Informed Podcast by Mark Williams The podcast for LinkedIn™️ users

Another LinkedIn week goes by and not much changes….the share price keeps dropping and I see numerous articles about the drop in standards and unprofessionalism of LinkedIn!……Tough times for Mr Weiner and his gang!

As I have somewhat neglected your questions in recent episodes I thought I would focus on the AFQ section this week…..first a few interesting articles I read this week;

  • This Is Why Shares of LinkedIn Are Way Down Today. It seems investors have really fallen out of love with LinkedIn and the share price continues to plummet…do they have a point?
  • How Do I Master That Skill? LinkedIn, Markle Want To Help. LinkedIn introduce a new service called ‘Training Finder’ initially in Pheonix and Denver. An example of LinkedIn’s increased focus on training as part of their Economic Graph.
  • How I Made $10,000 in One Month on LinkedIn (And You Can Too). This article is not what you think from the headline! It sounds like another ‘get rich quick’ piece but it’s actually a sensible and practical example of how to use LinkedIn effectively…worth a read.
  • I see a lot of posts about the demise of professional standards on LinkedIn, this is one of the better ones; Why I’ve LinkedOff. I have mixed views on this subject, I don’t want to go back to the days when LinkedIn was, frankly boring! I don’t enjoy quizzes and inappropriate sexual images but I do think people should be free to post anything relevant to their business or career. LinkedIn definitely need to address this issue and I’m pretty sure they will….my concern is that they won’t do it very well and we will all suffer as a result…..be careful what you wish for folks!

 

AFQ

 

I’m promoting this section up the agenda this week!

 

On the subject of inappropriate content on LinkedIn, I got this question this week;

 

It has come to my attention that some porn stars/sex workers are appearing in my profile!! How can I stop this?

 

ANSWER: They were of course referring to the ‘people also viewed’ section of their profile, here is an example of what can happen;

 

Not great! The problem is you would see this yourself, the only way you would find out is if someone told you!

The solution is to switch off this feature in your settings.

Go to the main ‘profile’ section of your settings and you will see the link as shown below.

 

Next question:

How do I a) Get more profile views and b) Get more invitations to connect?

 

ANSWER:

  1. Have you got your settings so that people can see when you visit their profile? If not change it. Increase your activity, post more updates and try to use more images in your updates. Ensure your picture is professional but friendly and your headline very clearly explains who you are and what you do (not a job title).
  2. Put your email at the top of your summary and encourage people to invite you to connect. Make sure your profile isn’t  too 'corporate' and lacking in character/warmth/authenticity. People care much less about brands and companies. Getting more profile views will have a knock on effect and you will automatically get more invitations.

 

 

Cool Thing

 

Profile Views extension.

If you are using LinkedIn on a free account you are only able to see the last 5 people who viewed you profile……unless you use this very useful Chrome extension.

This extension saves all your LinkedIn profile views and stores it for you to see the full history at anytime

Take full advantage of who's viewed your profile on LinkedIn. This extension saves every individual that viewed your profile.

 

-See beyond the 5 recent views limit

-View full histories of every profile view at any time

-No upgraded profile needed

-No limit on 90 days if upgraded account

<insert image PF extension>

 

And of course, the best bit is….it’s FREE!

 

The 5C Business Development System is now for sale!

….and for a limited time it’s discounted by a massive 63%!

 

Just click here for more information

Direct download: LinkedInformed20106.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:30am UTC

Hello and welcome to episode 105. It's great to finally be seeing signs that winter is behind us, I love the spring it's probably my favourite time of the year!

 

There have been quite a lot of interesting articles about LinkedIn this week so the news segment is somewhat longer than normal.

 

The articles I cover are;

 

 

I also mentioned about the changes to LinkedIn contacts and how the "How are you met" feature has been moved into the notes section.

 

LinkedIn are about to release a completely new look design to their settings page, it's clearly taking its design from the mobile app.

 

LinkedIn’s to do list

 

This week linkedIn's most popular feature ‘who viewed my profile’ broke down and at the time of recording it hadn't been fixed. I'm sure this feature will be fixed very soon but it got me thinking about all those areas and features of LinkedIn that have been left broken.

 

It strikes me that LinkedIn are very keen to keep introducing lots of new shiny features but perhaps they ought to draw a line in the sand and fix or completely remove there broken features before adding anything new.

Here is my list of things that LinkedIn need to fix;

 

  • Remove the redundant ‘subject’ box in connection messages (when sent from their profile)
  • Followers should be listed separately to first tier connections
  • Followers need a label to show their level of connection (2nd, 3rd, group etc)
  • Add links to send InMail and follow to the brief ‘cards’ of followers
  • Display the customised message in received invitations on desktop when hovering over the invitations icon.
  • Display connection level for fellow group members.
  • Develop an algorithm to remove quiz like status updates
  • Allow keyword search of group members (in the group).
  • Remove fake profiles
  • Add a ‘select all’ function to messages
  • Improve the ‘Jobs that might interest you’ algorithm.
  • Add a link to the profile of the person being introduced in the introduction message
  • Fix ‘who’s viewed your profile’.
  • Fix the NOT command in advanced search
  • Phrases surrounded by “ “ in advanced search should give only results of that exact phrase, Not words within that phrase.
  • Show the chosen qualities is selected in recommendations
  • Synchronise notifications between the mobile app and desktop versions
  • Add a sent folder for messages.

 

Cool thing

 

This week's cool thing is a Gmail plug-in that is owned by LinkedIn called Rapportive.

This will show you information about the person who has emailed you from their LinkedIn profile and provides a link to view their profile.

Direct download: LinkedInformed20105.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:30am UTC

Well what a week I have had! Lots of interesting sessions with a variety of types of businesses this week.

I’m so grateful to the driver from Uber who saved my skin!

 

The main subject I want to talk about this week is ‘Followers’ but first a few quick bits of news;

 

  • Now you see it, now you don’t…..and now you do again! This week many people reported losing the relationship tab for LinkedIn Contacts altogether - for everyone, including  1st tier connections! LinkedIn have officially stated that it was a temporary adjustment while they were working on improving the feature. I also saw (below) a report that a LinkedIn staffer had admitted that they are working on a better solution for premium accounts only. I guess we will just have to wait and see.

 

 

  • PayScale compare top tech companies. Interesting report fro PayScale, the highlights being;
    • LinkedIn have the highest median pay for mid career employees
    • They have one of the youngest workforces in the tech industry with a median age of 29
    • 42% of staff are female, the 2nd highest in the survey.

 

And you think you are getting bad service from LinkedIn…….

 

This week I had a conversation with a senior manager from a very large enterprise in the UK. To my astonishment he told me that LinkedIn refused to offer any training or tech support for Sales Navigator because they had less than 50 licences!

This is an organisation that was spending £20,000 per year alone on Sales Navigator licenses plus a significant amount on Recruiter licences.

So if you think you are getting a poor service as a free user or a low spend premium user, just think how it feels to be spending £20k and get appalling service - shocking!

 

LinkedIn Followers

 

I was asked this week about how to handle followers on LinkedIn. I wasn’t exactly sure what they were asking because I had never really considered the issue of having unwanted followers.

 

Firstly let’s look at how we see who is following us;

 

 

How to see who is following you

 

  1. Go to ‘Your updates’

2)   Click on the ‘followers’ tab

 

3) Scroll down to see your followers. The first ones in this list will always be followers but unfortunately the list also includes your  connections but you cannot tell the difference until you click on them and open up the profile. Once you find your first connection you can be assured that all the rest will be 1st tier connections.

 

I personally have no issue with competitors following me (many do) but some people would prefer to prevent this. Unfortunately the only way is to block each individual - either because they are already following you or because you wish to prevent them from doing so.

 

Step 1

Step 2

This seems a bit drastic to me but it’s the only way to prevent followers.

 

 

 

Cool Thing

 

LinkedIn Storage.

 

It seems that LinkedIn Contacts is going to either completely disappear or be replaced with a newer feature but the chances are it won’t be free so this week I thought I would tell you all about a great little (free) extension called LinkedIn Storage.

 

 

 LinkedIn AFQ

 

This week, in line with the main subject of this episode I thought I would cover a question I get at least a few times every month.

 

Question - I have followed a number of people (not influencers) on LinkedIn but I can’t recall who they all are. How do I find the list of people I follow?

 

Answer - Errrr you can’t! Sorry about that, I must admit it’s pretty embarrassing for LinkedIn that they don’t have such a simple facility. I can assure you that this feature has been requested many times over a prolonged period of time, clearly they have other priorities!

 

<Please note that all the screenshot images should never cover the width of the page, they need to be smaller - check the ‘share link generator’ image from the last episode as guidance>

Direct download: LinkedInformed20104.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:00am UTC

Two main subjects this week;

 

How do you feel about your home page these days?

 

The future for LinkedIn?

 

Firstly there was one small news item worth a mention this week;

 

 

 

Your LinkedIn homepage

 

We see it every time we log in but how much notice do you really take?

 

If you haven’t done so recently take 5 minutes to scroll through, you might be surprised, disappointed, amused or even angry at what you see!

 

Last week I talked about how to respond to an inappropriate posts

 

In this episode I discuss various aspects of the content of our home page feed;

 

  • What are your thoughts about the views expressed in this status update below? Should LinkedIn be blocking content and should we have a ‘dislike’ or not business button?
  • Are you taking the opportunity to engage with your home page stream? These updates are from real people and everyone of them is an opportunity to build better relationships and raise your visibility.
  • Engagement can be very effective but when does it become counter-productive? Take a look at the list of comments below. What impression are these people creating? Where is line between good conversation/debate and petty arguments that reflect poorly on all concerned?

 

It seems to me that our homepage are being taken over by the loud and crazy minority. Sensible, mature business people are making the mistake of low activity - possibly because of all the idiots but this actually makes the situation worse!

 

Is LinkedIn under threat from Facebook?

 

The second subject this week concerns the future for LinkedIn. The following article by the highly respected sourcing/recruiting expert Jim Stroud really got me thinking about how LinkedIn are so exposed due to their reliance of Recruitment for dealt ⅔rds of their revenue.

 

How Facebook could destroy LinkedIn in a year by Jim Stroud

 

We know that LinkedIn is becoming a better social selling tool than a recruiting tool, business owners and sales people are starting to take the place of the recruiters who are leaving, or at least using other tools instead.

But this will not work out well for us unless LinkedIn find a way of becoming significantly less reliant of their Recruiting revenues.

How are they going to do that?

I discuss the options and would love to hear your ideas.

 

 

 

Cool Thing

 

This week I want to share (excuse the pun) a really useful tool I have started using called ShareLinkGenerator

 

This is only relevant if you have a blog or write content somewhere other than on LinkedIn. It works in a very similar way to ‘Click to Tweet’ does for Twitter.

By creating a unique share link you can create an option within your copy for a quote to be the headline for a share of that specific page on LinkedIn.

 

Again it’s another free tool and I have found it very useful.

 

Update:

 

Save to contacts hasn’t quite gone yet….for some of us anyway!

 

LinkedIn AFQ

Question:

One thing that is puzzling me is how I can send a message to someone who is not a first level connection who has commented on one of my Linkedin Longposts or updates without using up my In-Mails.  I can’t find a way of doing this without connecting with them which I don’t necessarily want to do at such an early stage of contact. If you can help I would really appreciate it. 

 

Answer:

The way to do is through using group messages, I made a video to explain how;

Direct download: LinkedInformed20103.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:30am UTC

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