentives in social networks’. This was a very interesting a quite revealing insight into how LinkedIn adjusted their algorithm earlier this year to counter what they described as a ‘perverse incentive’ where superstar content producers were being given too much visibility on our homepage feeds |
Sat, 27 October 2018
LinkedIn is changing rapidly! This week I focus on 9 important changes LinkedIn have made since the last episode.
More information at http://linkedinformed.com/episode228 |
Sat, 13 October 2018
This week I interview Kurt Shaver from Vengreso about the challenges of social selling and using LinkedIn in a corporate environment |
Fri, 5 October 2018
A couple of weeks ago I had a very interesting conversation with an experienced LinkedIn user about native video posts. They post regularly and get fantastic results but they have yet to do a video post. When I asked them why they couldn’t really answer. We explored this in more detail and agreed that it came down to two main factors;
This troubled me but I put it down to an isolated experience, then last week I had almost exactly the same conversation with someone else! The final straw came this week when I delivered a follow-up training session and during my preparation (where I analyse the delegates activity since the last session) I discovered that, despite plenty of text and image posts, nobody had attempted a native video post. I have covered video before but given the issues people seem to be having, I thought I would focus on this in this weeks episode. |
Sat, 29 September 2018
This week I respond to a post by Richard Moore about the apparent lack of 'Content Creators' on LinkedIn in the UK. What exactly is he referring to and how do we define great content? That plus a few interesting things I saw this week about LinkedIn. More info at LinkedInformed.com |
Sat, 15 September 2018
Welcome to episode 224, this week I want to mainly focus on company pages. A feature of LinkedIn that I have often been very critical of. LinkedIn have announced their Top Company Pages of 2018 list so I thought I would take a closer look at some of those companies to try to understand what benefit they are gaining from LinkedIn. I also want to return to the new groups experience as I now have the new features and thought I would add some further thoughts and things I have experienced. For the full notes go to http://linkedinformed.com/episode224 |
Sat, 8 September 2018
Thanks for all your feedback from last weeks episode about a wishlist for the new design of groups, well we didn't have to wait long did we? Well, to be more precise some of us do need to wait longer (myself included) to be able to play with the new design but on Tuesday this week, LinkedIn started rolling out their long-awaited new design that they are hoping can reinvigorate this much-maligned area of LinkedIn. More about new groups later but first. Interesting Stuff I Saw This WeekVery little news about LinkedIn this week apart from the following article that I saw in multiple places The US accuses China of 'super aggressive' spy campaign on LinkedIn New Groups DesignI told you it was going to happen this week, didn't I?! New groups have started rolling out and several people have been in touch to share their thoughts. I'm really frustrated to not be included in the early stages of the roll-out. I know these things are supposed to be random but I also know that they can add people to the rollout if they wish and it seems more than rude to not include people who have given up their time to assist with the evaluation of groups. Many people travelled to locations across the world to participate in the research that LinkedIn has undertaken at their own cost. LinkedIn have ignored many of these people and not included them in the early roll-out...Ignorance or incompetence? Probably a bit of both in my opinion! Fortunately, my good buddy and fellow LinkedIn trainer Greg Cooper has got the new design so I called him up for a chat to get his perspective. Here's what's new (so far)
The overall sense I get is that they are moving much control away from group managers. It would appear that the roll-out will be fast in that one internal staffer has stated that it will be completely rolled out this month |
Sat, 1 September 2018
Welcome to episode 222. I hope you find this episode enjoyable and informative. LinkedIn have recently announced that their new re-designed groups section will be launched at the end of August It's taken them over 18 months including much user consultation to get to this point so we are entitled to expect something special. As of the time of recording, nothing has transpired so I thought it would be timely to create a list of all the things that we, as users want to see and then we can compare it to what we actually get! More of that at http://linkedinformed.com/?p=2531&preview=true |
Sat, 25 August 2018
Welcome to episode 221, after a weeks break while I was hiking around the Swiss Alps. If you have never been I would highly recommend it, as you can see below, the scenery is breathtaking!
Interesting Stuff I saw This Week Thank you for your continued dedication to your LinkedIn groups. As you know we are fully rebuilding Groups and reintegrating it into the main LinkedIn website and mobile apps. We are excited for you to experience the new version of Groups which will start rolling out to all members at the end of August. We've heard from many of you over the past year that boosting engagement and enabling vibrant discussions in your groups is important, so we've prioritized features that support this including: Making it easier to access Groups right from the LinkedIn homepage and improving visibility of group conversations in the main LinkedIn feed Moderation queues will be temporarily unavailable. We realize the importance of moderation tools and are working on rebuilding moderation functionality in the new version of Groups. This rebuilt and improved moderation queue will be available in the next few months. We are not planning to rebuild the auto-generated classifier queue. We encourage you to review any content in the queues and remove any members who continue to violate your group rules. I'm not sure why people are kicking up such a fuss about this, LinkedIn are making it clear that these changes are mainly temporary, whilst they complete the implementation of a new Groups format. Let's hope new groups are something to be excited about it......I'm not holding my breath! New Feature Actually, it would be better described as an old feature that has been corrected! This video post explains it;
LinkedIn Articles In more recent times, views have dropped significantly. In this chat with Deepak, we explore why that has happened and debate with Articles are still worth writing and how often. Click on the image below to view Deepaks full profile.
Summary of points covered; Deepak is sceptical that posts and engagement generate business. He once did a post that attracted over 2 million views but didn't attract any leads from it whereas he gained business from Articles with significantly less views.
I'm unlikley to start writing an article a week but I can definitely see the beenefits more clearly now....I hope you can too. Let me know your thoughts.
That's it for this week.
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Sat, 11 August 2018
Hello everyone and welcome to a new episode. This week I have had messages from several people about an article doing the rounds that details how the LinkedIn algorithm works – “Wow, that sounds very interesting” I thought….then I read it and felt somewhat cheated. It’s not what it purports to be but I do think it’s worth covering so that will be the main subject for this week More of that later but first….. Go to http://linkedinformed.com/episode220 |
Sat, 4 August 2018
Hello everyone and welcome to a new episode. After two weeks of discussing Pods we are moving onto pastures new. This week I want to focus attention on the continued development of #LinkedInLocal with LocalX. I was lucky enough to get to attend the launch party of LocalX in London recently and wanted to share my thoughts on this new initiative and also why I think LinkedIn have really missed an opportunity with LinkedIn Local. More of that later but first….. |
Sat, 28 July 2018
Welcome to a new episode of LinkedInformed. The main content this week is the second half of my recent interview with Lynnaire Johnston about LinkedIn pods plus my conclusions on the subject. But first…… Interesting Stuff I Saw This WeekHow to beat LinkedIn : The Game This spoof article made me chuckle…enjoy! Microsoft quotes from their latest earnings call about LinkedIn Taken from this article from The Motley Fool Microsoft’s 2016 acquisition of LinkedIn is increasingly looking like a winning bet. Sure, Microsoft had to fork over more than $26 billion to acquire the company, but LinkedIn continues to see incredible momentum nearly two years after the social network for professionals was acquired. Over 575 million members strong, fiscal 2018 was a record year for LinkedIn. Further, Nadella said LinkedIn’s year-over-year revenue growth accelerated for the fifth quarter in a row in Q4, to 37%. “We saw record levels of engagement and job postings again this quarter, with sessions growth up 41% year-over-year,” Nadella said. “This strong engagement is driven by quality of the feed, video, messaging and the acceleration of mobile usage, with mobile sessions up more than 55% year-over-year.” Got to linkedinformed.com/episode218 for the rest of the notes |
Sat, 21 July 2018
What are pods? Sometimes they are called engagement or amplify or boosting pods. The basic premise is that a group of active users form a group/community somewhere online (LinkedIn, Facebook, Slack or any other online community site) and announce (with a link) to the group everytime they publish a post or article on LinkedIn. The agreement is that everyone in the group then engages with that post (Liking and/or commenting). This has two effects;
Pods are sometimes managed by one individual with strict rules and procedures and others are managed much more loosely. Some pods have hundreds of members and others are much smaller. I first came across them last year when a listener directed me to a Facebook group that was set up for this purpose, then again earlier this year when I saw this article. My first reaction was that they seemed somewhat ‘shady’ and populated by ‘internet marketers’ who were trying to cut corners and gain quick wins (as they do!). Then a couple of months I was invited to join one by someone I knew and respected so I thought I would join to learn more and assess it’s effectiveness. My experience is that they do work but only when managed correctly but I wanted to get the views and knowledge from someone who has been using pods for much longer – enter podcast listener Lynnaire Johnston. |
Sat, 14 July 2018
Where were you last week? Unexpected holiday? Did I miss an episode? Ooops…sorry about last week folks, this episode didn’t happen last week because, well to be perfectly frank…I had the podcasters equivalent of writers block! But I’m back on it this week and this is a tricky subject that probably effects all of us at some time. Interesting Stuff I Saw This WeekI’ve scanned the internet for interesting articles about LinkedIn and there really is very little but this one instigated a rant from me…just a little one! Dear LinkedIn, Did You Forget You’re a Business Site? What a load of C*** or codswallop as some posh English people say! Why do people feel the need to dictate how LinkedIn should be, based purely on their own preferences. LinkedIn should be inclusive to all people. Some people love emojis and others hate them…that’s fine but just because you hate them, that isn’t a reason to prevent others from using them. Some industries and some users of a certain age love using emojis. If you are sent one then just ignore it, give feedback to the sender or just simply block them. This nicely leads me into the main subject of this weeks episode…….The etiquette of using LinkedIn. LinkedIn EtiquetteI was talking to a fellow LinkedIn Trainer last week and we were debating what we thought was acceptable or not when adding comments to a competitors post. This motivated me to publish the video below; The comments thread on that post make very interesting reading. It seems that a prominent view amongst many was that it’s OK to post a link provided it added value to the discussion and was not promotion….which sounds sensible but that doesn’t take into account the original poster (OP) – they have probably posted that content to encourage engagement and your link doesn’t help at all in that respect because it is taking people away from the thread. No matter how well intentioned your actions, it’s not always clear to the OP that you are not promoting yourself – even if the link is to educational content that is highly relevant to the topic, you are still taking people from the thread to your website, which is still promotional! There is also a good chance it is actually detracting from the engagement thread so this could be considered bad manners. The problem is that the right and wrong ‘line’ is different for everyone! This can all get very confusing for less experienced people who, understandably find it off-putting. One person even suggested that hashtags and @mentions are inappropriate – I can’t subscribe to that though, they are mainly ways to bring people to the post which is doing the OP more of a favour. The subject of course is much wider than post comments, other subjects that are relevant;
It’s a bit of a minefield isn’t it? What other examples can you think of? Did you know?You can now add email addresses into posts and messages on LinkedIn and they become active, clickable links. This is very useful. Unfortunately they still don’t convert to links in your profile which is where they would be most useful Post of the WeekYou may recall Simon Bourne from episode 207 I recently saw two posts from Simon, the first shows how genuine and authentic he is, the second shows how, by building a great following through being authentic, he is able to generate business on Linkedin.
This weeks question comes from Jason Holt. Question: A while back, I was a bit lazy when reaching out to people with connection requests and didn’t customise the message. (I know!) In my defence its not super easy on mobile but anyway…I now have a list of contacts who didn’t respond. I don’t know these people but they could potentially benefit from my services and would be great networking contacts for. They are local too. Can you suggest how I can recover this situation and try to obtain the connection. Is there a way of re-submitting the connection request? Answer: The answer depends on how they reacted to your original invitation. > If they selected the ‘ignore’ response you can only invite them again if you have their email address. > If they neither ‘accepted’ or ‘ignored’ then you can withdraw the invite and try again. For the latter do this; > My network > Manage all > Sent > Withdraw
That’s it for this week, until next time. |
Sat, 30 June 2018
This weeks episode is all about something that is right in front of us, every time we log in to LinkedIn but it's something that most of us take very little notice of......and I think that's a missed opportunity. I'm talking about data - about companies and their employees. Companies that are our competitors, customers or prospective customers. I think we should all be taking more notice of this data, more of that later but first........ Interesting Stuff I Saw This WeekUnveiling Translations in the LinkedIn Feed When you click on 'See translation' you see this And here's how it compares to Google translate Conclusion: A fantastic feature that will be really beneficial to people who operate in countries like the Netherlands where you want to reach an English and native speaking audience with your posts. It will also be very handy when someone @mentions you in a post that is written in a foreign language - this happens to me at least twice a month! It's not as accurate as Google yet but should improve with time. At First VidCon Summit, LinkedIn Video Creators Celebrate “Special” Community Good to see LinkedIn recognised by the wider video creating community and given a spot at VidCon. I find it fascinating that these LinkedIn video creators, who seem to have come out of nowhere, are gaining almost 'YouTuber' like cult status! I do think that a feature like Instagram stories would be great for Linkedin, such as this; The only issue is that she has had to make this is IGTV (Instagram) so the portrait format looks awful on LinkedIn - hence the need for a way of making this type of video in the LinkedIn app. I believe that the next stage for video on LinkedIn is the combination of video and stories - live streaming is probably the next stage after that but I'm not sure the LinkedIn community is ready for live just yet! LinkedIn DataI was recently sent this article by a listener to the show; Recruiting on LinkedIn adds analytics and pointed questions I'm really not sure I understand the question about the ethics of using this analytics tool to raid a competitor - isn't that what everyone does? This tool just provides better information to allow recruiters to 'poach' those that are more likely to be interested. The ethical question around headhunting has always seemed bizarre to me, to suggest it is wrong would suggest that a company somehow 'owns' its staff - that seems to be on much thinner moral ground (ice) to me! Interestingly enough, someone else had mentioned LinkedIn's new Talent Insights feature to me recently and I had made a note to check it out. If you want to hear LinkedIn talk about it, the video below is set play at the part where they announced Talent Insights at their Talent Intelligence Summit earlier this year. LinkedIn describe Talent Insights as their most exciting product since Recruiter! It will be launched next summer (2019) There are two reports that it provides;
This all seems pretty exciting for Recruiters and it got me thinking about how useful such data could be for other purposes. As I started to think about it I realised that much of the useful data can easily be extracted from Sales Navigator! Take this example; Account search by location, industry and number of employees, then I used the headcount growth slider to identify which companies had seen the highest growth over the last 12 months Furthermore, I can go into that company a drill down to a list of employees, here I can see exactly how long they have been at the company and in their role. This easily highlights those that are new. This can be very useful data used for the following;
Conclusion As is often the case LinkedIn are demonstrating a lack of joined-up thinking. Much (not all) of what this new Talent Insights product provides can be found, quite easily within Sales Navigator already! I'm assuming this new product will come with a hefty price tag and we have to wait at least a year to get it! I've been quite disappointed with Sales Navigator recently. It's pretty hopeless as an engagement tool and LinkedIn.com is easily my preferred tool for posting, commenting etc but the data you can access is really very useful. What are your thoughts? How else could this data be used? You are 100% correct Rose, a company page is required to ensure that your company logo appears in your experience section which in turn ensures that it appears at the top of your profile. I would never suggest that people don't have a company page, you also need it for advertising and it can be useful as a way of getting people to your website. It's a good feature for branding and providing information about your company - it's just a very poor feature for engaging with people. |
Sat, 23 June 2018
Welcome to episode 214. Due to time constraints, this will be a much shorter episode than normal but I did want to focus on company pages and specifically the issues that I have with them. But first..... Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week
LinkedIn Kudos - My thoughts The day after I published last weeks episode, I got the new kudos feature (and the Q code, see below). Having played with Kudos for a while, I'm not that impressed.
I also got the new QR code feature
This not only went viral but it's also a really good post that asks a great question. I like to think I make some good videos but this guy is a real pro (and a listener to the show) Company PagesThis subject came back into my view this week when Tony Restell posted this; Can you believe it?!!! The more I thought about, the more I realised that this was a major weakness of the job posting and company page process on LinkedIn. So I decided to try it out myself! Firstly I took one of my fake/testing accounts and changed their employment to my company on LinkedIn. This has always been a frustration for many of us - literally anyone can say they work for your company! The next stage was to try posting a job As you can see, I made it clear that this was a fake vacancy! The interesting thing was that I was able to use the email address associated to the personal profile so all job applicants would come to that emails inbox! I then set the PPC rate and bingo, the job posted! The only caveat is that despite the above, I actually couldn't find the job on LinkedIn! Could this be because they have blocked the ad? That is possible but I suspect it is actually just a current glitch with job postings. I also had an interesting conversation this week with someone who was advocating the use of their company page "What are you getting from your page" I asked. "We get a high number of page impressions" was the answer. "And what do they give you?" pause...... "It's good brand exposure" Is it really? Company page posts gain almost zero engagement - they often attract Likes (mainly from employees) but very few posts attract comments. If you get comments, you know for a fact that someone is paying attention to your post, in addition it gives you the opportunity to build a relationship with them. It's the main reason to post and by far the most important metric - Likes are 'two a penny', Shares simply don't work and page impressions are a meaningless figure (how do we even know they are true?). If you can prove that your posts (updates) are sending a decent number of people to your website. I don't mean LinkedIn per se, I mean specifically updates. If they are then your activity has some value but otherwise, without comments you are achieving very little (apart from showing that your page is active). Why don't people comment?
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Sat, 16 June 2018
Welcome to episode 213. A big thanks to everyone who contributed with ideas of LinkedIn mistakes/disasters that I can use in a book I’m considering writing. If you have any other stories, please let me know by either sending me a message on LinkedIn (it’s free even if we are not connected) or leave a voicemail (link on the right side of this page) or email me at mark@linkedinformed.com. Some ideas so far;
More of that later….. Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week Groups update - nothing to get too excited about but a recent post in a group managers forum confirmed that progress is still being made and that they see that “success is largely defined by the quality of the discussions and connections formed within Groups”. That sounds promising although at the same time they also suggest that they are working to help group managers in 4 areas - building, growing, engaging and managing. The 2nd one ‘growing’ worries me as I believe that large groups are what caused the problem in the first place. Cisco report. I mentioned this last week but admitted that I hadn’t read it. I have now and it makes for an interesting read;
LinkedIn debuts Your Commute, navigation and maps to evaluate jobs based on how far they are This is quite a nice feature, if it works! My experience was that very few jobs in the UK had a stated location postcode, perhaps because they were added prior to this feature. The couple that I did find both stated the car journey was ‘2+ hours’ - not very helpful! Introducing LinkedIn Kudos: Say Thanks and Show Your Appreciation I don’t have this yet so it’s hard to comment without playing with it properly. How will it be used? Will you be able to search for it - perhaps via a Recruiter account. LinkedIn are either rolling out or testing QR codes for your profile. I can see myself using this as QR codes really haven’t taken off here but it will be an important feature in other countries. Giving Companies More Ways to Learn with LinkedIn Learning Pro This seems like quite a useful feature for large companies Introducing Carousel Ads on LinkedIn These look nice and help with storytelling, although videos are a better way to tell stories. #Communities
As you can see above the feature is accessed in the left side bar. The first thing to note is that your feed has changed. Instead of being ordered by ‘top’ from those you follow who the algorithm thinks you might be interested in, it now shows posts from those you follow who have posted, Liked or Commented with and on #topics you follow. This is much better but only of you refine what you are following. To do this; > click on the ‘Discover more’ link (see arrow above) To do this on mobile you need to tap on the 3 lines shown below It is really important to get this right - only follow topics that fall into one of these categories Something your prospects and customers are interested in These Topics will define the relevance of your feed from now on. You can decide to filter your feed by just one specific topic by selecting it from your list of #topics To make this quicker on desktop you can ‘pin’ your main topics. Once you have set your feed up correctly you should see much better content that gives you plenty more opportunities to engage. The premise here is that we should be focussed more on conversations around relevant topics than around specific people we wish to do business with. LinkedIn are making a major effort to ensure that #topics are widely adopted. Every post you do, as you are writing the text, you are suggested hashtags to use. Having a more relevant feed should improve everyones LinkedIn experience allowing us to ; What I don’t like The are several things that could go wrong. If people # incorrectly or misuse the function to ‘game the system’ our feeds could end up being poor again. The suggested tags feature could increase this issue as I have found it is often suggesting the wrong topics. It is not possible to see what others are interested in. I think it would be better to show what topics someone is following in their profile. This will help us better understand the right topics to follow. To my mind, engagement is at the heart of social selling and yet this feature is nowhere to be seen in Sales Navigator….go figure! Another example of a severe lack of joined up thinking at LinkedIn. |
Sat, 9 June 2018
Welcome to episode 212. A big thanks for all the feedback from last weeks show. Most of you seemed to enjoy Marjorie’s information about ProFinder although I was surprised by a couple of people who felt I shouldn’t have been promoting a service such as ProFinder - the premise being that LinkedIn are creating a market that is free to use (even though it isn’t) and once people are dependent on ProFinder as a source of work, they will start to charge more for it. This week I’m looking for your help… What have you seen happen on LinkedIn that is a good example of a mishap or poor practice? As a starting point, I though I would cover my 5 biggest mistakes I see on LinkedIn and hope that you can help me add to the list.
Airline sources a plane via a LinkedIn post! Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t consider LinkedIn to be a competitor
New LinkedIn Features New Sales Navigator profiles - a definite improvement The people also views has gone but they do have an extra ‘Recommended leads at:’ section that isn’t shown above
Using Stickers and Text to Stand Out on LinkedIn Video ‘How You Match’ feature speeds up time-to-hire Post of the Week This one obviously resonated with me! Thanks to Gary Stockton for sending this one in. Have you seen a post that you really enjoyed recently on LinkedIn? If so drop me a note on LinkedIn or via mark@linkedinformed.com with a link to the post.
The 5 Biggest Mistakes Made on LinkedIn
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Sat, 2 June 2018
Welcome to episode 211, this week’s episode is dedicated entirely to understanding LinkedIn ProFinder. I haven’t used ProFinder as it is currently only available to users in the United States so I found an experienced (and award winning) user who could tell us all about it. Let me introduce Marjorie Kavanagh
ProFinder is LinkedIn’s own professional service marketplace’ where users can search for freelancers, small business owners or interim executives who can provide expertise in a variety of specialist disciplines. You can access ProFinder by going to the ‘More’ menu on LinkedIn desktop Freelancers can apply to be accepted as a ‘Pro’ in up to 10 of the 140 categories available in proFinder. These are broken down into 17 broad categories. Freelancers can apply to be accepted as a ‘Pro’ in up to 10 of the 140 categories available in proFinder. These are broken down into 17 broad categories. How to become a ‘Pro’ To be a successful applicant your main LinkedIn profile must satisfy five key requirements;
Here is Marjorie’s profile; You will then start to receive Request for Proposals (RFP). You are under no obligation to respond but you are advised to respond quickly as up to 5 ‘Pro’s will be sent the RFP and not all are sent at the same time. What does it cost? ProFinder is free for those who wish to appoint a Freelancer. As a Pro, you get your first 10 RFP’s for free (not assignments, just proposals) after that you will need to upgrade your LinkedIn account to a Business Premium Account (currently $60/month)
As someone looking for services you can simply search for specific categories or go to an individuals page (strangely there is no link in their main LinkedIn profile). If there are more than 5 suitable pro’s then the algorithm will select what it considers the best ones (presumably taking into account the number of recommendations). As a pro you will receive a notification by email and in your ProFinder Inbox - this is separate from your main LinkedIn inbox and there is no other way of knowing you have an RFP (this is very poor design in my opinion). There is currently not a mobile app for ProFinder. When responding to an RFP you have to provide a cost estimation or hourly rate and indicate whether you are happy to provide a free 15 minute consultation. Following this you have up to 1500 characters to present your credentials - LinkedIn’s advice is that short and concise works best. You can include links which could be a video introduction or an example of your work. LinkedIn do not require that a client indicate that they have appointed you so it is not currently possible for LinkedIn to assess how successful you have been with your RFP’s in addition your recommendations are from your main LinkedIn profile and not specifically related to your ProFinder work. Summary LinkedIn ProFinder offer a fantastic opportunity to wide range of small business owners and freelancers. There is no doubt that it is still a beta product and in just one conversation I can see several obvious improvements that could be made. If you are in the US, I strongly recommend you check it out to see if any of the categories fit with your business. It could be a great way to outsource certain specialist projects and if you provide such services, an untapped lead generator! |
Sat, 26 May 2018
Welcome to episode 210, I’m back after a very restful week in the sun in Cape Verde and was surprised to see very little news about LinkedIn circulating the internet over the last couple of weeks so this is going to be a shorter than normal episode.
Another example of scammers using LinkedIn in this article. This really highlights the need to be a bit more careful who we connect with, for everyones benefit. LinkedIn Announces New Sales Navigator Capabilities
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Sat, 19 May 2018
Welcome to episode 209, this week we have a pre-recorded interview with Kris Holland who is a Marketing Manager with a specialist recruitment business called Charlton Morris Kris and I engaged on LinkedIn following on from my posts about content marketing as covered in episode 204. Kris was keen to explain that content marketing had been working well for them so I thought it would be great to get him on the show. Takeaways Content should be designed to start conversations Here is the LinkedIn article we often referred to in this interview. I hope you found that an interesting interview. How many recruitment businesses do you know who focus this heavily of content and understanding their specialist markets? Let me know if you are aware of any companies, in any sector that you believe are using content effectively on LinkedIn. |
Sat, 12 May 2018
Welcome to episode 208, this week I am revisiting the search algorithm. If you are a long term listener you will recall that I tested the search algorithm a year ago in episode 161 and I promised that I would conduct the same test every year to check if the algorithm had changed……..and guess what, it has!
Shameless drug dealers using LINKEDIN to sell Class A narcotics. I’m afraid this is classic British tabloid sensationalism! The profile of Scott Bush has already been deactivated and I could find very little other drug selling activity. LinkedIn Updates LinkedIn is now rolling out suggested hashtags in posts as per this voicemail from Lynnaire Johnston. Post of the Week I just love the positivity of this brilliant post from Michael Spence LinkedIn SEO 2018 How easy is it to find your profile in a LinkedIn Search? This is why I carry out a test every year to check what is important to ensure that your profile is correctly optimised for search. WARNING : It's not an exact science! Don't get me wrong, there will be an exact science to this but no-one knows what it is apart from a select group of 'higher beings' who reside in some dark room at LinkedIn's headquarters in Sunnyvale, CA. This group are sworn to secrecy so we will never know the answer to this mystery.......but we can perform some practical tests to get a better 'sense' of what is important in a profile. The Test I used 4 accounts for this test (my own and 3 others I was kindly given access to). Account 1 - 9900 connections, highly active, based in Warrington, Cheshire, UK I performed the following search from each of these accounts (within minutes of each other) Keywords : copywriting OR copywriter and filtered by 'people' Initially the results were analysed without any further filters.Initially the results were analysed without any further filters.
Keywords
Conclusion: If you can identify someone who you think might be searching for someone like you (for instance a Recruiter in a company you wish to work for), consider following them rather than connecting. How important is LinkedIn SEO? If you are a jobseeker, it's extremely important. The vast majority of searches performed on LinkedIn are by Recruiters and you should optimise your profile in line with these results.
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Sat, 5 May 2018
Welcome to episode 207, this week I had the pleasure of chatting with Simon Bourne from The Hand Dyed Shoe Company. Simon is a classic example of what can be achieved when you use LinkedIn to develop an authentic personal brand.
Takeaways LinkedIn has massive untapped potential to develop your brand |
Sat, 28 April 2018
Welcome to episode 206. As the new desktop profile design continues to roll-out to many, I thought it would make sense to cover profiles with you in this episode.
LinkedIn’s AutoFill plugin could leak user data, secret fix failed Facebook faces exodus as businesses call time Facebook's new slogan: 'If you think we're not good for your business, leave' Always Customise Your LinkedIn Invitation? Better not? LinkedIn Features The new mobile ‘Find Nearby’ seems to be broken! Post of the Week Following on from last weeks episode on content marketing I thought I would highlight this excellent post from John Espirian. Great advice…and great subtitles too! Refresh Your Profile With the new profile design rolling out to many of you I thought it would be a good time to make some changes to your profile. As a starting point I posted this video this week showing a side by side comparison A Scientific Explanation Of The NEW LinkedIn Profile Some of you will have to change your background image because of the new position of the profile picture. It is unlikely to change on mobile where it is still centred. This is not a massive issue as the background image is less important on mobile, but worth considering. The easiest way to create a background image is to find a suitable free image on Pixabay and upload it to Canva and then create a ‘custom dimension’ of 1584x396 px It may also be a good time to invest in a new, professionally taken headshot image. This is no longer an expensive thing to do and you should easily be able to find a good local headshot photographer on LinkedIn, just type the following into the searcher at the top of the page; Review your headline : Is there clarity to your prospects? Are you using your 120 characters wisely? Company Logo; The most recently commenced position will be the one that shows a logo at the top of your new profile. Make sure that if you have several concurrent positions that the most important one is at the top (you can move them by dragging the 4 horizontal lines) Summary: This has increased from 2 to 3 lines (roughly 300 characters) now. A good summary should start with your contact details (only 45 characters are seen on mobile) and the rest should provide an enticing ‘teaser’ to encourage the viewer to click on the now more prominent ‘show more’ Media: As there are now 6 thumbnails that actually show in the preview, it may be a good time to review which media you are using and perhaps designing them so that the thumbnails (which are much smaller) show what the media is. Skills: If you are into skills (I’m really not!) then you might want to use the new format as an excuse to review what you show (see Greg Coopers post above) |
Sat, 21 April 2018
Welcome to episode 205, this week I’m joined by Robert Indries to discuss content marketing on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn are changing Middle East and African accounts onto US based contracts as from May 8th to avoid GDPR compliance.
LinkedIn Tips to Keep Your Profile Fresh includes reference to new profile design Content Marketing I chatted with Robert Indries about how content marketing can work on LinkedIn but only if it is done in the right way. Key points
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Sat, 14 April 2018
Welcome to episode 204, this week I want to return to the increasingly important subject of video, not just native video but the wider use of video on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn Updates LinkedIn appear to be trialling the compulsory use of hashtags in posts. Goof idea or not? GIFs have returned to LinkedIn! They are now accessible only in the Messages feature and interestingly via a 3rd party source called Tenor. This itself interests me as LinkedIn have shown reluctance to work with 2rd parties previously .(see emoji’s and video filters). Here is a link to the article. I’m a bit mixed up when it comes to GIF’s, in theory I shouldn’t like them as they are usually pretty stupid……but I keep finding myself using them so I think I’m going to have to come out and say it…….I’m a Giffer!
Whilst I wouldn’t advise posting YouTube, Vimeo and other external links to videos as posts, they can still provide excellent content to add to Articles and your profile in the media section under the Summary, Experience and Education sections. With the forthcoming changes to profiles, 5 pieces of media will show in the profile which potentially allows you to do more with adding videos into your profile. Whether it be Native LinkedIn video or other sources, the guidelines are the same. In the podcast I highlight some examples of people who are posting awful, ‘Vcard’ type videos with boring, sales content. Whilst tempting, this really does you no favours! The best type of video content (as a post or in media in your profile) will include; Post of the week Of course if you were really brave you could also record yourself singing as Page Kemna does in this ‘singing Résumé post that went viral recently. Even Jeff Weiner felt the need to comment on this one! Thanks to Giles Davis for highlighting this I keep hitting the commercial use limit. I can’t afford to upgrade my account so do you have any tips to avoid this problem? ANSWER; Commercial use limit is defined by LinkedIn as; This information from LinkedIn gives us some handy clues as to how to navigate around the limit. Reduce unnecessary profile views |
Sat, 7 April 2018
Welcome to episode 203, after a weeks break for the Easter holidays we are back and this week I want to talk about engagement……quite possibly the single most important thing you should consider when using LinkedIn!
I have mixed feelings about this, as you know I love video and the ability to post videos from a company page is a positive thing but then again, the people that manage company pages tend to be stuck in a mindset of promotion……so we can expect to see a lot of boring corporate, ‘look at how amazing we are’ videos….joy! I still think video from a personal page is by far the best way to encourage engagement.
New Feature LinkedIn are now rolling out the ‘find nearby’ I have mentioned previously to mobile apps (roll-out is ‘account specific’ not ‘device specific’). Engagement Promotion simply doesn’t work on LinkedIn…or at least, it very rarely works so that poses the following question; “If we are using LinkedIn to win new business and promotion doesn’t work…why bother with LinkedIn?” The answer is simple: LinkedIn allows you to achieve two key things that will help you win more business; Increased visibility. Both of these factors are achieved by one thing…….Engagement Engagement - the development of conversations on LinkedIn. This is the key to success in my opinion. How to engage The first point about finding the right content is dependant on searching for content (keywords and Hashtags) as well as ensuring your homepage feed is full of comment-worthy posts. This is achieved by; The algorithm has to make decisions as to what to show you in your feed, if it showed you every post from every connection you wouldn’t be able to make any sense of it. There are probably more factors, LinkedIn doesn’t tell us how this is done but we know it’s an algorithm and that can only work from data/activity based instructions. You need to think of yourself as being a ‘programmer’ through your actions. This is important to consider in terms of what you see but even more important to consider when you are posting! Who will see your post and can you influence this in your activities? Some people have suggested that LinkedIn should allow us to control our own feed…this is unrealistic as very few would use it. |
Sat, 24 March 2018
Welcome to episode 202, this week I don’t really have one main subject to cover but I guess the most eye grabbing headline is that LinkedIn have decided to re-design profiles….again!
The Bible of LinkedIn Bollocks
New Profile Design About a year ago, most people were seeing the new design for the first time, The basic (free) version of LinkedIn had a complete makeover including a new design for profiles…..and now they have decided the re-design profiles again!! Firstly let me make it clear that these new profiles are in the early stage of roll-out so very few of you will see this. I also don’t have this new design, the above screenshot was sent to me by my good friend and fellow LinkedIn Trainer Angus Grady. Please Note: Roll out of new features is per account, not per profile. You might think this is the same but it isn’t. Angus’ LinkedIn account is part of the early roll-out, not his profile. When I view his profile, it has the picture in the centre but when he views it (or any other) he sees the new design with the picture on the left. Also please note: Another misconception about new features is that there rollout is based on geography…it is not! The amount of times someone states “we don’t have it yet here in X” drives me crazy! Because I don’t have this yet, I haven’t been able to test if the links and features are different or whether it’s purely a cosmetic change. One thing is for sure, there are plenty of people out there who are going to have to change their background image! So what do you think of the change of design? Multiple Image Posts on Desktop An image post made of up to 9 images has been a feature of the LinkedIn mobile app for sometime but recently LinkedIn quietly made it possible on Desktop, this is great news for company page admins who are not able to mange their page via mobile. To add images via a PC simply use the ctrl+click or cmd+click on Mac to select multiple images (or the click+shift feature for a complete line of files). Video Filters LinkedIn Video: Stand Out with Filters and Text Ok, maybe it’s just me but those filters just look ridiculous! They remind me of the equally ugly emojis in Messages that no-one uses!
Er…no! He followed that up with this article The thing is, I don’t believe ‘Broetry’ was ever a reason why he got high numbers in the first place. All that matters in a post is that it’s more than 3 lines long, this will ensure it triggers the ‘See more’ and if people click on that, the algorithm will automatically push the post out to more people. It doesn’t matter if it’s easy to read or a big, ugly block of text. If the first 3 lines are enough to tempt me to click or tap on ‘see more’ it will get more views. As far as Josh is concerned, his numbers are still amazing so I don’t really know what his is complaining about. The algorithm has to limit the amount of content in our feed or it would be unmanageable so a reduction in views is inevitable....the same thing happened with Articles. This is simply a consequence of success, if you get high views and engagement, other will copy and as they get higher views, your will go down. That’s all there is to it….no conspiracy!
Posting Statistics A listener Mark Lee decided to conduct his own experiment on the success of his posts on LinkedIn and he has been generous enough to share the numbers and conclusions with me. Mark’s target audience is Accountants and small Accountancy firms The analysis goes back to the start of December, initially he was posting links to his or other Blogs via IFTTT, this was soon halted in favour of long, text only posts. His conclusions are as follows; My observations |
Sat, 17 March 2018
Welcome to episode 201, this week I return to our normal format and the main subject is something that has been playing on my mind for a while, in some respects I think it can be the ‘elephant in the room’ for a social media or LinkedIn Trainer / Coach …..What do you do if your prospects are not socially active on LinkedIn or any social media platform? More of that later, but to start with….
Post of the week Actually this was from the previous week when the ‘beast from the East’ hit the UK. I also posted a video this week of a feature that has been bugging me for a while…..why can’t you ‘Ignore’ an invite from a profile? #LinkedInLocal Manchester I would estimate we had about 70-85 people at the inaugural #LinkedInLocal event in Manchester. How Do You Win Business on LinkedIn with a disengaged audience? This topic has been on my mind for sometime and I decided to cover it in this episode when I received this excellent video question from Paolo Lanciani I asked Paolo to share his ideas on this subject and here is what he had to say; That is great feedback and fits with many of my thoughts on the subject. I also asked for more thoughts and ideas in this post; You can read all the comments but the main ones I would highlight are; John Espirian wrote; Michael Spencer added; As you would imagine LinkedIn Ads expert AJ Wilcox had something to say about that! For me, Michaels approach is about laser sharp focus for content. This is ultimately possible (you can send a link to a post or article to anyone on LinkedIn with a premium account or your connections on a free account but he is referring to hitting high numbers….and we are back to a numbers game again! My view is that the key to this is having an intimate and deep knowledge of your target audience. This will allow you to post relevant, interest content in a format that is easy to consume. Paolo posts short ‘on the move’ videos which reflect the nature of the way his audience behave. Post on a consistent, regular basis. Don’t expect your audience to always see it but at some point someone will and they may refer you or a target might view your profile and see your content there. People do not have to be active to notice you, just an occasional visit to LinkedIn may allow them to see your content. |
Sat, 10 March 2018
Welcome to this momentous occasion and our 200th episode, this week I wanted to do something special to celebrate this landmark so rather than the normal format I am going to be covering the top five episodes (as defined by the number of times they were downloaded) out of the 199 recorded and published so far. I really love this show, it’s become my main form of content these days and the best way to keep people in touch and up to date with LinkedIn. It all started in November 2013 when I decided to finally give it a go and promised smells that I would give it 20 episodes and see whether it was worth continuing after that! So here we are, over 4 years later and with over 85,000 downloads we have finally reached our 200th episode. This podcast is really all about you, the listener so I thought it would be a good idea to include contributions from regular listeners.
Number 5 Number 4 Thanks for all your support, questions and feedback over the last four years, I really appreciate it and I wouldn’t be able to do this show without your continued input.
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Sat, 24 February 2018
Welcome to episode 199. Well what an amazing response we had to last weeks debate with John Nemo about LinkedIn automation!
Introducing Salary Insights on Jobs
I received this question prior to last weeks episode and I thunk it hits on a really important question I enjoy John’s (Nemo) podcasts too and find them to be useful. He also believes in providing value which aligns well with your strategy and what I believe in. That said, on the providing value yet pushy scale, John is totally different from you which is why I appreciate your style a lot more. The question for you though is how does one avoid being pushy like John, provides value like you both do, but also builds a solid bridge to the services that are provided by you and/or your organization. For example I have now downloaded and heard at least 20+ of your past episodes. I love them! I love your style. However I am not sure what you do besides some LinkedIn workshops which you have very briefly mentioned on your podcast. Of course I know I can go on your web site and find out, but isn’t that a lost opportunity? If I run into someone tomorrow that needs services you can provide but I don’t know about them, wouldn’t that be a loss for you? The reason I ask is that I have also approached my networking in person with the same mentality. I have for years provided lots of value to people in the business community here in Washington DC. They love me and the relationships are strong. But I am not sure most would know what opportunities to pass on to me. Of course that’s why I am getting more active on LinkedIn and working on content generation but also find somethings John talks about to be appealing. Eg automating messages to contacts...which add value and lead them to more ‘sales’ options. Anyway, just a thought about balance on the spectrum of ‘pushy ness’ and how you build an effective bridge to sales for people that see you as a credible resource
Define your product or service and it’s target audience (customer avatar) Go deeper. As you engage with relevant people (not just potential customers) selectively take it to the next level by suggesting meeting for a coffee or via a Skype/Zoom call.
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Sat, 17 February 2018
Welcome to episode 198, this week I have a real treat for you! I have thought about this a lot and my conclusion is that automation tools are a bad thing for all of us and the more they are used, the less effective LinkedIn will become. Darrel Griffin agrees But not everyone sees it that way…..enter John Nemo! John is a LinkedIn trainer and a big fan of automation on LinkedIn so I thought it would be fun to get him on the show and have a good old debate! We get into all sorts of areas during our discussion and I’m not going to even attempt to cover everything here, you will have to listen to the episode but in short; John believes I believe
https://www.inc.com/john-nemo/1-simple-strategy-that-will-skyrocket-your-engagement-on-linkedin.html I personally wouldn’t recommend that strategy……but that is entirely up to you! So what do you think? Please get in touch and let me have your views. Send me a voicemail or drop me an email to mark@linkedinformed.com |
Sat, 10 February 2018
Welcome to episode 197, I’m back and it’s just me this week. Someone alerted me to a shocking issue regarding invitations to connect this week and it got me thinking about the ineffective way that LinkedIn introduce new features. It seems that introduce features on a slow roll-out and rely on their users to report issues…..but what if we don’t or aren’t able to spot a problem…….based on the evidence of this week, it appears that such issues just remain until someone does report it. More of that later but as usual I scanned the internet to find any interesting articles about Linkedin, I found a few but it has been noticeable this year that LinkedIn’s own blog seems to be focussed mainly on job seekers - very few LinkedIn users are looking for jobs so why are Linkedin writing virtually all their blog articles for jobseekers?
People Still Spend an Insane Amount of Time on Facebook, But Trust it Much Less than LinkedIn #LinkedInLocal I will be attending three Linkedin local events in the next month or so; The #LinkedInLocal concept is really taking off with an amazing 48 events happening in February and March across the world including Bristol, Leeds, San Francisco, Paris, Las Vegas, Edinburgh and Lahore to name a few To find an event in your area go to https://linkedlocally.com/explore/
Post of the Week A great video post from José Chávez-Ruz that hits the mark for being relevant, interesting and highly shareable.
New Feature LinkedIn are improving the skills endorsements feature (mobile only at the moment). Now when you endorse a skill you are asked to grade the level And then give it some context In addition you can now see the actual number of endorsements on mobile, rather than the previous 99+ Will this make skill endorsements relevant?
I was truly shocked to find this out this week - thanks to an eagle eyed connection who spotted it. This is, I believe a direct result of LinkedIns ridiculous feature launch policy that appears to involve zero testing or quality control and relies 100% on the user reporting a problem……but what is the user is unable or highly unlikely to spot the fault? It’s time that LinkedIn stopped letting their members down and implemented a proper, thorough quality control testing procedure. Do you agree? “How do I stop those irritating badge posts from LinkedIn appearing on the left of my screen while I'm working? The ones which talk about how it bases choices it offers me on my interests or posts or some such nonsense. I've only really noticed them this week” ANSWER |
Sat, 3 February 2018
Welcome to episode 196, this week I chat with personal branding expert Jennifer Holloway about the article that LinkedIn bring out every year highlighting the most used words in LinkedIn profiles. Click on the image above to view the full article Takeaways from our chat Some words (such as passionate) are overused in profiles without much thought going into whether they are true or not
Thanks again to Jennifer for her time and ideas. You can find out more about her from her LinkedIn profile (link in image above) or by going to her website https://www.jennifer-holloway.co.uk/ This weeks question comes from Mahan Tavakoli “Hi Mark, |
Sat, 27 January 2018
Welcome to episode 195, I had planned to cover a different subject (The dangers of automation - let me know your thoughts on that!) this week but then I got an excellent voicemail question from Giles about the differences between following and connecting and decided to cover that subject in more detail. But before that……
Find the Right Words to Land the Right Job
LinkedIn are clearing ‘moving the furniture’ on desktop at the moment, so many things are not working - especially @mentions and notifications. I also found that only half the comments on one of my posts were showing when I checked on mobile. Suggest you keep an eye on mobile at the moment until things settle down.
As I mentioned, this subject was instigated by a question I received from Giles;
Definition: Following someone means that you could see their content and activity in your feed (articles, posts, shares, likes and comments). You can follow anyone on LinkedIn provided their setting allow this. You can follow up to 5000 people who are not your connections. To follow someone simply click on the 3 dot ‘More’ menu at the top of their profile or look for the Follow button on the Activity section of their profile. Connecting A connection is a follower and someone you follow by default. You can unfollow a connection at anytime from the ‘More’ menu. You are allowed up to 30,000 connections. The difference with a connection is that, as well as their activity you are able to see and filter their connections (dependant on their setting), send messages and see their full contact info including their primary email address. Now to Giles question Firstly let me address the question of blocking. This is the only way you can prevent him from following you
What harm can come from him seeing your activity - assuming you are not giving away commercially sensitive information? This brings up a wider point; The ethics of competition on LinkedIn; Is it ethical to provide advice and demonstrate your knowledge on a competitors post? When to follow and NOT connect A complete stranger whose content you find interesting Obviously 1 and 3 may be pre-cursors to connecting. Following has been around on LinkedIn for years but still most people just connect, it’s beginning to be understood better but we still have a way to go. When I talk with people who are more familiar with other social networks, I explain the mechanics of LinkedIn as being like a blend of Twitter, where you follow and Facebook where you connect (friend). On LinkedIn you can do either! This weeks question is also about following and comes from Nigel Willis
Nigels first question refers to following Influencers such as Bill gates. Influencers have become known for posting some decent content but never engaging with comments, this somewhat flies in the face of the point of content in my opinion! I’m not surprised you want to unfollow Bill and as far as I know it will not cause you any issues with the algorithm. |
Sat, 20 January 2018
Welcome to episode 194, this week I have a chat with my friend and fellow LinkedIn trainer/consultant Sandra Long about personal branding.
Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week
I have mentioned previously that I’m aware that LinkedIn are currently working on a project to improve groups and this week they sent out a communication advising of several changes that will happen soon. My thoughts;
This week I had a chat with LinkedIn expert Sandra Long. Personal branding was one of my predictions for 2018 covered in episode 192 and a subject I believe to be very important to all of us. I even covered it briefly in the first ever episode of LinkedInformed when I introduced ‘Personal Branding for Brits’ author Jennifer Holloway Key takeaways Tom Peters article The Brand Called You which is still just as relevant today as when it was written in 1997!
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Sat, 13 January 2018
Welcome to episode 193 and a very happy and prosperous new year to you all. I trust everyone had a fantastic break over Christmas. Towards the end of last year I conducted a survey of LinkedIn users to see how behaviour had changed on LinkedIn. I had a sense that the results would be interesting……and I wasn’t disappointed! In this episode I will go through the results with you but before that….
New LinkedIn Feature Invitation Sorting I think an additional catergory of “customized with a message” would also be helpful as, when I do have a lot to go through, I always prefer to read those with messages first.
I still don’t have the feature but if you do and have been using it, I would love to hear how well it has worked for you.
Thanks to Carl for sending this one in. This is actually pretty easy to do yourself, but only if you have access to a Sales Navigator or Recruiter account. For some reason the url’s on those interfaces ignore the customised version and show the original source url with your number in it The 2017 LinkedIn User Survey Results We had 780 responses in total, thank you to everyone who took the time to complete the questions. The average number of connections was 2178 We had five people who had reached the maximum 30,000 connections. The highest number of followers was 205,000 (11,658 were connections) and equally impressive was someone who had 165,231 followers including only 1903 connections! As for the rest of the questions, the full results can be seen below; |
Sat, 23 December 2017
Welcome to episode 192 and a very merry Christmas to all of you. There has been very little news about LinkedIn this week but I did native the following two related articles;
What we got right — and terribly wrong — in our 2017 predictions LinkedIn are, as always, keeping very tight lipped about their plans for 2018 so I thought it would be fun to take a stab at what I think the likely trends for LinkedIn in 2018 will be. LinkedIn in 2018Increased use of #Hashtags. Hashtags re-emerged in 2017 but next year they will become mainstream and ‘trending hashtags’ will become an important feature that we will all be using extensively by the end of the year. Please note that ALL the above predictions are total guesswork on my behalf. I have no inside knowledge on what might actually happen! Thanks to everyone for contributing to the 2017 LinkedIn User survey. I will compiling the results in January and expect to announce the results on either the first or second episode of 2018. If you didn’t get time before, way not help out now by taking a few minutes to answer the questions below; That’s it for this week and for this year! We will be back with the first episode of 2018 on January 13th Happy Christmas Happy Christmas to you all, enjoy the break, open time with your families and switch LinkedIn off for a week or so! See you next year. |
Sat, 16 December 2017
Welcome to episode 191, this week I’m going to cover a topic I tackle almost on a daily basis at the moment…..How to know what subjects to post about on LinkedIn. But before I get onto that……
The Crappy Handbook of LinkedIn Profile Pics |
Fri, 8 December 2017
Welcome to episode 190, it seems that many people are talking about the mysterious LinkedIn algorithm, myself included! I can’t believe how many of these people are still blaming the algorithm for the poor performance of their content, it’s not the algorithm folks, it’s your content!…… But before I get stuck into that, here are a few things I came across this week Interesting Stuff I Saw This WeekPeople Are Flooding LinkedIn With Strange Stories. We’re Calling Them Broetry. Native video problemsA number of people have been seeing error messages on native LinkedIn videos this week It would appear that simply refreshing your page often sorts this out, if not then try clearing your cache. |
Sat, 2 December 2017
Welcome to episode 189, not much news this week but I do have a couple of new features to share with you and a cool thing plus I feel the need for a rant!…..more later.
‘LinkedIn degrees’ from global providers ‘could leave UK behind’
New Features Double tap to Like This new mobile feature is copied straight from Instagram and is definitely aimed at millennial who tend to move through their streams much more quickly and ‘thumb tap’ rather than finger tap as us ‘oldies’ tend to New Magnet Posts This feature is in the early stages of roll out so you may not see it yet but it’s a good one! When you create a post on a mobile app you now get the option to specify to send it to the homepage of (and potentially notify) followers who have specific skills - via a magnet icon. This means that the distribution of your post will initially only be to targeted followers - it may of course reach further as they like or comment on it. When you receive such a post in your feed you will see which skills you have that match the specified ones and you are encouraged to ‘Add your thoughts’ The only problem is that the skills you pick have to be skills that you also have on your profile. This seems like an unnecessary criteria to me and will result in people adding false skills to their profile just so they can target people they are interested in. You can tell these posts said because the skills specified and those you match are clearly identified All that said, it’s a great new feature and hopefully we will all have the opportunity to use it soon.
Whilst conducting some research this week I was stunned by the amount of people that are still wasting time and resources in posting external links. Its a waste of time….virtually no-one see’s it! I’m somewhat puzzled by this. Do these people not care that there is zero engagement and views? Maybe I’m wrong and they are getting huge numbers to their website….I doubt it! It seems to me that it is taking people a long time to shift their habits from the ‘share relevant content to build trust’ into ‘build trust through engagement. I suspect much of this is just people who have set up automatic sharing via aggregate and scheduling tools so they don’t really notice - the problem is that it messes up their ‘ranking’ with LinkedIn algorithm making it harder to reach many people, even if their posts are better. Maybe it’s just extremely hard for people to break long established habits? The ‘post interesting content and bring people to your website’ mantra has been around for a long time but does it really work? I personally found that it didn’t What do you think? Are you still posting links? If you want to post a link you need to do it manually as I showed recently in this video Evernote Business Card Connecting This isn’t actually a new, just something I had forgotten existed! This is a great tool to use when at a physical networking event. This video shows you exactly what to do Before you can use this you need to make a few adjustments to your Evernote app and account. This feature is only available to Premium Evernote users Go to Account > Settings Now tap on Camera Now tap into ‘Business cards’ And now you will see the option to connect the app with your LinkedIn account You can’t customise the invitations so I would only use this whilst you are actually with the person but it can be a great way to ensure that you always quickly and efficiently remember to connect! How can I see who is following me? This feature is exactly the same on desktop and mobile but it’s not where you would expect it! Go to your profile and scroll down to your activity and you will see a blue link ‘Manage Followers’ next to the number of followers The following list will always start with your followers (as opposed to connections who are followers). If you see the option to follow them back then you know they are not a connection, scroll down until the option ceases and it states that you are already ‘following’ these will (mostly) be your connections. |
Sat, 25 November 2017
Welcome to episode 188, this week I had some very sad news, one of the clipper race crew was swept overboard and tragically lost his life - devastating for his family and also extremely unnerving for all the other crews. I can’t begin to imagine how they carry on from this. It highlights just how dangerous this race is and impressed on me even more just what Brendan Hall had to go through when he won the race previously. Brendan incidentally released his new speaker showreel this week; I had an interesting chat with Stoke School student Tim Collins who has been using LinkedIn along with some of his friends recently and has been impressed with the authenticity and kindness shown to him by LinkedIn members……(give it time Tim!). You can hear that interview later in the episode but firstly. Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week Trends in marketing investments: LinkedIn starts to establish status? New Features Some people have reported seeing a new design to the search page. This is clearly of on LinkedIn annoying A/B tests but doesn’t it look awful? You can now embed posts into your website, just as I have done several times in this post, including the video below. This can be done on anyone’s posts including your own but isn’t available to everyone yet (roll out). LinkedIn are now officially launching their new ‘Career Advice’ feature which is closely allied to the mentoring feature. More in this video; What You Saw On LinkedIn This Week This could become an interesting new feature if you get involved! I really liked this one sent in my listener Carl this week. I can’t wait to see how that develops! So from now, when you spot something interesting, take a note of the url and send it to me. My LinkedIn Survey I announced this last week and I was terrified that my target of 1000 respondents was going to be too hard to reach…..I might have been right! Over the last week I have managed to gather 300 respondents but that leaves me woefully short so…. Please take a few mins out of your day to complete the survey and then share it with your network. A Millennial’s view - LinkedIn is Authentic, collaborative and refreshingly ‘real’ Listener Anna McAfee pointed out to me a video posted by 3 school kids made while they are waiting for parent evening to start. I really enjoyed hearing what an 18 year old makes of LinkedIn, especially in comparison to Facebook (old and dated) and Instagram (lacks authenticity) This is Tim’s Video post I love the way he was brave enough to know that is was far from ‘perfect’ or ‘professional’ and post it anyway…….if an 18 year old can then why can’t you? (assuming you have video) And this is the post he referred to when talking about ‘it’s about who you know’ No questions for this week. Please feel to drop me a line or leave a voicemail of you want your question featured on the show. |
Sat, 18 November 2017
Welcome to episode 187, this week we are back to the normal format after a few weeks of interviews. I would really appreciate your help with compiling a survey of how LinkedIn users have changed their behaviour over the last 12 months or so. Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week 60% users from Russia remain on LinkedIn after year of blocking
Active status is coming to your home page feed. We are used to seeing the green dots in messaging but they will soon be seen elsewhere on LinkedIn, which is a great move. There does seem to be some confusion as to what each one means so just for clarity;
You can adjust your settings for active status if you wish under ‘privacy’ in your settings I had this for about 2 weeks but it has disappeared again now, it’s a great feature though and I’m looking forward to it becoming permanent once they have completed their testing.
Posting External Links - New Method I saw this Article from Andy Foster and decided to make a video post about it. The bigger question is whether posting links at all makes any sense. LinkedIn Search Results When searching LinkedIn you will get results from anyone that meets your criteria but they won’t all be visible to you, however there are some people beyond your 3rd tier that are still visible.
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Sat, 11 November 2017
Welcome to episode 186, this week I really enjoyed chatting with Leif Carlsen, A social selling expert and podcaster from Denmark. Leif and I chat about a range of things in the episode; ROI - Return on InvestmentIt's difficult to measure The future of social sellingLess about content marketing and more about engagement Company PagesI believe that company pages have very limited use, primarily because people do business with people. ArticlesLeif has found that Google will find articles but only if the content is of the highest quality. |
Sat, 4 November 2017
Welcome to episode 185, this week I’m doing my annual ‘escape from the wet and cold of Britain’ week in Spain so I thought I would treat you to one of the most popular podcast episodes I have ever produced. I’m sure many of heard you have heard me talk about the florist from Grimsby who is killing it on LinkedIn….well this is the interview I did with her in May 2015 on a since retired podcast called Winbusinessin…..enjoy! |
Sat, 28 October 2017
Welcome to episode 184, this week I’m expanding on the subject of the meteoric rise of LinkedIn in terms of engagement and activity and I want to to focus on some of the key characters behind that change - the class of 2017! But before I get to that….. Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week HiQ turn to crowdfunding to fight LinkedIn’s legal appeal of a recent court decision The Class of 2017 (plus Oleg!) When we look back in years to come we will see 2017 as being THE year LinkedIn really became a mainstream social media platform. 2008 was a similar year, that was when LinkedIn initially became widely used but this year is different. It’s not so much that LinkedIn are attracting new members, it’s more that more users are engaging on LinkedIn. Here is a list of some of the most impressive and influential members of the class of 2017 (in no particular order) Michaela Alexis I’m sure I have missed some important names, so please do not be offended if I have not listed you! I’m not stating that I agree with everything these members do on LinkedIn but they are definitely pace setters in this new age of LinkedIn engagement. Take a look at their posts and you will see similar patterns; As I have stated before, some of them post things that I think are not always suitable for LinkedIn but who am I to argue with the level of engagement those posts get? This weeks questions are all regarding last weeks topic of GDPR and were all aimed at Jeremy Kajendran following his interview. Jeremy has been very generous in answering all the questions I sent him by recording his answers. Topics covered were; |
Sat, 21 October 2017
Welcome to episode 183, this week I am dedicating the whole episode to this much requested subject. GDPR is coming next year whether we like it or not so it’s time to start educating ourselves on the dangers and opportunities this presents. With that in mind I have taken time to speak with three individuals, two of which are interviewed on this show. My first interview is with Privacy, Cyber Security and Risk Advisor Jeremy Kajendran who is the UK Privacy Practice Leader for EY Key points from Jeremy;
Jeremy’s InfoRisky Podcast. I also had a chat with Kim Bradford who also specialises in GDPR but tends to focus on it from the perspective of small businesses and solopreneurs. Advice from Kim; If you process data on anyone, you need to register with the ICO in the UK. Data can in theory include keeping their email asking you to take them to remove your data! Advice from Kim; If you process data on anyone, you need to register with the ICO in the UK. Data can in theory include keeping their email asking you to take them to remove your data! |
Sat, 14 October 2017
Welcome to episode 182, lots to tell you about this week so no main subject as such. Firstly I want to correct something I mentioned in last weeks show under the title ‘The State of Groups’ It seems that, on closer examination, the stated number of pending members isn’t actually accurate! Thanks to Carl for putting me right on that one! Another correction from last week regarding GDPR. Asked if you had any questions and a number of you did. I will be interviewing an expert on the matter soon so I will make sure all your questions are answered (keep sending them in). Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week LinkedIn opens it’s new EMEA HQ offices in Dublin. |
Sat, 7 October 2017
Welcome to episode 181, this weeks episode is focussed on an interview with Janet Murray from Soulful PR. I appeared on her podcast recently and since then she has been achieving great things with LinkedIn so I thought you would all like to hear from her. But first… Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week Bumblebizz is now live!
Key things I took from this episode;
Win a free 60 minute PR strategy session with Janet (worth £300+vat). You can enter this free prize draw by entering your details below Links to other things mentioned in this interview; Cara Mackay’s LinkedIn profile If you have any questions that you want me to ask Janet, I will be happy to do so if you drop me a voicemail (link on the right edge of this page) or email me at mark@linkedinfomed.com |
Sat, 30 September 2017
Welcome to episode 180, it’s been a busy week for me, I nearly didn’t get time to put this episode together but I’m glad I managed to because I want to talk about the revolution that is happening before out very eyes. Clipper Race Update They won!! Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week
Interesting article, although a bit technical! Quote ‘we’ve built a scalable comment ranking system that uses machine learning (ML) to provide a personalized conversational experience to each member visiting the LinkedIn content ecosystem.’ Previously LinkedIn had a very basic way of ordering the comments in a thread; ‘The default mode for ranking comments on the feed was rank by recency: if you were the last person to post a comment on a popular thread, your comment would show up first. We had no understanding of the comment’s content, no notion of personalization, and no knowledge of the engagement that these comments were drawing.’ Comments are now assessed via machine learning where factors such as;
It would appear that you only see a comment from one of your connections on a thread that is already attracting plenty of engagement. This shows the importance of getting quick traction to any post…once you get early engagement then the algorithm will share subsequent comments to more of each commenters connections (interestingly they use the term connections and not followers). Comments, Likes and Shares are up by more than 60% in 2017 - wow! The machine-learned model below shows what affects what you see with regards to comments This tells us that to gain greater visibility on LinkedIn we need to think about;
Overall, whilst a bit ‘techie’ this is a valuable insight into how LinkedIn programme their algorithm.
This seems pretty similar to the ‘Rapportive’ Gmail plugin and the Sales Navigator Gmail plugin although from the screenshots, it does appear to provide a little more information. With the amount of people who use Microsoft Office 365 this doers highlight just how important your LinkedIn profile is to you! The State of Groups Many groups have been left to fester by their owners as can be seen by these shocking numbers of ‘pending members’ in some of the groups I am in on LinkedIn. Not all groups are this bad and some are still well, run and valuable but the engagement on LinkedIn is now all in the stream and not in groups. Let’s Not Get Too Honest! Have you seen the trending #hashtag on LinkedIn #letsgethonest? LinkedIn have even feature it in this new feature as seen below; This involves posting something honest and vulnerable about yourself and nominating others to do the same. Here are some of the things people have been posting about
And the list goes on…. If you click on the image above you can read more. I’m typically enjoy genuine, authentic posts and I’ve always been a fan of showing vulnerability but this feels like a step too far for LinkedIn. Maybe I’m wrong but this feels too self-indulgent to me and I find myself wondering about people who feel the need to share such deep personal issues with the whole world in this way. As I’m about to explain in the next section, the engagement on LinkedIn is phenomenal these days and maybe this is part of what comes with that but at the end of the day, this is still a professional network and there are boundaries. Posting about feeling vulnerable in the workplace because you do not have degree is one thing but talking about more personal issues such as bereavement feels wrong to me. Maybe I’m wrong…..I’d love to know what you think. Drop me an email to mark@linkedinformed.com or even better why not leave me a voicemail Something Special is Happening That’s the fourth time in the last 2 weeks that an audience on one of my seminars have told me that they are astonished as to how much better LinkedIn is than they thought it was (based on previous experience). I’m sure something really special is happening to LinkedIn this year and I’m not the only one who thinks this As previously mentioned, engagement levels are exploding - a 60% increase is beyond amazing! Is this down to the new design? Partly, but it’s mainly down to a new, younger demographic who are leading the way in showing us how to engage more effectively. The algorithm behind the new design has played it’s part and the new, more user friendly design has helped to attract this new audience but whatever the reason, I really senses a step change in the way LinkedIn is being used. As someone that has been training LinkedIn best practice for nearly ten years, I can’t begin to tell you how happy that makes me. Finally……finally!! Greater engagement is certainty bring with it more success whether you are a job seekers, recruiter or looking to grow your business. The future is LinkedIn! I've listened to at least 2 episodes about Groups, but I have a question that you haven't discussed. I've found about 5 groups that are really directly related to the kind of folks I'm trying to get to know, but all of them are really like advertising boards. People don't try to engage anyone in the groups at all, and every once in a while people will have a conversation around a post. My question is - how can I, as a member of a group, help to move the group more toward conversations? When I post to them, I post with questions that I really would like to engage (mostly with no response), and I'm starting to comment more in the groups (but mostly with no responses from anyone). Is there a way that I, as a member, can up the engagement, or when the culture of the group is set to be an advert board, is there really nothing I can do? I really appreciate your podcast and appreciate any thoughts you might have on this subject. Answer; The reason why this happens is that the members of these groups are simply not turning up! They may be members but they have long since 'disengaged' from these groups. This reflects the serious problems that exist in groups - too much spam and irrelevant 'noise' has led to people ignoring groups. They are still members but they never check emails (or they have switched off notifications) and they don't bother checking into their groups. So the answer to your question is to not bother with groups, at least for now anyway. Groups will be re-launched (probably early next year) and I suspect they will become relevant again but for now there are better ways to engage with the sort of people you wish to get to know. Most of the conversations on LinkedIn have moved to the homepage stream, meaning that people are commenting and engaging with peoples posts rather than in groups. The good news is that these conversations are better and more prevalent than they ever were in groups. Here is what I would do in your situation; • Identify people you are interested in via search - people and posts search. • Follow these people • Clean up your own homepage by unfollowing those that don't interest you and hiding irrelevant posts • Engage with people via their posts • Post interesting and engaging posts 3-5 times a week and @mention relevant people (sparingly) to bring others into the conversation Communication strategy and techniques are something I cover on a regular basis on the podcast, in fact, the last episode (178) is a recording of a talk I gave on that very subject. There is a place for groups on LinkedIn and I'm sure we will see the re-emergence of community discussion forums next year, but for now, I would advise concentrating your efforts on post engagement.
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Sat, 23 September 2017
Welcome to episode 179, this week the main topic is something I seem to be coming across a lot…employee advocacy on LinkedIn. The problem is, I’m really not sure it works on LinkedIn….I will explain more later.
Carl who sent this article in uses Password Safe https://pwsafe.org I also noticed another two key people at LinkedIn have recently left the organisation. If you are listening Wade (highly unlikely) - my very best wishes for the future. LinkedIn have also lost another key person who is highly respected. Pat Wadors was the SVP of global talent. Both individuals were key players for LinkedIn, these must be testing times for the CEO Jeff Weiner. Employee Advocacy. Does It Really Work on LinkedIn? I have had several conversations recently with companies who want to know how to use LinkedIn more effectively as an employee advocacy tool.
Here is the post I did on this subject (click on it to see the comments); You can see the LinkedIn #LifeAtSAP posts here and the #WeAreCisco posts here These week we have a first! ….a live question recorded today! Lorraine Bow is a Ukulele instructor based in London and has been struggling to find ways of using LinkedIn to win new clients. She asked me to help her and this is what you can hear in the episode You can view Lorraine’s recent activity by clicking here Here is her original ‘Goosebumps’ post which, as you can see didn’t get much traction
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Fri, 15 September 2017
Welcome to episode 178, it’s been a busy week for me with several training sessions and a speaking gig. I knew I wouldn’t get time to produce an episode this week so I thought it might be interesting to hear the talk that I gave this week. First and relevant to the subject of my talk, I saw this article and wondered what you would make of it. Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week Seriously, Please Stop Trying to 'Go Viral' on LinkedIn My thoughts;
You can view a copy of my slides below |
Sat, 9 September 2017
Welcome to episode 177, this week I want to focus on research….not stalking! The problem is that everyone seems to want to refer to it as stalking so whatever…I’m going with that in the headline. Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week Once a Running Joke, LinkedIn Is Suddenly a Hot Social Network. Here’s What Changed LinkedIn Update Not so much an update as just some feedback. Native video appears to be fully rolled out now and the numbers of videos in my feed has increased dramatically. I posted a video yesterday that so far has 32 likes and 12 comments...not bad in 1 day......but only 186 views!! Stalking LinkedIn can be used in many different ways as we all know but in my experience, one of it’s most common yet also most under-utilised uses is people research. Here’s what I do before meeting someone; Read their headline, summary and experience The more research you do, the better. You won’t use 90% of the information you find but the things you do use could make a huge difference. Question from Magnus Unemyr from Sweden: Answer: Great question. One post a day is good going, especially if you are also engaging with people throughout the day. |
Sat, 2 September 2017
Welcome to episode 176, this week I am going to share my thoughts on the demise of content marketing and the rise of engagement as a much more effective tool to influence and build trust. But first….. Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week Bumble’s CEO Takes Aim At LinkedIn
New LinkedIn Feature Invitations. This week saw the introduction of significant improvements to the way we manage our invitations to connect. The ‘select all’ feature will save me loads of time. Thanks to Perry Van Beek for informing me of this. Search. LinkedIn have, for some strange reason, decided to take away the keyword search field from search results. In addition the ‘search for people with filters’ has been replaced with ‘People’. ‘Jobs’ and ‘Posts’. Selecting People is still a ‘filters’ search but you can’t then subsequently add in keywords to your search. You either start with keywords or have none….odd move! This has a knock on effect with search alerts because you cannot create one unless you have performed a keyword search.
Engagement This has been playing on my mind recently as I think we are seeing the start of a significant change in the way people use LinkedIn. Traditionally we always thought that sourcing relevant content and sharing it on LinkedIn was a great way to build relationships. This led to scheduling of link based posts using tools like Buffer or Hootsuite. On reflection we have been posting all these links to external articles but is anyone reading them? Probably not! Instead we should be focussing our time on creating effective posts, good quality articles and engaging with other peoples content. Can you see where I am coming from here? |
Sat, 26 August 2017
Welcome to episode 174, this week I want to return to a subject close to my heart and also one that I think is really important to all of us. Interesting Stuff I Saw This WeekLinkedIn launch a new ‘Welcome to the team’ prompt Last Friday I had a wonderful day with three other LinkedIn Trainers in the UK. We had a really productive day sharing ideas and expertise in a very open ‘nothing to lose, everything to gain’ atmosphere. If you get the chance to get together with your competitors, take it. You will gain a lot from the experience. On Sunday I attended the start of the Round the World Clipper race. I really knew very little about it beforehand but I found the whole thing incredibly inspirational and it’s really helped me get some new focus into my business. Click on the image below to find out more about the race Company Page Followers Hack It’s very annoying that LinkedIn prevent us from seeing who are followers are but thanks to Glen Smith I have a cool hack to show you. It’s a useful hack but my advice is to focus all your engagement efforts on your personal page anyway. Is this poor communication? This fascinates me. Is this good communication or not? Is it good design by LinkedIn? What are they hoping to achieve by this? A Focus on Youth This week I chat with John Morley about the work he has been doing with school leavers via the National Citizen Scheme in the UK. Key Points I would strongly encourage you to spend some time with your teenage kids, family members or family friends and encourage them to think about LinkedIn. You could be doing them a real favour. |
Sat, 19 August 2017
Welcome to episode 174, I’m going to share an interesting chat I had with AJ Wilcox this week. AJ heard me talk in sceptical terms about the new website demographics feature that LinkedIn are currently rolling out and contacted me to say he was very enthusiastic about the feature. So I thought I would record our conversation and share it with you. More of that later but first… Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week
This ruling could have interesting ramifications for other current and potential 3rd party products. I’m not sure it ‘opens the floodgates’ for plug-ins and extensions but it will be interesting to see what develops. Feedback This a great point from Sandra. Sharing a post, with attribution does allow someone to add their own perspective that is suitable to their audience. If you want a copy of the cheatsheet that outlines how to achieve high post views and engagement then fill in your details below, it’s completely free. New LInkedIn Features Native video on desktop is now being rolled out, it doesn’t allow you to record unfortunately but you can upload a video from your computer The video feature has suffered some problems this week as a new tranche of members have been given access which has caused uploads to be very slow at processing. We now have a new ‘Connection’ filter in search results (mobile and desktop). This is different to searching a connections connections which is done from their profile. This is designed to be more of a secondary filter to an existing search result. For example you may be searching for prospects and then want to know if one of your good business contacts is already connected to anyone in the result. Thus revealing the opportunity for an introduction. LinkedIn active status in Messages. Many users seems to have got this useful new feature this week but the way LinkedIn explained it can lead to some confusion. Hopefully the below video clears that up It’s a positive enhancement to the messages function but I think this feature could be improved with; What do you think. Any other ideas on how they could improve this? Website Demographics Let’s hear what the world’s nicest social media expert has to say about this new LinkedIn website demographics feature AJ explains how this tool can be used to get a much greater understanding of who visits your website. Not just your domain but each specific page so you should be able to get a much clearer idea of who is interested in certain aspects of your business or products. Also you can combine custom audience advertising with website demographics by targeting the demographic of the people that are typically going to your relevant website pages. This should make your custom audience ad’s much more effective. You might already have this feature. Go to your ad’s account on LinkedIn Then click on an account and you will see website demographics if you have it. I didn’t have it when I spoke with AJ but as you can see, I have it now! Apparently only 25% of members have it but it is currently rolling out to all.
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Sat, 12 August 2017
Welcome to episode 173, this week it’s just me (no interview) and I want to talk about the controversial but also very important topic of plagiarism.
But before we get to that I need to catch up on some things I wasn’t able to cover last week plus some other articles I saw this week… Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week
You can hear my interview with Janet Murray on the Soulful PR podcast here LinkedIn Updates Think twice before you reply to an InMail with a shortcut ‘No Thanks’! This is very sneaky and I’m not sure it’s been properly thought through by LinkedIn. When you receive an iMail from someone you have the opportunity to reply with 3 shortcut phrases
On the face of it this looks like a time saving convenience feature similar to those inBot responses you see in normal messaging. When your ‘no thanks’ reply is received the other end the sender sees this message So they can’t continue the thread….that makes perfect sense to me but what happens if they try to subsequently send you a new InMail? So you have inadvertently ‘blocked’ this person from ever InMailing you again which could be disastrous for jobseekers and others who don’t wish to cut off communication altogether, it seems absurd to me that LinkedIn don’t make it clear what you are doing!
Long text posts are ‘killing it’ on LinkedIn
I have reported on this before but since then I have tested this further and it is clear that the algorithm that decides how many of your followers will see your post is massively favouring posts with a lot of text and really penalising any posts that include a link (unless it’s a LinkedIn article).
Here is a post I did last week about a news item regarding Sports Direct. As you can see below, this story was widely covered on LinkedIn by individuals and companies but everyone else made the mistake of including a link to the online article. Knowing what I know, I simply took a screenshot of the letter and posted it as an image accompanied with some long text (triggering the ‘see more’. As you can see, the results speak for themselves! As I typed the above post I paused as I wondered if what I was doing was in some way a form of plagiarism. In the end I decided it was OK as the story had been widely covered by many sources in the national press….but that got me thinking about the main subject of this weeks episode! LinkedIn Plagiarism - Is copy & pasting posts OK?
Here is a classic example of what I’m talking about. This text only post from Ryan Cummings was phenomenally successful with nearly 40,000 likes and approaching 3000 comments. Those are great numbers but could have been so much more because others decided to copy and paste his post and re-post it on their own feed. I actually found 27 posts like this. This is the most blatant example and is classic plagiarism The majority were like this, I even found someone who had made it into his own LinkedIn Article! And someone who tried to be clever by changing the copy, ever so slightly! And another who just copy & pasted a section Some fool even had the cheek to add their product picture to the copied post! It’s hard to defend these people. They clearly have extremely low ethical standards and will never find success by operating that way……..These losers are annoying but not the ones I’m most concerned about. I also saw plenty of examples like this; Whilst Ryan’s name is shown, it is not a link back to his profile. There were other examples where Ryan is mentioned and linked (@mention) Whilst this is an improvement, is still wrong in my opinion for this simple reason; They are stealing views, Likes and Comments from Ryan! and I think that is totally unacceptable! Every post offers us the opportunity to Like, Comment or Share - using these is quicker and ensures that all credit, views and further engagement belong to the rightful owner. Not everyone however would agree, look at this post from a CIO claiming that this practice is ‘standard behaviour’ across all social media - really? If this is common practice then that would suggest to me that it’s ‘common practice’ to behave unethically, surely that isn’t true for most social media users - is it? Admittedly Bill also makes a good point about unwarranted blocking but his original comment is ludicrous! This topic was also covered and extensively commented on in a recent post by Simon Chan I agree wholeheartedly with Simon’s comments but who cares what we think. How does it feel to be copied in this way? “When I first noticed that some people were copy and pasting my post, I was a bit flattered. However, when one particular post began accruing several thousand likes and gained momentum, I then had people commenting on my post saying that they think the story was made up or that I was the one who copied it. LinkedIn can easily determine who the original author was, and I believe they should step in and take down posts/suspend users who do not give proper attribution when posting others' content. So to directly answer your questions: |
Sat, 5 August 2017
Welcome to episode 172, this week I’m going to introduce you to a very interesting and somewhat entertaining character. Jon Buchan is a digital marketing expert who has a unique way of getting fantastic responses to cold messages (mainly emails) he sends by using humour. But first we had some feedback from last weeks episode on Native video. Native Video My friend and fellow LinkedIn trainer Sandra Long sent me this voicemail Gary Stockton also got in touch; “I'm looking forward to creating videos for important job openings and new thought leadership content. Check out Screenflow for Mac. You can record screen from iOS devices and make great looking mobile demo videos. I think current release of Camtasia also allows for mobile screen recording” Great points Gary. I think highly of both those products but they might be out of the budget for the average user who occasionally wants to post a video. In those circumstances, simply record on your phone. |
Sat, 29 July 2017
Welcome to episode 171, well I’m back from my holiday and fully refreshed albeit missing the sun, crystal clear sea, wonderful beaches and amazing sunsets……oh well!
More of that later but there has been other news whilst I’ve been away
There have been some other changes as well as native video whilst I have been away. Hover over name feature returns and it’s better than ever! You get the option to send a message to 1st tier connections, invite 2nd tier to connect and InMail anyone else. Don’t use the connect though as it doesn’t not allow for personalisation. Website Demographics - coming soon. An interesting looking tool that will give you information about your website visitors, we will have to wait and see exactly how useful it is.
Multiple image posts. This could be very handy for visual storytelling, I also suspect the algorithm my favour them. Only available in the app and iOS only for now. Reshares of your posts now show in your post analytics. This is definitely a step in the right direction but one of the =main reasons you want to see who shared is so you can thank them and the ‘hover over’ feature does not work in pop-ups so you have to click and open the profile to see more about the person a send a message. Bizarrely you can actually see the ‘hover’ pop-up opening in the background! Native Video is Finally Here!
I noticed this feature whilst sipping my Mojito by the pool in Greece! Fortunately I had only just started my drink so was able to immediately give it a try;
This feature is currently only available on the mobile app Very few users currently have it although it is being slowly rolled out to all. You can record your video directly into the app or upload a video that is saved on your phone, simply tap the video icon to start the process As you can see a ‘view’ is only counted when the video has appeared on someone’s screen for 3 secs without scrolling, this is therefore not comparable to other posts which are simply ‘views in the feed’. Therefore a view count of over 10,000 is pretty good and suggests that the algorithm is favouring video posts. I have tried various formats, if you are recording directly into the app I would suggest holding your phone in landscape mode, this will look better when seen on desktop. It is worth noting that you cannot edit your video in the app. Native video will autoplay in the feed on both desktop and mobile. The problem with video is that few people will have sound (or sound switched on) on their computers and many mobile viewers won’t bother with sound so it may be wise to use subtitles. In my tests the best results were when I used the free Clips iOS app, it records in square format so it doesn’t matter which way you hold the phone, you can edit before posting and it has a very effective subtitles feature that can be edited but often gets it right first time. My first video above was made using Clips I have been looking in the Google Play store for a suitable equivalent and I found Videoshow, I’m not sure how good it is but it maybe worth a look for Android users. If you know of a better app that allows editing and subtitles then please let me know. So how can we use native video effectively? It’s early days and we will have to wait and see what works but here are my initial ideas;
I’m sure other ideas will develop in time. How will you use video on LinkedIn? Please share your ideas by sending me a voicemail or email. No time for any questions this week but I will make sure I catch up an any unanswered ones next week. |
Sat, 22 July 2017
Welcome to episode 170, I’m still away this week but rather than go two weeks without an episode I thought I would pre-record an interview with the amazing LinkedIn Trainer from London called Alex Galviz. We cover a lot of ground in the interview and I hope you will agree that Alex’s approach to LinkedIn is both refreshing and inspiring. But first I thought you might find these interesting…
The British Prime Ministers ex PR guru makes her feelings known in her LinkedIn headline…but doesn’t know how to update her profile properly! Migrating Groups is not as easy as some people suggest! Interview with Alex Galviz I really enjoyed chatting with Alex, a millennial LinkedIn trainer and coach for millennials from London. We covered a lot of ground in our chat; Challenging your definition of success This is the post Alex referred to that kickstarted her career as a career coach and LinkedIn specialist. |
Sat, 8 July 2017
Welcome to episode 169, lets get personal this week……or maybe not! Is is right to chat about non-business matters on LinkedIn?
This subject was instigated when I saw the following post. It’s a very interesting thread and really got me thinking about this subject which many people seem to feel very strongly about. Rather than just share my views I thought I would gather some views from LinkedIn and boy did you respond! This post is currently averaging 1000 views per hour! I’m actually quite happy to share topics that are not strictly business with my network. There is almost always a tenuous link to business in everything I do but I believe people are more interesting in you than what you do. They can easily see from your profile what you do but the key difference in deciding if they want to work with you (or employ you) is who you really are. In contrast I utterly detest using my Facebook profile for business. I’m not saying it’s a detestable thing to do…everyone to their own but I personally find it excruciatingly uncomfortable to either talk about work and business on my Facebook or alternatively ‘friend’ work related contacts and have them looking at things that are entirely personal. I can control what I reveal about myself personally on LinkedIn, whereas using Facebook for business feels like I am opening my front door to people who are not appropriate share such things with. I wondered if that was a contradiction….. On balance I don’t think it is but maybe you disagree. I would love to know what you think about this subject. There will not be an episode next week as I will be here; The podcast will return the week after (22nd July) with a pre-recorded interview with Millennial LinkedIn Trainer Alex Galviz |
Sat, 1 July 2017
Welcome to episode 168, last week’s show seemed to go down a storm……it seems everyone is checking their influence score and comparing them which can only be a good thing in my opinion. As a followup to that and on a similar track I wanted to focus on article clicks this week, or rather the lack of article clicks many people seem to be battling with! I’m getting a lot of comments like; “I think I will move to posting rather than articles as they get better views” So in this episode I’m going to try to fix that…but first
Here is the new ‘What people are talking about’ feature. This seems to be based on trending stories but when you click on it LinkedIn encourages you create a new post with a pre-written hashtag on that subject. Could this be LinkedIn trying to get # moving? Images are fixed! At last LinkedIn have fixed the issue regarding posting images. No longer do we need to worry about turning our phones horizontal to take a picture for LinkedIn we can now add images in portrait! What To Do If Nobody Is Reading Your Articles Years ago published posts (now renamed articles) would get thousands and at times tens of thousands of views. It seemed like LinkedIn was the perfect place to produce content…a ready made audience that would be alerted to your content. So let’s be clear…….publishing articles on LinkedIn is not what it used to be. The article feature is no longer a distribution network for your content, it is merely a library for your content….just as other blogging platforms are such as Wordpress and Blogger. That however, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be writing articles. It simply means that you need to use posts to distribute your articles to your audience…and hopefully beyond. First let me make something clear; We do need to be careful when comparing posts to articles. They are completely different and the stats are measured in different ways (clicks vs views in the feed). A posts ‘view in the feed’ is simply a page impression ie it appeared on someones feed - it doesn’t mean they saw it. An Article click does mean they saw it - completely different things The best way to view them is that they work together. An article is long form content but just that - static content. If it gets into a pulse channel it might get clicks outside of your followers but the best way to achieve clicks is via posts which are short form, viral content - see posts as the 'vehicle' to distribute your articles. Your ability to gain high view numbers on your posts is down to a variety of factors but most important of all is to show the algorithm that you are 'interesting' through regular comments & likes. So here are the 3 key areas to focus on; Aim to get it published in a Pulse channel Make sure it is over 500 words 2) The Headline is Critical. Create intrigue that makes some want to click on to see more There is a free course on Lynda from LinkedIn editor in chief that includes many great tips from someone that should know more than most! 3) Generate your own traffic
If you want to tag and download profiles, the best tool out there is LinkedInBack. It is only for notes and tags but the download feature is the killer for me. I also discovered a new video tool this week. Loom is very similar to Viewedit that I mentioned in episode 162 This weeks question came from Avi and it’s all about that ago old problem of multiple or dual objectives and whether you should create 2 profiles or not.
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Sat, 24 June 2017
Welcome to episode 167, this week I’m going to take the opportunity to catch up on questions which have been building up recently as well as discussing the issue of influence and followers vs connections. But first….. I had some great feedback from last weeks episode including this message from Kurt Shaver Plus Leif Carlsen contacted me from Denmark. Leif consider himself to be the ‘Mr LinkedIn’ in Denmark! Leif and his partners run the Social Selling company and even have their own podcast called Social Selling Radio! The reason Leif contacted me though was regarding #LinkedInLocal. They have been holding similar event every month for the last 3 years which they call Social Friday’s Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week LinkedIn have released a new Sales Navigator course on LinkedIn Learning and is available for everyone. https://www.linkedin.com/learning/learning-linkedin-sales-navigator-2
LinkedIn have introduced new Search statistics….but are they of any use? Are you Influential? I was speaking to someone this week about what makes people influential on LinkedIn, the answer is mostly to do with credibility but there is no doubt that some people get a wider distribution of their posts and this in part, must be effected by what I call the influence equation. This can be broken down into two separate equations. Firstly the number of actual followers you have as opposed to the number of connections. A follower has chosen to see your content whereas a connection may have connected for different reasons. What can you do to increase your ‘real’ followers? The problem with this is that most LinkedIn users simply don’t understand following! Very few people actually follow so this somewhat nullifies the above equation. Another way to look at it is this equation As an example Kate Lister has 3851 followers and 3832 connections, so not many ‘pure’ followers but on average she gets 21,000 views of her posts! that is an influence rating of 5.45. I’m way behind with my questions so I have decided to catch up this week. The first question is from long term listener Jaz Greer; I have always held to the headline in the profile is indexed by Google as it is basically set up as an H1 tag in SEO terms and that is the only part of the profile. The rest festure in Linkedin search and not necessarily indexed by Gooogle hence why only the headline shows in the SERPs Also, I have always been led to belive that Published Posts or now Articles are indexed by Google and can show in search However in something recently from Viveka Von Rosen, she states Articles are not indexed unless they get into Pulse - am I missing something? Answer: Oh the dark mysteries of Google! Here's my take…..based on experimentation. The most indexed field is the name, well that's two fields - first name and surname but Google definitely picks up headlines as well and that is where your keywords should be. As for articles, there is no doubt that ones in Pulse channels are far more likely to be picked up by Google. I have tried searching for fairly unique phrases in headlines of Articles that are not in channels and had no success unless I state Site: LinkedIn.com in the search. I'm not sure where Viveka gets her information from but my experience reflects her views.
The next question is from Rob Curley I’m using sales navigator very efficiently (at least I think I am!) and want to target my key contacts (leads) in a Facebook ad campaign – a technique I first heard you talk about. Of course I can’t see an email address for a lead unless I am connected but fortunately many of my leads are 1st tier connections. I can use Sales Navigator to quickly filter leads which are 1st tier connections but this is where I run into problems as I don’t think I it’s possible to export from Sales Navigator? Answer: Unfortunately there is no solution in Sales Navigator but I do have a workaround for you. I don't know how many leads you have that you wish to download, if a lot, this might be too time consuming
This works on Sales Nav and allows you to add tags and notes (duplication I know), the key thing though is that you are able to search for those tags and download them. This question is from Fabio Alonso I've got a question for job seekers on how to improve their "past experience" fit to a role advertised.
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Sat, 17 June 2017
Welcome to episode 166, this week I have been inspired to spread the news about #LinkedInlocal, a movement that is gaining momentum around the world and it’s all about meeting your connections face to face. More of that later but first…. Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week
Elle Hunt has been a journalist since she graduated in 2012 so I suspect she knows very little about how a business works - apart from a business that makes it’s money (less and less fortunately) by publishing garbage like this with clickbait headlines intended to drive advertising revenue…advertising we don’t wish to see. Perhaps she might be better served changing careers into a business model that seeks to drive revenue and growth by developing relationships and genuinely providing a valuable product or service - perhaps then she would appreciate the benefits LinkedIn brings. This was a bit of a rant I know so here are the main points I covered;
LinkedIn Updates Images can now be added to comments on desktop (it’s been on mobile for some time), simply click on the camera icon as seen below;
I doubt you will need to use this much but where appropriate, it can be quite handy and will often allow you to ‘lighten up’ thread with humour
Introductions are finally being rolled out on the desktop now. Did you know you can now see the date you connected to someone in their contact and personal info sections? #LinkedInLocal I was first introduced to this idea by listener Anna Mcafee from Australia. OK so the idea of networking offline is hardly new! The point here though is to take those connections you have made online and meet them offline. LinkedIn is so mainstream these days, the chances are that many of your neighbours will be on LinkedIn and I think it’s a great idea to arrange local meet-ups. Anna talks about her recent experience in this great article So why not organise your own event, it doesn’t have to be anything big, just 10-15 people meeting in a local pub or coffee house.
This is exactly what Erik Eklund did in Brussels and he has now run two events. Listen to the podcast to hear how he went about it and what the results were. Here is the post Erik published after his event; Feel free to contact Erik on LinkedIn or you can email him at erikeklund@outlook.com London #LinkedInLocal meet up on 22nd June. Alexandra Galviz is also organising a #LinkedinLocal in London this week Click on the image below for more details Let me know if you need any help with this, let’s get this movement to gain more momentum and start shaking hands and meeting people Question: I want to be able to add my linkedin profile link to my CV - I believe you can find a shortened link - how do I do this? Answer: Your url is pretty easy to find but you might want to personalise your url first. This video explains how you do it. |
Sat, 10 June 2017
Welcome to episode 165, this week it’s that old nugget again…Skills and their annoying little brother endorsements! But first…… Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week
Skills & Endorsements. A valuable feature or a waste of space? Skills have been with us for over 5 years now and they still frustrate me. What exactly is the point? The Case Against The first article is by Neil Patel and pretty much summarises everything I hate about skill endorsements. The Case For This is more difficult for me so I have asked some of my LinkedIn training buddies to help me out plus I found this article from a very well respected LinkedIn expert, Wayne Breitbarth Are You Still Confused by LinkedIn Skills and Endorsements? Some other benefits; By all means have skills and let people endorse you and maybe even endorse other people if they are someone you want win favour with. Hi Mark. I trust you are well. Is there a way of tagging a post so you can go back to it later? You can save (bookmark) any post with a link on mobile but not image or text posts. On desktop you can't at all. The workaround on desktop is to click through to the post from your feed and then save it in your browser bookmark/favourites. On mobile, (if it's not a link post) it depends on your operating system. On the iPhone I tap into the post and then on the 3 dots (top right) and click 'share via' and then 'add to reading list' |
Sat, 3 June 2017
Welcome to episode 164, following on from last week’s theme of ‘cleaning up your homepage’ it struck me that you also need to make sure that you are not a victim of someone else cleaning up their homepage! I saw this bizarre Sales Navigator glitch this week. It would seem that you can save yourself as a lead!! On the subject of mistakes, it seems I made a mistake recently by suggesting that you could track post shares by adding your own unique hashtag. Listener Darrel Griffin tried it out and it didn’t work! Come on LinkedIn…how hard can it be?! Increase Your Visibility With Shared Content Sharing content has two main benefits; It is also important to produce your own content and I have covered that extensively before but you are unlikely to have enough hours in the week to produce enough content of your own and in any case, you want to be seen as a helpful resource to your followers and not just someone who is always ‘pushing their own stuff’ Quantity My advice is that you should post 1-3 times a day and 7 days a week, if that sounds a lot then one a day is perfectly OK and relatively easy to do. Quality This is really important and in my experience, the ‘make or break’ of visibility. It is critical to understand that you must not, under any circumstances share crap! This means that the content you share must; Source There are plenty (almost too many) places to find great content on the internet. Here are some ideas; Scheduling You can’t really have an effective sharing process without using a scheduling tool. Many scheduling tools also allow you to collate content as well, here are some options; Buffer - This is what use for curation and scheduling - very simple to use which is why I’m a big fan! Content curation available on the paid plan (not expensive) LinkedBack:Tags/notes for LinkedIn profiles In addition you can download your tagged profiles onto a .csv spreadsheet and the information in the download is actually very good. including their Name, headline, location, industry (not visible on the profile), number of followers, contact info inc email & birthday(1st tier only), full summary, profile url, profile image url, current position, education, level of connection to you plus the tag and any notes you have entered. The free version allows you to add notes/tags to up to 30 LinkedIn profiles (Basic and Sales Navigator). Subscribe to Premium at just $10/month for unlimited usage.
This week we have another voicemail. This question is from Alan Harper and it’s about profile updates. Great question. I don’t have a Recruiter account but I am told there isn’t a ‘profile last updated’ filter and there definitely isn’t on any other level of account so the answer is no….but most recruiters would simply check recent activity which is very clearly shown in the profile on any level of account. So being active is very important. In addition there is a feature in LinkedIn Recruiter called ‘Update Me’ which will notify Recruiters when you update your profile. This is only applicable if they have already found you and asked to be notified but it’s worth baring in mind. |
Sat, 27 May 2017
Welcome to episode 163, it’s been a terrible week for me with the shocking news coming from Manchester and being personally touched by the tragic events, it’s made it really hard to focus at times. This week I want to focus on managing your home page feed on LinkedIn.
I listened to a very interesting and revealing interview with ex LinkedIn social selling guru Koka Sexton on the ‘Linking into Sales’ podcast this week. The most interesting part for me was when Koka revealed that LinkedIn are driven by data and this is why they drop features that many ‘superusers’ love (Answers, Amazon Reading List, Signal etc) which is, in my opinion, absolutely nuts! LinkedIn introduce ‘Pregnancy Pause’ a feature that allows women who are taking a career break to add a Pregnancy Pause period into their experience section. The new photo filter feature has finally appeared on our desktop profiles this week…it’s OK but I can’t see much point in it really. LinkedIn have introduced an improved InMail analytics tool for their Recruiter and Recruiter Lite customers. It looks great but why on earth wouldn't they introduce this for Sales Navigator customers…probably because LinkedIn work in ‘silos’ and it will no doubt make its way to Sales Navigator soon. LinkedIn have also released a handy step-by-step guide to Sponsored InMail. If you are considering paying to send inMails to a targeted audience, this is definitely worth a read. Introductions are making a return! At the moment this feature is only available on the mobile app but it actually works pretty well. Lets hope it comes to desktop pretty soon. LinkedIn are changing their profile background images….again! I don't mean the change that occurred in line with the new desktop design, this is another change! The previous size was 1536x768. The new size will be 1584x396.
And this is how my profile currently looks with the old background image dimensions (the image is exactly the same). I actually think my background image looks better with the new dimensions although when it is fully rolled out I will need to drag the image a little lower. "Why have they made this change?" I hear you ask. Well, whilst frustrating, it does make some sense actually. The wide 'stretched' image when optimised for desktop, didn't look great on mobile (where 60% of your viewers are). This change fixes that and looks great on all devices and screen sizes. If however you would prefer to make your own image with your images and text then I would recommend using Relay. It's free and their 'LinkedIn Cover' templates will work OK with the new dimensions - they are still set to the old dimensions but will work, to a degree, with the new and they will no doubt update the templates once the roll-out is complete (I have made contact to give them the heads up).
Your LinkedIn homepage feed is one of the most important features on LinkedIn So what do you do? You ignore it!!! Why? Well because 90% of what you see there is of no relevance or interest to you! And you blame the algorithm…which is partly correct but what are you doing about improving your feed? It’s time to take control and get your house (homepage) in order! To do this effectively you will need to be brutal. It’s like clearing out an attic or your wardrobe of old clothes….it only works if you are really honest with your self and admit ‘I’m never going to wear that’ but your ‘inner doubt devil’ will keep whispering in your ear “but maybe you will….perhaps if this happens or you go to this event”! Your LinkedIn feed is the same…..”Oh maybe they will post something important one day”…Really? I doubt it….dump them and unfollow! Ignore the little devils warning and unfollow…unfollow…unfollow. Trust me, it’s very liberating! More importantly you are taking control and commanding the algorithm. Rather than being it’s victim, you are now it’s master! And now you can enjoy your feed..and engage..and build relationships…and build trust and start to really benefit from LinkedIn. Here are the five questions you should ask for every post you see on your homepage feed; Do I personally know this person? If you can’t answer yes to one of the above questions then unfollow them…..be really honest with these questions - are you sure? Be brutal! You won’t regret it This week we had another voicemail question. Click below to listen to Jaz Greer’s question about post notifications. This is clearly a design fault in that I can see no logical reason why LinkedIn wouldn’t want you to see who shared your post. I’m using #MrLinkedIn on all my posts until they fix the problem. What will your hashtag be? |
Sat, 20 May 2017
Welcome to episode 162, well I’m still standing! I’m approaching the end of my second week standing and my legs and feet finally seem to be adjusting! I definitely feel a lot fitter and have more energy so I’m going to stick with it. So this week I want to return too the subject of LinkedIn Articles (formerly known as published posts) because I sense that many people are holding back and the main reason for that is that they don’t know what to write about. But first…..
It seems as though some people are subversively misusing this type of post to generate leads! It’s an interesting point, I have asked for referrals and it can be very effective but I have never thought of going back to say I had sorted it.
I was helping a client this week who was reluctant to write articles on LinkedIn. My advice is that; When pressed she admitted that the main thing blocking her was thinking of what she could write about. I think this is a pretty common problem so I have produced a 12 step approach to generating ideas for great LinkedIn articles. New Video recording and sharing Chrome extension. Thanks to Darrel Griffin for highlighting this one. It’s free and works really well. This week we have a voicemail question from Greg; Firstly I have never tried it but I am sure you can have a Sales Navigator account as well as Recruiter Lite account. It would be cheaper than going for the full blown Recruiter account but probably unnecessary. Let’s first exam why LinkedIn believe you need to upgrade to Recruiter. Below is a table explaining the difference and I have highlighted the advantages that are relevant to you You could make an argument for the extra filters but I’m not convinced. Therefore it comes down to InMails. Do you really need 150 a month? The question on whether Sales Navigator is the right option for you is probably answered in this post I wrote; Sales Navigator Vs Recruiter Lite |
Sat, 13 May 2017
Welcome to episode 161, I’m recording very early this week so please excuse me if any news that broke this week isn't covered! So that is the main topic this week, I hope you find it useful. But before that….. Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week Weekly Roundup: Message and Share Comments, Calendar Sync, Personalized Job Insights I also heard a rumour this week that the infamous “I don't know” induced restricted account is no more! There has been much talk about the disappointing numbers of views that people are getting for the articles on LinkedIn but this week I spoke with an ex-colleague who has almost 150,000 followers. They are getting an average of 5000 views per article and a staggering 150,000 views of their posts in the feed! LinkedIn seemed to be really pushing growing networks at the moment. To celebrate reaching 500 million members they have been displaying information such as this on your homepage (mobile and desktop).
LinkedIn search engine optimization
The search that I undertook was for the keyword “copywriter" and I compared the results between my account, an account with no connections, and accounts with circa 100 connections and my account on a Sales Navigator lead builder search.
This can by no means be described as a thorough, scientific evaluation but when I add it to previous tests that I have undertaken, it did bring some very interesting results. From what I can gather there are 5 important elements to ensure that you rank high in a search result.
For the first time in a long time, I have a cool thing to tell you about! As you know I am a big fan of using Google extensions that allow you to expand prewritten text from short snippets but did you know you can also do this on mobile? TextExpander 3 will create a custom keyboard for your iPhone which will allow you to use snippets that can be created with the app or in the desktop version. Answer: |
Sat, 6 May 2017
Welcome to episode 160, the wether has improved in the UK this week and it looks as though spring has finally arrived so I thought that would be a good excuse to take a fresh look at our LinkedIn profiles and see if they are in need of a spring clean But first, I did see a couple of things this week you should know about….. Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week Oracle links to LinkedIn so its salesware can sniff you out
Profile Spring Clean 1. Is your background image effective? Consider using Relay for this 6. Make sure your most relevant and important media is shown under your current position. Tip of the Week How to reveal the full profile of people of people outside of your network (in a search result) Three questions this week; “Hello Mark, hope you are doing well. I have another question for you. How can I remove the university information from the top of my profile, between the headline and the location? I see your profile and others do not show it, thought education is listed in your profile. What's the trick?” This is actually easier than you think, simply add a new item under eduction (anything you like) and it will automatically appear in the education section at the top of your profile (see below) “I had a quick question in regards to LinkedIn and was hoping you may be able to point me in the right direction given your expertise. I was told a little while ago that when Microsoft purchased LInkedIn they disposed of "linkedin jail" where you have sent too many requests and they then ban you for sending additional requests unless you have an email. As a result, I went about diligently expanding my network (only 2nd degree connections). I have now noticed that I am unable to send any further requests. Does linkedin jail still exist? would there be a reason for freeze thats been placed on me? And is there a way around it?” I think you might be confusing two different things. If you are not able to send invitations at all then that could either be a bug or you may have reached your limit of 3000 invites. “How do I send out a group announcement?” This has recently changed. The solution is not in the management area but simply click on ‘Start a conversation with your group’ on the main page and (as a Manager) you see the option to send an announcement |
Sat, 29 April 2017
Welcome to episode 159, following my trip to Social Media Marketing World something has been bugging me…..video! So that is the subject of this weeks episode but before I get into that……
Check Out the New Podcast Hosted by Reid Hoffman with the most annoying name ever! Video A big thanks to Una Doyle-Love for coming on the show to share her knowledge of video. Una mentioned using a light that simply clicks on top of your phone such as the one at the below link; She also mentioned headphone extension cables such as this one; and a selfie stick such as the one below; Where video can be used on LinkedIn Messages. I am most excited about this way of using video because video messages are so much more powerful and effective. When some one receives your video on their mobile app (tip - send it in the evening or at the weekend if you want them to see it on their phone) it looks like this; See below for a couple of simple examples of videos I made today, the first one was taken on my laptop and took about 4 minutes and the second one was taken on my iPhone and took even less time |
Sat, 22 April 2017
Welcome to episode 158, it’s been a very ‘buggy’ week this week, firstly connections were in reverse order in the ‘My network’ list then the ability to recommend someone disappeared. Both are now fixed but it is clear that something is going on behind the scenes. I thought I would lighten things up a bit this week and relay a funny story I heard from a listener in the US this week.
Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week Google quietly takes on LinkedIn with its own job listings site New Feature New Privacy Settings I was alerted to some changes in this article from LinkedIn this week; Updates To Our Terms of Service I was interested to see the ‘Using public data to improve your profile’ setting with the option to switch this off, this is a mobile only feature but when I tapped on it, I got this; Genius! Back to the drawing board LinkedIn! I also noticed a new setting that allows you to merge accounts, this has only previously been something the help centre could do for you. You can find this setting in the ‘Privacy’ section of your settings; Productivity messaging bots can be switched off, a relief for many I’m sure but I’m sticking with them to see if they improve and become useful. I’m very curious about the ‘Easily meet up with members’ feature. I can’t see any reference to this in the mobile app settings on iOS but it sounds like a pretty cool feature. Groups Follow Up Thanks for all your feedback following last weeks topic of what to do about LinkedIn Groups, I especially liked this input from Carl Whalley who runs a massive Google Android group on LinkedIn. The story for me creating the Android group is legendary, I just wanted the badge by my name which is pretty much all they had back then. When I thought a bit more though, I was assuming they would grow into something much more - the phrase I hear often is "centres of excellence". Linked In already had a massive pool of business oriented individuals which alone is unfocussed. Groups are a way to segment those skills and interests into a more manageable system. They really had the potential to take on what many specialised forums on the external internet were doing. So if you were say an accountant, a lawyer etc using these specialised forums - why were you there? The immediate answer is "because thats where the others like me are" - which is the biggest chicken and egg problem anyone trying to grow one of these faces. For Linked In though, that issue never arose. What else then? I can only go off my own experiences. I had as issue with my Audi recently, so I searched a few Audi forums. I'm not a mechanic, but I know if I phrase the question properly, or even search properly and the content is already there, I'll get my answer. I go to a centre of excellence relating to the subject I am interested in. What makes a centre of excellence, and what keeps it that way? It's the knowledge of the people contributing. At the start, Linked In groups were like this. They were small enough to be able to keep up with, and there was a genuine enthusiasm from the members to share their knowledge, for free, because they valued the community spirit and assumed the quality would remain high because everyone else seemed to thinking that way too. This pattern is the same for external forums. So what changed - i.e. the second part, "what keeps it that way"? I think deep down people have to get value from something if they are to invest in it long term. With anything free, value is something other than monetary. Value *can* work in free forums on the internet - look at the programmers website, Stack Overflow. There is a badge and points system which members have to earn from their peers, but it's definitely recognised now in that industry and those with decent ratings are proud to trumpet them on their CV's. Imagine if Linked In groups were seen this way. You'd end up with people saying, for example, "I have 1000 points and the guru level in the Linked In Architect group". This clearly wouldn't work for all groups, or perhaps only a small minority, but without financial incentives the answer will be something like this. Also, the groups themselves must be seen to be credible, i.e. rated by Linked In. It's one thing having a zillion SEO web marketing groups, but we all know only a dozen or so would be well run - natural consolidation will have seen to that already. Having Linked In endorsing the group itself, or even rating it, instantly removes most of the noise we see today. The software itself also plays a large part in all this. If you look at any successful internet forum, you'll see it just looks and behaves nothing like a Linked in Group. There are easy to identify sub groups, which Linked In did have at once stage but killed off. There are threaded discussions, often with user customisable views such as hierarchical, flattened, highest rated etc. And why is spam so hard to deal with? As a first measure, any identical content posted in multiple groups is suspect. Let the group managers see what other groups and titles the poster has attempted before, so they can spot them right away. Again, external forums have smarter ways of dealing with this such as new members not being able to post anything until their "rating" is above a certain limit. This pattern keeps repeating - look at what makes external forums successful and do it that way. Is is to late to turn around? No. The members haven't gone anywhere, and the issue of segmenting them into useful areas will always be present, no matter what you call them. The solution is to focus on making them centres of excellence - giving them value - and putting in place everything needed to support that. This week, LinkedIn also produced some new information about some changes to the management features of groups and confirmed they are committed to the groups feature. You can read the detail here; New Groups Management Experience - Frequently Asked Questions I think these are just small incremental improvements and the big change that is required. I suspect LinkedIn, possibly in conjunction with Microsoft are looking into much more significant changes to groups, I certainly hope so, as I said last week - chipping around the edges is not going to solve this problem!
I received 6 emails from a listener in the US this week who I will call Donald. In these emails he outlines a long and clearly frustrating interaction with LinkedIn’s infamous ‘Help’ Centre… I was almost crying with laughter when I read them so I thought I would share this slice of comedy gold with you! |
Sat, 15 April 2017
Welcome to episode 157. It’s about time we talked about groups again, A long standing feature that used to be great but seems to have deteriorated in recent years resulting in very strong rumours that groups are about to be dumped by LinkedIn. But before we get into groups….. Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week
Have a listen to the podcast to hear what I have to say on this.
I can remember when groups were one of LinkedIn favourite features, now they seem to be the problem child. Should LinkedIn abandon them or is there a cure? This is an infographic that LinkedIn put together in August 2013 In those days LinkedIn were proud of groups, so how did it all go so wrong? My feeling is that they became a victim of their own success; Too many groups were created (8000 a week in 2013!) Most groups have become like ghosts towns with very few new members and virtually no activity happening. I first heard this rumour at Social Media Marketing World from experienced and knowledgeable commentators and this led to ex LinkedIn staffer Koka Sexton publicly asking the question to Ryan Rolansky (Head of Product and one of LinkedIn’s key decision makers) Samantha Bailey has since written this article; (Warning : Samantha researches her articles exceptionally well but as a result they are long……..very long!) Personally I really don’t believe the answer lies in monetising groups. LinkedIn’s monetisation strategy has always been largely indirect meaning that they design functionality to increase things like page views, number of members etc so that they can monetise those things. The Solution Groups should be abandoned and replaced with a new, fresh feature that is named differently It would seem sensible that this new solution would be developed in conjunction with Microsoft New Udemy Course <AFQ image> Question : “I'm Canadian and actively looking for my next job opportunity not locally but abroad. What can one do to not be looked over because of their location? I've filled out the hidden job search function on LinkedIn but I'm not confident that most recruiters have access to this so I feel I could be doing more to make myself a more attractive candidate to foreign recruiters. The only issue for me is that I feel recruiters are turned off to my candidacy because of my location and the possible relocation costs involved. ANS= Unfortunately there is no simple solution to this. Most jobs are filled (on LinkedIn) via search so what are the chances of someone searching in Canada? One important thing to note is that applying for jobs without a permit to work is pretty much impossible. You won’t get a job offer first, permit second. It simply doesn’t work that way! As far as LinkedIn is concerned you have two things you might be able to do;
ANS = This one had me (and Luca) stumped but Luca found the answer in the good old LinkedIn Help centre! |
Sat, 8 April 2017
Welcome to episode 156, this week I finally get around to discussing how LinkedIn works across different languages and seeing as I know very little about the subject, I called upon my good friend Luca Bozzato to help out. But first a few updates for you….. LinkedIn have finally clarified the difference between article and post ‘views’ Article views have always been ‘real’ views (ie someone clicked on your post) whereas post ‘views’ are just page impressions, ie it has just appeared on someone’s homepage feed and there is no guarantee that anyone has actually read it. I wrote an article this week about the increasing amount of images posted to LinkedIn that are the wrong size and are therefore getting badly cropped in the feed. You can read the full article below; I also had all kinds of issues getting the thumbnail for the article to look right in my profile. Something interesting I saw this week…. Who Has the Best (and Worst) LinkedIn Profile Photos? So who would have guessed that Chile would have the best profile pics?! This gave me the perfect excuse to re-test my score with Snappr now that I have a new profile, previously in episode 145, I found I had a rather disappointing score of 64 but I’m delighted to see a big improvement! LinkedIn Languages with Luca Bozzato I was delighted to welcome Italian LinkedIn expert Luca onto the show to share his knowledge, click on the image below to view Luca’s profile. Some highlights of our chat Please feel free to get in touch if you have any further question about multi-lingual profile A great question this week from Stan Robinson; Q- Is it possible to duplicate a saved search in Sales Navigator? ANS - This is a great question and the answer is that it can be done but not by duplicating a saved search directly. The workaround is to do the following; Go to the saved search you wish to replicate & amend
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Sat, 1 April 2017
Welcome to episode 155, I’m sorry I wasn’t able to deliver an episode last week, the conference was so ‘full on’ I had no opportunity to put together the full episode although I did manage to record a few short snippets. Now that I’m back, albeit somewhat jet lagged, I thought I would share with you my experiences last week in San Diego But first…… Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week. LinkedIn revamps timeline with Trending Storylines: curated, algorithmic news clusters LinkedIn could be moving firm's IP to Ireland after Microsoft's €24bn takeover Social Media Marketing World (#SMMW17) So last week I made the trip to San Diego, a trip I had thought about making every year since this conference started. It was a big commitment both financially and in terms of time….so was it worth it? The conference was held at the massive convention centre in downtown San Diego. SMMW had c3000 delegates but we barely took up ⅓rd of the convention centre!! The conference began officially on Thursday but they ran a series of practical workshops on the Wednesday so my first experience was a practical session led by David H. Lawrence 17th and it couldn’t have been a better start! How to create videos that build authority at a moments notice. David H. Lawrence XVII I made more notes in this session than in any other. Very impressive speaker with a background as a Hollywood actor! I met up with listener Gary Stockton afterwards to get his feedback Key points;
How to create highly shareable social media images - Rebekah Radice I am a big believer in the importance of images in our posts and articles on LinkedIn so I had high hopes for this workshop……it wasn’t as insightful as I hoped but I still picked up a few tips;
Day two keynote - Michael Stelzner
Artificial Intelligence - Christopher Penn This was a very fascinating but complicated topic and I think I understood, at best about 20% of what Christopher covered! He was clearly a very competent, technical guy and as a result he communicated as you would expect of someone of such a ‘techie’! The main highlights were as follows;
How to become an evangelist - Guy Kawasaki Guy was one of the real ‘Superstar’ presenters at the conference and he didn’t disappoint! He can be pretty controversial at times but also very entertaining. He was talking about being an evangelist and the things I learnt were as follows; |
Sat, 18 March 2017
Welcome to episode 154, it’s been a tricky week this week, I had planned an interview with an Italian LinkedIn trainer to tackle the important subject of multi-lingual profiles but due to a combination of illness and power cuts, I had to postpone that! Instead I decided to cover a subject I am very enthusiastic about - research, specifically researching people. But first…..
LinkedIn’s founder Reid Hoffman has been wondering what to do with himself since he found the the company he had a major stake in had been sold for $26.2B…..tough life! Mobile Update LinkedIn have updated their mobile app. Instead we have to try to figure out the changes for ourselves although they did announce in their blog that the new version now has profile picture edit options; There are some other notable changes. The ‘Me’ menu has disappeared….wait! I thought they redesigned the desktop experience to be more in line with mobile…but now they are dropping the Me menu from mobile?!! This was how the menu looked before the update; This is how it looks now As you can see, the Me menu has been replaced with jobs (boo hiss!). So how do you get to the profile edit page? They have also improved the controls you have over your feed. Now when tapping on the edit link (see below) you get more options. One of these options is ‘Improve my feed’
Have you noticed any other changes? LinkedIn Warn Cheaters! LinkedIn are sending out emails to users who they spot are logging into another persons account, this currently only seems to happen when they are a Sales Navigator or Recruiter Lite subscriber. A listener sent me this screenshot of an email they received recently I Know You…..Profile Research There are so many things you can find out about someone from their profile. In this section I talk in more details about; No episode next week (probably) I think it’s likely that I won’t get an episode out next week as I will be networking and learning like crazy at the Social Media Marketing World Conference in sunny San Diego….can’t wait! |
Sat, 11 March 2017
Welcome to episode 153, this week I discuss my thoughts on @ mentions in LinkedIn posts. There seems to be a growing trend out there and I’m not sure it’s all good. But first…… Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week
Perhaps Jeff Weiner needs to have a word with his new President…..I believe he has some good contacts in Russia!! Update Last week I featured a question from Jamie…..firstly I used the wrong name! It was actually from Robert Curley….apologies Robert. Thanks to Giles Davis for that. New Desktop Design Update LinkedIn are now rolling out more ‘advanced’ filters in search, I don’t have the feature yet but I saw this screenshot this week.
I’m noticing an increasing amount of posts that are using the @mention feature in what I feel is an inappropriate manner.
I have also noticed a growing trend towards @mentions in comments. But I have also noticed a lot of people just tagging someone…no comment or question just their name. This is being used as a way to share the post with someone, which is good but the right way to do this is to ‘share’ the post via a message That is how I see it but I’m interested to know what you think. Drop me a line at mark@linkedinformed.com or better still, leave me a voice mail by clicking on the link at the side of this page (see image below) Q - Why don't I get notified when all my contacts post an article? Previously we received a notification when one of our contacts had published a Pulse blog (now article). Now I only see a few notifications from my contacts publishing articles. This week I know of two people who published an article, but it did not show in my Notifications! Ans - The algorithm has definitely changed on this front. The problem is that so many people are publishing articles and LinkedIn does not want to overwhelm you! I think they will only notify you when someone you have shown more interest in posts.
Ans - No the link you need is shown below;
I’m delivering a short TED style talk this coming week in Manchester.
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Sat, 4 March 2017
Welcome to episode 152, this week I’m going to cover the new Neptune design quite a bit as there have been quite a few developments. Firstly a big thank-you to Kurt Shaver, Darrel Griffin and the mysterious ‘LoveWeb’ for giving the show 5 star reviews on iTunes - I massively appreciate your support. New Desktop Design Update It would seem that there is no way to see your sent invitation messages - this is crazy! The Great U-Turn LinkedIn have had to face an enormous amount of negative feedback about the new design. Anyway the good news is that LinkedIn are listening and David Flink published this article this week; It would also appear that they are seriously considering bringing back postcode radius search…which would be massive! I really applaud LinkedIn for their approach. Taking criticism is not easy and to take this approach is refreshing and progressive. But…… I could have told them about all these faults in October but no-one was listening! LinkedIn say they survey members before making changes but either; Such a massive u-turn on so many features should not be necessary at this stage. Waiting until almost full roll-out before listening means they have lost a massive amount of credibility. Thanks to Sandra Clark for her voicemail question about Sales Navigator. For me the three key benefits are as follows; Saved searches are better, partly because of the above filter. You can receive daily email alerts about people who meet your criteria and are active Question: Question: Answer If however you are using the ‘in page’ messaging feature then you are effectively using a chat feature and every ‘return’ is a ‘send message’. This makes sense to me. If you want to construct a nicely laid out message, using the Messaging page. |
Sat, 25 February 2017
Welcome to episode 151 at the end of another traumatic week for LinkedIn and it’s new design! Following on from last weeks episode, I want to dig a bit deeper into what communication techniques work and what really don’t work on LinkedIn. But first….. Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week
Are LinkedIn understaffed and overworked?….or just low quality or ignorant? I suspect they are severely overworked and understaffed….ironic for a site that makes 60% of its revenue from recruitment! LinkedIn Salary - Did you know that premium users no longer have to add their salary to be able to use the salary feature. New Desktop Design Update Now that the majority of users have the new UI, the heat is really turning up on LinkedIn…members are really not happy! Someone has even created an online petition! Whilst I think it’s important to provide LinkedIn with feedback, I don’t think ranting helps (other than the person that wrote it might feel better!). I’m not happy with the new design either but I am trying to be constructive and find realistic solutions. Here is my list of bugs, it is worth noting that this list was almost double the length in November, so things are slowly getting better.
Bugs or ‘forgotten’ features
Have you found any more? Let me know if I have missed any. New UI fact: Did you know that emoji’s in name fields make the person impossible to find in a name search? Communication. The Mirror Effect What is going on here? Let’s consider a better example; Mike noticed that following an article he wrote on LinkedIn (aimed at being of value to treasury professionals) he was getting a lot of new followers. I noticed you recently reviewed my profile maybe after reading one of my articles, you may also have seen this post about improving your LinkedIn profile if it helps you? All 22 accepted! This is no surprise because he acted on a clear signal that they were interested in him, rather than assuming they would be. This is what I mean by effective communication. I would love to hear about more examples, both good and bad.
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Sat, 18 February 2017
Welcome to episode 150, that seems like a pretty good milestone to have reached but I think the main celebration will be at number 200! Something interesting I saw this week Well there hasn’t been much news at all this week, it seems everyone is so pre-occupied with the new desktop design (which I am trying to avoid covering in this episode). LinkedIn did announce that they had re-vamped their premium accounts, I’m not sure they have changed much to be honest and Business account holders are still getting a raw deal but there are a few changes worth noting, especially to the jobseeker account which is now called ‘Career’. Here is the article; Coaching If you are interested in a one to one coaching session or just want to have ask for some quick advice, you can book a free 15-minute consultation with me at; New Book - I need your help I’m starting to research the topic of online relationship building a communication for a book I will be writing. Social Media Content. What matters most - When or What? I read a great article this by Jay Baer that really got me thinking about what matters when posting content on LinkedIn. The Truth About How Often To Post In Social Media
Jay makes some great points but I also think that consistently high engagement will lead to more people seeing your posts initially (before the algorithm can judge how interesting it is). His main advice is spot on; I would just add - also at the right time, with an image and ask a question!
Lars asked via voicemail which browser I thought worked best with LinkedIn.
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Sat, 11 February 2017
Welcome to episode 149, it seems that the roll-out has now reached about 75% if users so I thought it would make sense to get through some of the many questions I have been receiving. It’s funny for me, I feel like I have been talking about this for so long with very little feedback and then all of a sudden….everyone is talking about it and asking questions!
Published Post Comments Firstly LinkedIn have officially announced a new feature within published posts - the ability to switch off comments and report inappropriate comments - woop-de-do! Maybe it’s just me (probably) but I find it hard to read those ‘corporate’ type posts that say nothing at all for the first two paragraphs! Update to Mobile App LinkedIn have quietly added an interesting new section to a personal profile, it’s on on mobile currently but I suspect it may come to desktop eventually. When you tap on add topics you are given a list of topics (presumably based on your profile & network) from which you can pick 3. Then you add them to your profile And this is what they look like I’m not sure if these are searchable yet but that could become an option. It’s certainly worth adding them for now. Your ‘Neptune’ Questions answered.
This is a bit hidden but you will find up at the bottom of the ‘more’ menu (you do need to scroll down). How do I find my own company page or one I’m an admin for? For some reason this is in a different place to the above! How do I personalise invitations? Don’t invite someone from anywhere other than their profile! If you click ‘connect’ from a shortlist or ‘people you may know’ it just sends a blank invitation. Has the recommendation button gone? No but it has moved. See below How do I conduct a search within my first tier connections? This actually hasn’t changed, the best way id via an advanced search…..wait! Advanced search has gone!! No worries, you can still do it, this video shows how; How do I sort my homepage feed by ‘most recent’ Unfortunately you can’t but I believe there is a strong possibility that this feature may be coming and that it will be much better than before…let’s hope so! How do I revert back to the old UI? Sorry you can’t! My suggestion is that you focus on making the most of Neptune, it has it’s faults but also some good points and I’m certain it will improve in time.
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Sat, 4 February 2017
Welcome to episode 148, this week I interview a young chap called Jack Parsons who is the CEO of an exciting start-up called YourFeed. Jack and he team are about to launch a brand new website and social network called YourFeed, here is how they describe themselves; I found this a fascinating conversation about the challenges that LinkedIn face with the younger generation. I would love to hear your views on this. Please leave me a voicemail or send an email to mark@linkedinformed.com So long as you keep open the tab that this opens, you have the new UI…as well as the old one! Unfortunately this doesn’t seem to work for everyone, some are getting 404 error page and others see an earlier version of Neptune that is completely useless. This weeks question is about the new user interface. Question: Where have groups gone? Answer Groups are now accessed via the ‘More’ matrix menu |
Sat, 28 January 2017
Welcome to episode 147, this week, I had planned an interview but that didn’t happen so I thought I would talk about something that I know is very important to many of you…..advanced search in the new desktop design. But first…. New Desktop UI Design Update
Update On last weeks show I explained that you can create a custom audience on Facebook from your downloaded LinkedIn connections. I still think this is a good idea but it is worth noting that this is against Facebooks rules. Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week Here are the articles I refer to in this weeks episode; Advanced Search With The New UI LinkedIn released anew video this week showing how you can search for people in the new UI, it’s very basic but they did go on to explain that for more advanced users they have brought back some important boolean operators. The five operators you can use in the search field are; firstname: Finds members based on first name lastname: Finds members based on last name title: Finds members based on their current title (this one is likely to be the most useful) company: Finds members based on their current company (keyword search) school: Finds members based on schools attended (keyword search) Search operators complement the filters on the right-hand side of the results page and the AND, OR and NOT boolean operators. Here’s a quick example: to search for current software engineers not named Doe, who have attended either Harvard University or Stanford University, try: title:"software engineer" NOT lastname:doe school:(harvard OR stanford) When using search operators, remember to use quotes for multi-word search terms, and parentheses for AND, OR and NOT phrases.
Question: Can I adjust my Sales Navigator Lead builder search results so that I see someone’s headline rather than their job title? Answer: No you can’t but don’t forget that for the vast majority of profiles, the two are the same. It is worth noting that job seekers might want to consider making their current job titles a little more descriptive. As you can see in this screenshot, the information highlighted is my current job title and not my headline. |
Sat, 21 January 2017
Click here to get your step by step guide on how to download your connections and upload them to Facebook. Welcome to episode 146, this week I have an idea to share with you about what you can do with your LinkedIn connections on Facebook. More of that later, but first….. New UI Desktop Design Update Saved searches are returning (end of Jan) Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner Shares How to Effectively Scale a Business in a New LinkedIn Learning Course Here’s What You Can Do With Your Downloaded List Of LinkedIn Connections I’m always encouraging people to regularly download your list of connections and it’s even more important now as you won’t be able to directly download them in the new UI (you can via the data archive). The question has always been…What do I do with them now? Well the answer to that is not to add them to a newsletter email list, that is not something they have given you permission to do and it’s actually against the law! I would however consider uploading them to Facebook and creating a ‘custom audience’. That way you can run a low cost ad campaign specifically directed at your LinkedIn connections - genius! Click here to get your step by step guide on how to download your connections and upload them to Facebook. |
Sat, 14 January 2017
Welcome to episode 145, this week I want to revisit something that so many people ignore or underestimate the importance of….your LinkedIn profile picture! But first a few interesting things I saw this week; An open letter to Jeff Weiner by Oleg Vishnepolsky The main highlights from this were; LinkedIn tell Windows app users it is no longer supported…and then say it was a mistake! Russia completes LinkedIn ban by demanding Google and Apple remove the app No Fake news from LinkedIn. Really? These comments are very misleading from Daniel Roth, Editors do not control all published posts and certainly not all updates. That said, fake news is pretty rare on LinkedIn. New Desktop UI Update: There are strong rumours that LinkedIn have had to put the roll-out on hold due to problems. Is Your Profile Picture Up To Scratch? I found an excellent article this week that reminded me of the importance of this subject; The new service this refers to is a fantastic idea - Snappr Photo Analyzer Analyse your LinkedIn profile photo here (make sure you are logged into LinkedIn in another tab first) Unfortunately I didn’t score so well!; This is a subject I always cover in my training, as does pretty much every LinkedIn or social media trainer in the world - it’s the most obvious thing to get right and yet so many people get it wrong. As a random experiment I ran a search on LinkedIn with the following criteria; Then I viewed the first 20 profiles and here are the mistakes I found; So only 10 profiles had decent profile photos and out of those I would only give 4 of them a 8+ out of 10 score. Other common mistakes I often see; The 5 simple rules of a great profile photo Close up - head and shoulders max With the new desktop UI design, all profile photos will be circular - across every section and on mobile so it is important to check what your current profile photo looks like in a desktop search result or on the mobile app. Also: I answer both these questions in the podcast and refer to an episode of the winbusinessin podcast where I interviewed ‘The Headshot Guy’ John Cassidy Season 1 Episode 5. LinkedIn Profile Photo’s with ‘The Headshot Guy’
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Sat, 7 January 2017
Welcome to episode 144 and a very happy new year to you all. I hope you achieve great things this year and I trust that LinkedIn will be with you every step of the way! I thought I would start the year with a focus on searching. As we know, the much loved Advanced search feature will be gone once we all get the new UI so it seems a good time to focus on the subject. But before that I saw a few things this week that I thought you might find interesting…. The Twitter account you should use to get the attention of LinkedIn’s published post editors has changed! Worth knowing about if you publish a lot on LinkedIn. LinkedIn Censorship Following on from my rant about LinkedIn censorship in the last episode I was reminded by someone of the infamous Candice Galek and how much her posts get censored by LinkedIn. I have to admit that many of her posts actually do need censoring as they often used to include inappropriate images but it seems she is now getting censored for criticising LinkedIn - not good LinkedIn, that really is Soviet style tactics! The above post has now been removed by LinkedIn! Searching in 2017 I saw a very interesting presentation this week from Shakhina Pulatova who is the Search and Discovery Product Lead at LinkedIn, based in San Francisco. You can watch the full presentation from the Global Big Data Conference in August last year here; Instant and Personal: Searching Your Network at LinkedIn This presentation was about how LinkedIn design their instant search feature on the flagship mobile app. It’s especially relevant as the new UI seems to use the same system. Highlights include; Results ranking: She gave us some interesting clues about how a search resulted is ranked with network distance, similarity of network (shared connections) and global popularity appearing to be important. She also referred to ‘spammy content in names and headlines’ counting negatively. Recruiter Lite vs Sales Navigator With the impending demise of advanced search in the new desktop design, many users are reluctantly having to consider upgrading from a free or Business level premium account. So what option do you go for? Why is this even a question?!! Surely the clue is in the name - If you use LinkedIn to win new customers then Navigator is the correct solution (it is!) and if your role is to fill job vacancies then Recruiter Lite is the obvious choice (and it also is!). But what if your role involves both?….. That is the dilemma facing Recruitment businesses throughout the world and it's more than just a choice between LinkedIn products, it actually addresses a key question about how that business operates! To help with this dilemma, I wrote a post on LinkedIn covering a comparison between the two; Sales Navigator VS Recruiter Lite |
Sat, 24 December 2016
Welcome to episode 143, before I get into anything else I just want to extend my warm wishes for the festive season. Happy Christmas everyone! Is This LinkedIn Censorship? I posted the ‘Dear Satya’ image on LinkedIn last week and a number of people were @mentioned and several commented. On Wednesday 21st December I was unable to log into LinkedIn and only saw an error message stating my account had been suspended! I had to sweat this out all, wondering what on earth I had done wrong! Eventually I received this email from the safety team; At first I assumed it was just an innocent mistake, then I tried to find the Dear Satya update and my conspiracy theory started to grow! What do you think? Am I letting my imagination run away with me here? Updates The excellent browser extension Dux-soup has updated and is now compatible with the new User interface - great work! The Google Chrome browser has also recently updated and this now includes a LinkedIn notifications feature - nice. Another Security Breach I’m not sure this is something to lose any sleep over but it is another sign that LinkedIn are often vulnerable; You can read more about it here; LinkedIn's training arm resets 55,000 members' passwords, warns 9.5m Question; Could you discuss the difference between connections and followers? I get connection requests from people that I really don't know and don't want to connect with. However, I would like for them to follow me on LinkedIn. I know that I have seen profiles where I could choose to follow the person, but not connect with them. How do you recommend that I accomplish this? Answer Whilst there is no perfect answer to this question, I do discuss the differences between followers and connections and what steps you might be able to make to encourage more people to follow you rather then send an invitation to connect. Scroll to the top of this page to listen to the show. |
Sat, 17 December 2016
Welcome to episode 142, on the week that the roll-out of the new desktop interface has really begun……Have you got it yet? Please get in touch and let me know your thoughts if you have. I found out from a very good source this week that LinkedIns internal name for the new user interface is ‘Neptune’ which got me thinking “How do they come up with these names?” You might associate Neptune with the Roman God of the seas but Neptune is also a planet - Interestingly I read that Neptune is not visible to the unaided eye and is the only planet in the Solar System found by mathematical prediction rather than by empirical observation. Could these be a reference to the removal of Advanced Search I wonder?! Want the Old UI back? There is a short-term workaround The guys at Autopilot for LinkedIn have devised a short term way of accessing the old UI if you wish to (I’m not recommending you do). Here is what they had to say; I’m not sure this will work so be careful, I personally found that once I had the new UI, my view limits were drastically reduced in LinkedIn.com and I found my account suspended in no time! Tags/notes and Sales Navigator Following on from LinkedIn’s announcement that Takes and notes were no longer supported in the free version of LinkedIn and to continue using them you need to upgrade to Sales Navigator I thought I would take a closer look at how this transition works. It doesn’t - it’s a disaster! Yes you can upload your tags to Sales Navigator but all that does is add them to the list of tags, they are not officially assigned to a profile until you save that profile as a Lead, they are greyed out until you save. This shows a complete lack of understanding of how we use tags. The whole point of tags is that they are an easy way to find people you have categorised in some way - the reason you do this is because you won’t be able to remember everyone by name. In Sales Navigator, Tags can only be used as a filter in a search result but the imported tags are not assigned to profiles until they are saved as leads….so how do you find those profiles you tagged in LinkedIn.com? You can’t! Slideshare Update. An update on this subject from last week about the potential demise of Slideshare. Someone pointed out that a plausible explanation would be that LinkedIn are looking to merge Slidehare and Pointdrive.
I have seen several people state that you can still use Boolean search queries in the new UI. I really don’t believe this is true. Are Recruiters Walking Away From LinkedIn…..And Is This Such a Bad Thing? I read this excellent article this week from Katrina Collier;
This brings us back to the Facebook argument again! I know a little about Katrina and I have always considered her a highly credible expert in social recruiting. She doesn’t elaborate on what she means by ‘being creative’ to be able to recruit successfully via Facebook - unless you buy her training but my guess is that it involves some form of search (although career data is weak on Facebook) combined with building communities and groups. These are all viable methods and I can’t argue with the logic of sourcing candidates from a variety of sources and the data she backs her argument with in favour of Facebook is pretty compelling. Judging by the comments on her piece and the feedback I am getting from Recruiters, I think it’s probably true that many Recruiters will soon be spending a lot less time on LinkedIn. Whilst LinkedIn don’t want this, I suspect they have factored it into their plan - sales of LinkedIn Recruiter are less likely to be affected, I suspect its the lower level premium accounts and free users that will walk away and LinkedIn, now backed by the financial powerhouse that is Microsoft can afford to lose some revenue in the interim period before Sales Navigator really takes off. Are LinkedIn users going to miss Recruiters? I doubt it! Good Recruiters who build relationships will continue to stay active on LinkedIn (as well as other places). Facebook could be a place to talk about jobs and careers but it is not a place to talk about business, LinkedIn allows us to keep our personal lives personal and not have our Facebook time interrupted by work related subject matter. I believe the vast majority of people feel this way. Recruiters who are only interested in posting endless jobs and sending inappropriate messages to potential candidates will probably go to Facebook….good riddance.
1. A voicemail question fro Jaz about the annoying habit that some users have developed of putting keywords in their name field. 2. I recently purchased the Sales Navigator. Thank you for all the information that you have put out about it. It really helped me decide if I was willing to pay for it. Now that I have it, I have a question about segmenting prospects and the recommendations that LinkedIn provides. I am a financial advisor, but I also volunteer with a couple industry organizations. So here is the issue I am having. I have many connections that are other financial professionals. They are not prospects to become my clients, however, they are prospects for joining industry, or professional organizations that I participate in. I think that because I have all these connections, LinkedIn thinks that I want to prospect other financial professionals. However, these are not the sales leads that I need. Is there a way to segment leads into potential clients and potential colleagues? How do I tell LinkedIn Sales Navigator that I want client leads that fit my target demographic (professional women, 25-40)? I answer both questions in detail in the podcast. Go to the top of this page to listen to the show. |
Sat, 10 December 2016
Welcome to episode 141….the calm after the #linkedinthebin storm of last week! The feedback was great from last weeks show, thanks to everyone who voted. The result was a draw between myself and Angus. If you want to hear another round of Linked-in-the-bin, let me know and I will have a think about who I can invite as contestants. Interesting stuff I saw this week Search Filters are being removed A Business account holder received the following message this week Message from LinkedIn reads; At LinkedIn, we're always looking for ways to simplify and improve your experience – helping you be more productive and successful. This sometimes means removing features that aren't heavily used by most of our members to invest in others that members tell us offer greater value. As such, we're removing the Premium search filters feature that allowed you to apply additional advanced search filters to find people on LinkedIn. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you. If you'd like to continue using this feature, it's available on our Sales Navigator platform, which you can now enjoy for a free trial period of 3 months*. LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a product we launched a couple of years ago and is targeted at sales professionals - it lets you keep track of your existing relationships, research your network, and find new leads faster with tailored recommendations. Please feel free to contact us with any questions regarding your Premium account. The LinkedIn Premium Team This would appear to suggest that the premium filters are the only thing they are removing but that is definitely not the case with the new UI - perhaps this is an interim move whilst the roll out to the new UI takes place? Do you have a business account? What do you see in the advanced search area now? I checked someones free account and the premium filters were still showing As usual with LinkedIn, a lack of clear communication leaves us all confused! Tags & Notes A number of people have also contacted me this week to say they had received notification that Tags and Notes were being removed. This was originally announced several months ago and I haven’t see the relationship tab on connections for some time now so I was surprised to see this. As with search filters / advanced search these features have all moved to Sales Navigator. Whilst I’m a big fan of Sales Navigator, I do think it’s a very poor show to remove these features from free users as well as Job seeker and Business account holders. Sponsored InMail LinkedIn Releases Sponsored InMail Campaigns for All Advertisers This could be useful for some although I fear more spam is likely to come our way! Microsoft deal approved by EU due to Xing concession Microsoft Said to Use German Site to Appease EU Over LinkedIn Great article from Greg Cooper about Sales Navigator Should I Upgrade to LinkedIn Sales Navigator? A Guide for SMEs (SMBs) Don’t Trust LinkedIn I was reminded by a follower this week that I warned people against using Tags in June 2014 when I wrote a post on LinkedIn titled Be careful LinkedIn...... Which included the lines “For instance. LinkedIn Contacts is a fantastic feature, effectively a free social CRM system built into LinkedIn. So why aren't people using it? Well what happens if I write notes, add reminders etc and then find they have all disappeared because LinkedIn changed its mind and decided that this was not the direction they want to go in!” So now LinkedIn are basically saying the following; “I know we gave you something and asked you to use it and now we want you to pay to keep using it but please use it…..we promise we won’t take it away or suddenly increase the cost. The lesson? Don’t use features that tie you into LinkedIn….period. This is not a reason to upgrade the Sales Navigator in my opinion, unless the info you wish to add is non essential to your business If your content and followers are all on LinkedIn - diversify where you place your content. Keep writing posts but don’t just rely on LinkedIn. By all means link Sales Navigator to your CRM but don’t add any valuable data into your LinkedIn account. I hate to say it but we have to learn from experience. LinkedIn are not a company to be trusted! With these changes and the impending outcry when everyone gets the new UI, I fully expect the likes of BeeBee to encourage a migration away from LinkedIn. Whilst I understand the sentiment and the desire to protest, there really is no point in cutting your nose off to spite your face! LinkedIn is useful to us because of it’s members, the company that run it may annoy us and at times act in ways which prove they are not trustworthy but that is no reason to leave. The right response is to keep using LinkedIn because the majority of professionals will be there. I have no loyalty to LinkedIn but I believe that the point of social media is to engage and build relationships with those that you wish to do business with and to do that you need to be active where they are…and most people are on LinkedIn. Voting with your feet and migrating to other smaller networks is not the answer, the vast majority of people on LinkedIn will never leave so neither should you. Just don’t trust them with anything of value or importance to your business. Stop ‘Bigging’ yourself up! Don’t tell me…let me find out This week a connection of mine posted a status update showing a screenshot of a recommendation they had received on LinkedIn! This loses all impact - stop telling me how great you are (even if it’s someone else words) A product with a testimonial printed on it is seen as blatant, untrustworthy marketing. A product with a review attached to it is seen as credible…both the same thing
Slideshare - RIP? Following a voicemail from Gary Stockton, I started to investigate the rumour that Slideshare could be shutting down. I haven’t asked LinkedIn about this (because they never tell you anything!) and the ‘Todays Top Slideshares’ feature has now been updated but I still smell a bit of a rat….watch this space! Below is the article referred to; Is LinkedIn Killing SlideShare?
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Sat, 3 December 2016
Welcome to episode 140, this week I thought we would have a bit of fun with our new gameshow! But first……
The Truth Behind Malware On Facebook, LinkedIn; Google's New Policy On Malware Sites Freaking Scary The reality is that you have nothing to worry about by browsing your LinkedIn feed, viewing and sharing images. Whilst we are talking images, I noticed this week that LinkedIn have still not corrected the image sharing issue I highlighted in this post I wrote back in May; I had heard that one of the reasons they have redesigned the desktop experience was to allow them to fix such issues (apparently the old platform made it difficult to fix issues such as this) so optimistically I checked out the new UI to see if had been fixed. Here is what I found….. Microsoft Takeover Apparently Microsoft had their eye on LinkedIn for many years…I bet the price wasn’t anywhere near $26.2b in 1996! You can read the article here; Introducing our new game - Linked-in-the-bin! I’m trying something new this week. It’s mainly a bit of fun but I’m hoping you might find it useful as well.
The format works as follows;
For example Tweet : #linkedinthebin I vote for Mark. Of course you don’t have to vote for me! The contestants. As well as myself I have invited Steve Phillip and Angus Grady to this inaugural Linked-In-The-Bin show. Both are respected UK based LinkedIn Trainers (click on the images below to view their profiles; Features for the bin; Angus - Default invitation to connect messages Have a listen to all three arguments and vote for the one you think is the most compelling by tweeting #linkedinthebin and one of the names above. New Desktop Design Update I tried to write a recommendation for someone this week and this is what happened;
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Sat, 26 November 2016
Welcome to episode 139, this week I’m mainly exploring a subject which many people find a real challenge - how to promote you or your products/services without appearing cheesy or being too pushy! But first…. Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week The three articles I refer to are shown below;
I also have a further update on the article about LinkedIn being banned in Russia I covered in last weeks show. It seems LinkedIn have been somewhat arrogant in their handling of this issue which could have been sorted out before going to court (according to a contact I have in Russia). The Art of Social Selling A good rule of thumb when selling or promoting something on LinkedIn is to take your lead from off-line behavioural norms. You wouldn’t walk into a networking event and think “right, how am I going to sell sell sell to this lot”! In reality you would ‘work the room’ talking to people, asking questions, building rapport and getting to know them. You probably wouldn’t try to ‘sell’ anything unless they enquire. This is how it works on LinkedIn. In this section I explain my thoughts on how trust is built on LinkedIn, the actions that we take to generate a magnetic profile where prospects feel motivated to come to you. The New Sales Navigator Inbox / Messages experience. This is a big improvement to this area of Sales Navigator so I made a short video to demonstrate what is new and different. |
Sat, 19 November 2016
Welcome to episode 138, this week I thought I would address the issue that many are talking about…Facebook’s perceived threat to LinkedIn. The most important number here is that only 28% of C-level executives source leadership material from social media. It is surprising but out of the 28%, more are influenced by Facebook but in truth we are only talking about 44 versus 38 executives. These results showed a continued slowing of LinkedIn growth to just 23% in comparison to the same period last year. LinkedIn could be banned in Russia Question: |
Sat, 12 November 2016
Welcome to episode 137. Well what a crazy week it's been, quite possibly one of the craziest weeks in living history! But first….. Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week LinkedIn Record is rumoured to be rolling out soon to all members. I haven't seen any official confirmation of this from LinkedIn and I'm not exactly sure how it would work but the opportunity to post 30 second videos to our followers would be great! Facebook have announced that they will provide ways to advertise job openings on business pages. Journalists are getting excited thinking that this is in some way a threat to LinkedIn not realising that the majority of LinkedIn's success in recruiting is through its search capabilities not recruitment advertising! You can read the full article here;
This is not a scam but a product that is getting a lot of people excited….. Apart from me! I have several problems with this product; These are just my opinions and you should take a look yourself at linkedinselling.com rather than just take my word for it. The new UI - your questions In this episode I provide answers, The best I can, to the following questions that were sent to me. Which of the 17 missing features will return?
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Sat, 5 November 2016
Hello and welcome to episode 136 at the end of another crazy week in the wonderful world of LinkedIn! I have spent this week working in the beautiful and sunny Costa Del Sol, it’s my annual escape from the wet and cold of England at this time of year. LinkedIn have now said that the version of the new desktop UI I have is actually in ‘beta’ ie it’s not ready for general release…..you don’t say!!! I covered this extensively in last week’s episode and don’t intend to cover too much more now because it’s clear that things are likely to keep changing. I did mention recommendations which have improved. You can now see ‘given’ and you can now recommend and asked to be recommended and the option to edit your recommendations has returned although this still needs some work. It’s very frustrating to be in a position to spot omissions and bugs and not have anyone (sensible) to report them to! New Company Pages The new design of company pages are now being rolled out, all admins should see the new design. As far as I can see, the functionality is pretty much the same but the design has be refreshed. One change that will effect all admins is the need to upload a new background image to all company and showcase pages. Advanced search
I see the removal of advanced search as the key test as to whether LinkedIn have correctly judged the difference between the hunters and the hunted (see episode 134 for more information on The LinkedIn Paradox). The key question here is on the fringes between hunters and the hunted. LinkedIn need the regular users (the hunted), without them they are nothing and the super users (hunters) have no reason to be on LinkedIn either. Super users just need to upgrade, no question. But if regular users feel they are being pushed towards upgrading then we all have a problem and LinkedIn have messed up big time! Do regular users feel they have a need for advanced search? Have LinkedIn misjudged the definition of a regular user? Only time will tell but it’s a big call by LinkedIn. No More Boolean Searches! Irina Shamaeva broke this story this week. Apparently LinkedIn are dropping the ability to search via boolean from all but it’s top level Recruiter accounts. Another example of pushing Recruiters to pay more for LinkedIn….the squeeze continues! Read the excellent article below. Boolean Is Dead. On LinkedIn Only LinkedIn Salary This is a very exciting new feature from LinkedIn and potentially a game changer for recruiters! Individual users on free accounts in the UK, Canada and US can now check the average salary and benefits for their job (or one they are applying to) against other LinkedIn users. To do so, however, they need to enter their own compensation information (this will be kept confidential) This is a fantastic idea, give people highly valuable information but ask for their data in return, thus increasing the quality of the data! IN addition, and most importantly Recruiters using a Recruiter premium account will be able to add salary as a filter in their searches - genius! You can read more about this below Introducing “LinkedIn Salary”: Unlock Your Earning Potential Or watch the promotional video below |
Sat, 29 October 2016
Welcome to episode 135 and what a week it has been! This episode is 100% dedicated to sharing with you the new desktop design that I woke up to on Saturday morning. It is still early days for the new user interface (UI) and it still has many bugs so things are bound to change over the coming weeks but having spent the last 4 days investigating every link, page and angle of the UI I can confirm the following;
This 2 minute video will give you an idea of how to navigate around the new UI Lost features 1. Advanced search (inc connection search) Desktop search is now the same as mobile search. You have to start with keywords but you cannot combine keywords with current job title. Once the initial search is performed you can then filter the results although you cannot see a number next to each filter. 2. Saved searches You can no longer save a search result with alerts and it would seem that our previously saved searches have also disappeared! 3. View your followers 4. emoticons in messages Gutted….not! 5. Out of network profiles. When you find a profile out of your network in a keyword search result you are no longer able to open that profile, here is what you see; 6. Edit display name in profile 7. Rich media in profiles 8. Move profile sections 9. Move current positions 10. Cant move or edit which recommendations show The above points 6-10 are all covered in this video; 11. Posting updates to Twitter The option to post a status update to Twitter no longer exists; 12. Video autoplay. This might just be a bug but as it stands videos no longer autoplay in the stream. 13. Top/recent updates option Our updates are now 100% based on what the algorithm think we want to see, we have no control other than by our actions. 14. Introductions They only just fixed this feature but now it has gone. 2nd tier profiles show mutual connections but there is no option to ask for an introduction.
15. Last 3 posts in profile - just 1 now This is to make way for activity. You can see this in the above video. 16. Additional info section - interests - personal details - advice for contacting. If you have spent time adding valuable information here in your profile, I would suggest you copy and save it somewhere. When you get the new UI it will be wiped! 17. Pdf Download. You can still share a profile from the 3 dots menu but the pdf download has gone. It also goes without saying that all Chrome extensions have stopped working in the new UI (until their developers get to work on them!) Additional features 1) Many links open in a new tab This is so handy but I wish they did it for profiles in search results as well. 2) Summary at top of profile 3) Last 3 activities show in profile 4) New size for background image 1536 x 768 (1400 x 425) 5) All profile/thumbnail pics now circular Points 2-5 are also covered in the above video 6) No need to give a reason when inviting At last! 7) Personalized invites much more visible This is what you see when you click on ‘connect’ in the profile or in a shortlist <first invite message> That’s it for now, I will start digging into more specifics next week. Questions I’m sure you have plenty, so please fire away! I am more than happy to take a look at whatever you need to know about the new UI |
Sat, 22 October 2016
Welcome to episode 134, this week there won’t be much to read in the notes because the whole episode is dedicated to an interview I recorded with fellow LinkedIn coach Bruce Johnston. Bruce and I discuss his recent post ‘The LinkedIn Paradox: The Hunters And The Hunted’ which is all about how LinkedIn need to carefully walk a tightrope between growing their revenues (appealing to hunters) and growing/retaining enough active members (the prey) Read The LinkedIn Paradox: The Hunters And The Hunted
Bruce and I cover a lot of ground in this episode and I hope you find it interesting and thought provoking. What do you think about the paradox. Is this the most critical issue LinkedIn face? |
Sat, 15 October 2016
Welcome to episode 133, this week I get stuck into a whole bunch of things. Is Sales Navigator essential to get a good SSI score? First up, I saw this interesting update from Ankur Chaudhary LinkedIn say that using Sales Navigator is a major help in improving your SSI but they don’t go so far as to suggest it’s essential. Ankur’s experience would suggest different! Premium Members Get LinkedIn Learning for Free - well some do! If you are interested in LinkedIn Learning then you might want to read this article; How LinkedIn Learning Helps You And Your Team Achieve More Job Seeker, Business Plus and Executive accounts get full Learning memberships for free, which is amazing but I fail to understand why the higher level Sales Navigator and Recruiters get nothing - crazy! New Feature! LinkedIn Introduce Mobile Update Insights We used to have this feature on the desktop version until they removed it a few years ago, much to my annoyance as I always liked to analyse the performance of my updates to work out best practice. Now they have re-introduced it to mobile only for now but my guess is that we will probably see this as part of the new desktop design (whenever that comes!) How to see your insights 1) Go to the 'Me' page and you will see the link in the bottom right section 2) Tap here to reveal the list of your shares and scroll down until you find the one you wish to view. 3) Now tap on the icon highlighted below which gives you the number of total views 4) Now you will see the viewer stats by company initially 5) Now swipe to the left to reveal the breakdown by job title and again by location. I found that image updates are performing much better than video or link updates The average number of views for my last 30 status updates are as follows; Link updates - 236 Video updates - 462 Image updates - 854* *These updates were also all done first thing in the morning The lack of video playback ‘in the stream’ on the mobile app is partly responsible for the lack of attention video updates are getting. Here is the image update I posted last week to demonstrate the comparison with Instagram (ironically this update was the most viewed of the 30 I analysed!) 6) Now scroll down to see where your viewers are in your network. This will usually mostly be 1st degree but if you get a high number of likes/comments you may find other tiers are higher. Now you will be able to get a much better sense of what updates are working for you and resonating with your followers/connections so that you can make adjustments accordingly. Other articles I cover in this episode
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Sat, 8 October 2016
Welcome to episode 132, I’m busy with training & speaking engagements this week so I pre-recorded this episode. Therefore if any big news has recently broken, I won’t be covering it till next week! You may recall in episode 79 I interviewed the founders of an interesting product called Autopilot about their Chrome extension that automatically viewed LinkedIn profiles. I still believe autoviewing is a valuable and a potentially highly productive action on LinkedIn so I set about finding an alternative product to recommend.
Autoviewing is a simple task conducted via a browser (normally Google Chrome) extension. Once the extension is installed you are able to ask it to view a list of profiles from a search result on LinkedIn. As a free LinkedIn member you are currently only able to view 150 profiles per day** whereas a premium member (Business Plus, Executive, Sales Navigator, Recruiter lite & Recruiter Professional) you can view up to 1000 a day* By the nature of autoviewing, it’s a numbers game so to get impressive results, you really need one of the above premium accounts. Why do it? LinkedIn’s most popular feature is ‘Who’s viewed your profile’. On average 8-12% of people viewed will view your profile in return, this figure can be much higher if you view people that are known to be more active (possible with Sales Navigator). Do LinkedIn Allow it? I have never seen a quote from LinkedIn that expressly bans the use of autoviewing extensions but I think it’s fair to say that by using them you are in breach of the user agreement. This however, does not mean it’s wrong. LinkedIn has limits on the number of profiles you can view and this is subject to change so it is essential that the company you purchase an autoviewing product from is completely on ‘top of their game’ in this respect. Whilst LinkedIn do not openly approve of autoviewing, it’s also pretty obvious that they benefit from it; The net result is that it is very rare to hear of people running into problems with LinkedIn when they autoview - provided they stick to the guidelines which are made clear by all providers.
The Options I have come up with two alternative solutions, Dux-soup and eLink Pro, I like both for different reasons. I looked at a product called LinMailPro initially but it’s main features are automatic connection requests and messaging and I believe those actions to be unethical - it also Autoviews but it’s more expensive than the following two options (due to those extra features).
Features Autoviewing of up to 800 profiles per day. Advantages
Dux-Soup Features Configurable autoviewing of up to 1500 profiles per day (not advised) Advantages
Disadvantages Small and somewhat anonymous business behind the software Summary
Dux-Soup’s greatest benefit is pricing whereas eLink pro has the useful scheduling feature and the company behind it does give me more confidence of longevity and capable customer support is something not to be sniffed at given that the reason I am looking at these products is due to Autopilot’s deficiencies in that area! |
Sat, 1 October 2016
Welcome to episode 131, this week’s episode is mostly dedicated to the big news announced by LinkedIn last week. I believe these changes will have a significant impact on how we use LinkedIn, it’s going to take a fair bit of getting used to…once we have it. Before I get stuck into the announcements I did see one interesting article about Facebook for Work, which is going to be launched very soon.
This is Amy Parnell, Senior Director, User Experience Design on stage, explaining the new design. Below is a screenshot of the new homepage with arrows pointing to all the subjects I discuss in the podcast; I also made a short video explaining some of the changes and here is the new look profile; The New Feed This doesn’t actually look much different but apparently they have been making lots of changes ‘under the hood’, the idea is that we should see more relevant posts and articles in our feed and under ‘trending’ New Messaging Potentially very exciting! This is how the new messaging app will look in the main page (as opposed to the Messages page) LinkedIn Learning I’m not convinced about a subscription model for pricing but they are allowing Job seeker, Business Plus and Executive premium account holders free access to LinkedIn Learning. Shockingly though Sales Navigator and Recruiter premium account holders do not get access. Where is the logic in that? That’s it for this week, I hope you found that useful. If you get the new design, please get in touch and let me know what you think. |
Sat, 24 September 2016
Welcome to our 130th episode. Interesting Stuff I saw this Week Here are the links to the interesting things I saw this week Your Guide To Generation Z
A key focus of social selling is to engage with your Leads on subjects that are of interest to them (rather than what you are offering them). There are however another set of people that you should work just as hard to engage with that aren’t leads, they are Thought LEADers. You are highly unlikely to do business with these people but they could be the key to unlocking the most difficult Leads. Building relationships with thought leaders can pay off big time. Your Leads will see you as more credible, you will have your finger on the pulse regarding topics that are important to your Leads and this will also help you write better, more relevant content. Three Critical Questions If you are in a sales role or you are hoping to win new customers on LinkedIn then can you answer the following questions; What business subjects are important to your Leads? |