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.

The Charm Offensive with Jon Buchan

This is an intro’ from Jon that nicely sets the scene for the interview

“One night, I got drunk and wrote an email. I woke up and still thought it was a good idea to send this completely absurd email to very busy, Senior Marketing Directors at large brands.

I sent 6 emails manually. It wasn’t long before I got 2 replies. Both of them were highly complimentary but telling me they already had agencies in place. Then I got another response, and they wanted to meet me. I couldn’t believe it. The email I created should in no way work. It was out of the ordinary and weird and ridiculous. Yet it did.”

Here is an example of the kind of response that Jon frequently gets to his messages;

In this interview Jon takes time to explain the structure of his cold emails. This is equally applicable to LinkedIn messages and even posts. Below is an example of a recent LinkedIn post from Jon

You can check out Jon’s LinkedIn profile by clicking on it above.

The best information can be obtained in the Charm Offensive Facebook group

This weeks question is from Jennifer Holloway

Answer - Two options;

1. Upgrade to Sales Navigator and import your tags…….for the delightful price of £72 per month, which probably isn’t a good investment for tagging alone.
2. Use the Dux-soup Chrome extension. It’s free and allows you to add tags and notes and then search by tag.

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!

As always seems to happen, as soon as I go away LinkedIn decide to unexpectedly launch a new feature….well I guess that happens all the time but this one happened to be a very big one……native video has finally arrived!

More of that later but there has been other news whilst I’ve been away

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week

• CRM Zoho announces integration with LinkedIn Sales Navigator
• LinkedIn is testing a new feature that matches you with a mentor
• Woman gets thousands of messages on LinkedIn after getting rejected from dream job. This isn’t much of a story but her update at the end of her post reflects a growing trend of plagiarism on LinkedIn
• William, Kate & Harry advertise for a Communications Officer (terrible title!) on LinkedIn
• Veterans get a free ‘Career Premium’ account for a year….a nice gesture but why is it only for US veterans?
• Microsoft quarterly results show LinkedIn are making a $361m loss

LinkedIn Updates

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;

• Talking head (as above) expressing an opinion and asking for feedback or just asking a question. Use subtitles.
• Show an event you are attending or something worth noting at work. If you would think of taking a picture and posting that then now you should think video as well or instead.
• News. If you want to announce or share some important news, do it by video - this gives a much greater sense of urgency and makes it more of an event for the viewer.
• A brief interview with someone
• Teach others how to do something
• Make a video from a powerpoint as a ‘moving words’ video to grab attention
• A weekly tips or Q&A feature
• Recruiters - why not experiment with posting your new hot vacancy via video
• Storytelling - produce a series of short videos to allow others to experience something with you
• I would advise keeping videos less than 3 mins length
• Remember the view only counts if they pause for 3 secs so your opening (without sound) needs to grab immediate attention to make them stop scrolling.

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.

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…

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week

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!
This is a really interesting post about the difficulties in persuading people to migrate away from LinkedIn. This re-enforces my view that the answer to online communities still exists within LinkedIn but that LinkedIn need to work hard to re-invent groups.

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
Finding your ‘Why’
LinkedInLocal events
Millennials on LinkedIn
LinkedIn’s editorial calendar
Crowdsourcing your headline
5 tips for a great headline
1. Don't tell show
2. Think about how you want people to feel when they enter your virtual home
3. Do you give them enough teasers that they want to get to know you more?
4. Is your WHY clearly explained?
5. Why are you different to someone else doing the same job?
Personal branding and authenticity

This is the post Alex referred to that kickstarted her career as a career coach and LinkedIn specialist.

Welcome to episode 169, lets get personal this week……or maybe not! Is is right to chat about non-business matters on LinkedIn?
That is the main focus this week but first….

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week

When is public information not public? When LinkedIn says so
What LinkedIn Will Look Like In The Future
Posting Job Opportunity On LinkedIn Profile For New Employer Did Not Violate Non-Compete

Should we get personal 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

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”
Or
“Why doesn’t LinkedIn alert my followers when I post a new article”?

So in this episode I’m going to try to fix that…but first

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week

LinkedIn China president resigns

New LinkedIn Features

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.
Many people got in early and started to get amazing results, this attracted more and more new authors and in no time at all over 1 million people had written an article on LinkedIn.
This number massively increased the amount of notifications LinkedIn was sending out to people and this became a big problem….countless people objected to ‘spam’ from LinkedIn - too may notifications and too many emails.
So LinkedIn changed things and rapidly reduced the amount of notifications.
The net result was that article view number plummeted. What would have been 10,000 views 2 years ago became for like 200 views and this is where most people are with articles.

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
Ensure you have the right keywords in your headline
When you publish send a tweet to @LinkedInEditors

2) The Headline is Critical.

Create intrigue that makes some want to click on to see more
Test 5-7 headlines with friend or co-workers
Try to make it personalised
Lighter subjects work best - avoid serious/boring headlines
If one headline is clearly not working…change it!

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!
https://www.lynda.com/LinkedIn-tutorials/Paying-attention-headline/433721/443465-4.html

3) Generate your own traffic

• Create engaging posts, ask questions and encourage responses
• Post at the right time of day (commuting and lunch time)
• Extend the shelf life of your post by replying, commenting and liking over several weeks
• @mention relevant individuals asking for their feedback
• Use appropriate hashtags in your posts (and articles)
• Don’t just use LinkedIn to promote your article. Try all relevant channels
• Send a direct message with a link to the post to influential connections asking frothier input
• Consider emailing the article to your email list
• Ensure your post reaches the widest possible audience by improving your ‘Influence score’
  • Engage with others frequently
  • Avoid too many external links on other posts
  • Text only posts work really well, images are good but mix it up.
  • Focus most of your posts on interesting and ‘human’ stories and anecdotes

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.
Listen to the episode to hear my thoughts on that.

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
Google’s next big feature is to scrape LinkedIn
Data scraper’s case v. LinkedIn pits free speech against CFAA, DMCA
Sex technology industry accuses LinkedIn of censorship

LinkedIn Update

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.
<equation>

What can you do to increase your ‘real’ followers?
Produce great content on a regular basis but quality beats quantity
Ask people to follow you. Most users don’t really understand it
Get active with comments and likes, this increases visibility which will bring you more followers
Write articles designed to get into pulse channels

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.
These figures are heavily influenced by the amount of engagement she achieves with her posts and that is perhaps a more accurate definition of influence
What do you think?
How does 21k compare with your post views and what is your influence rating?

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 just wanted to check with you about which parts of Linkedin are indexed by Google

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?
 
I can of course export from LinkedIn but I can only export ALL my connections. I think my only option is to manually go through all my exported connections and handpick the ones I’m wanting to target, i.e. those which are leads in Sales Navigator. That would be a rather painful exercise, thought I’d run it by you in case I’ve missed something or you can think of a workaround.
 
PS – The LinkedIn connections export spits out a sheet with a “Tag” column so I thought I could tag the connections I’m targeting before exporting but of course we can no longer tag in LinkedIn!

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

There is a Chrome extension called LinkedBack 

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.
When looking for a job post, I (under a premium account) am able to get a competitive intelligence report automatically.

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

• Windows Phone LinkedIn app no longer available for download How ironic! I suspect this will return when new Windows phones are released.
• It’s probably not OK to send naked pictures on LinkedIn This is actually quite interesting because the employer is the one being sued. In theory this makes no sense because the account belongs to the individual but the flip side of that is that employers see it differently when someone resigns claiming their connections ‘belong’ to the company!
• LinkedIn is the worst of social media. Should I delete my account? Well it’s hard to know where to start with this one! I’m not surprised by the quality of this piece of journalism. The British press has never been great but the demise of that industry has led to poorer journalistic standards year after year and it seems Australia must be the same!

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.

• Conduct a search for 1st tier connections in your area (try using your town/village as a keyword and then filter by your main location) and send a message to them all asking if they think it’s a good idea
• Post using the #linkedinlocal hashtag promoting the idea and then again once you have enough interest and have a date organised.
• Write up an article after the event and @mention everyone that was there.

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.

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

One third of respondents to a recent survey said they lie about themselves in their LinkedIn profiles
Relay have now updated their LinkedIn cover templates
LinkedIn Deprecates it’s Groups API
Get Ready to Give Up on LinkedIn for Marketing - Good riddance!
The New recommendations settings are awful!

• Notifications could be about to improve
• Has the new UI attracted a higher number of premium users? Research from Chris Zaharias would suggest so.
  
  

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?
Endorsements are even more irritating, a senseless action in my view but I know my views are not ones that everyone agrees with so I thought it worth exploring the real benefits of skills and endorsements.
I searched the internet and found these two articles about the subject.

The Case Against

The first article is by Neil Patel and pretty much summarises everything I hate about skill endorsements.
Whilst his intention is to highlight the positive aspects of endorsements he actually does the exact opposite!
It’s clear that this guy is all about pointless numbers and he places no value on quality whatsoever..then again he is an SEO expert so what can we expect!
This attitude is surprisingly prevalent and articles like this are extremely popular. The idea of ‘hacking’ endorsements is utterly ridiculous and has led to an increasing irrelevance of the feature.
Wildy endorsing anyone you can, for any skill (who cares what) just to encourage them to reciprocate is frankly infantile and there is no proof whatsoever that it actually improves your effectiveness on LinkedIn.
How to Get 99+ Endorsements on All Your LinkedIn Skills

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?
I don’t personally know Wayne but he is highly regarded and puts an interesting argument forward for Skill endorsements.

Some other benefits;
Keywords. I have found little evidence to support this but some people believe that endorsements ‘power boost’ the value of a skill as a keyword.
Essential for jobseekers as people with Recruiter accounts can filter their search by skills. I doubt they do, but they can!
Credibility. It’s possible that someone will read your profile and scroll down to your skills and study who has endorsed you. I doubt it but I can’t deny it’s possible.
Engagement. If someone endorses you it gives you an opportunity to thank them and start a conversation. This one makes perfect sense to me.
Dopamine effect. If you endorse your connections it might make them feel good and why wouldn’t you want to do that? (fair point)
Research. They allow you to see who a target/prospect has been endorsed by - these people must be connections so that might give you an opportunity to get to know them and potentially use that relationship to help you get into that prospect. This is actually the smartest use of endorsements I have ever heard (props to Marcus Boswell)

My Conclusion

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.
Are they important?…..NO!
The only way endorsements could have worked is if they had made them an extension of a recommendation so that when someone recommended you they were asked to endorse your skills. This would have meant that they had some real, credible value.
Unfortunately the feature was poorly thought through and it’s too late to change them.

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'

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!
So this week I want to focus on the best ways to ensure that you remain visible on your followers homepage.
But first…..

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week

LinkedIn snaps up Redwood City sales tech startup. Another sign that the key focus for LinkedIn these days is Sales Navigator. I suspect these features will only be added to their corporate ‘Team’ solution version of Sales Navigator which again reflects LinkedIn’s interest in enterprise clients. Heighten technology apparently provides three core areas of functionality: sales process tracking, hyper-efficient pipeline reporting and an intelligent notepad. Unfortunately they seemed to have deleted any trace of information about the product before announcing the news of the takeover.
It is suggested that Microsoft ‘could redesign LinkedIn for desktop and mobile’ in this article…..please NO!!! Firstly it’s just been redesigned and secondly who wants something designed by Microsoft?!!
Why Japanese Don't Use LinkedIn. Interesting article from someone who understands the culture. I may have to re-evaluate my international expansion plans!

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!
This got me thinking and on reflection, it makes sense because when you share a post the text is never shown in the share…that is why you will see a shared image that makes no sense because the comments by the the person sharing it are referring to the text they saw with the original post.
The more I think about this, the more I realise just how messed up this is!
LinkedIn seem to have a blindspot of shares for some reason.
Here’s what they need to do;
Notify you when someone shares your post
When a post is shared, make sure the text they have written is included in the share

Come on LinkedIn…how hard can it be?!

Increase Your Visibility With Shared Content

Sharing content has two main benefits;
It is likely to keep you on your followers homepage and ‘front of mind’
It sends a clear and positive message to the algorithm - this member is ‘interesting’

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.
Weekdays are definitely better than weekends but I have found that I do get activity and engagement at weekends.

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!
Never
Ever…..

This means that the content you share must;
Be useful and interesting to relevant followers
Have been read by you (scan read)
Not be promoting any product or service.

Source

There are plenty (almost too many) places to find great content on the internet. Here are some ideas;
LinkedIn Articles (post searching and following channels and influencers)
RSS feed services such as Feedly & Pocket
Other services such as Nuzzel, Quuu and my latest favourite Anders Pink are also worth checking out.
Google alerts

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)
Hootsuite. A favourite with many people. Has the ability to show you ‘streams’ from your LinkedIn homepage alongside Twitter and other content as well as a scheduling facility (limited on free plan).
Drumup. Content curation, sharing and scheduling. Not one I have used but I have heard good things about it.

LinkedBack:Tags/notes for LinkedIn profiles
I came across this free (to a point) tagging tool this week and I think you should check it out.
Whilst LinkedIn discourage the use of Chrome extensions, I think they can really enhance the LinkedIn experience. I’m very wary (although not totally against) of automation tools but this one is not an automation tool, it simply replaces the tagging and notes feature that free users lost recently.

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.
LinkedIn Recruiter Tip: Use Update Me to Know When to Reach Out to Prospects

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.
It’s a critical aspect of using LinkedIn effectively and most people ignore it so it’s time for a good clean up! But first…..

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week

LinkedIn have changed the wording from ‘Try premium for free’ to ‘Reactivate premium’ and whilst it was a good idea to change it, I think the wording is terrible!
<Reactivate>

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.
You can listen to the interview here, it’s definitely worth an hour of your time.

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!
It makes sense to be informed by data but to be obsessed with it shows just how dumb LinkedIn can be!
If a feature is not widely used, it normally means that people are either not aware of it or do not know how to use it. Many of these features added a richness to LinkedIn that it now sadly lacks….all because they only listened to data!

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.
This is a good idea, it’s hardly groundbreaking as all they are doing is effectively creating a company page for Pregnancy Pause.
I wonder how long it will be before baby care products or nurseries start targeting Pregnancy Pause ‘employees’?!

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!
If you are using a background/cover image in your profile (and you should be!) then you may find it looks pants once this new design has been fully rolled out!

The previous size was 1536x768. The new size will be 1584x396.

Here's what the new dimensions will look like;

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.
Free background Image
If you don’t mind having a generic, cool looking image I have made 20 images that are exactly the right dimensions for you. Complete your details below to get access to the download page and pick the one you like the best…..with my compliments!

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).

It’s Time For A Clear Out!

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?
Is this relevant to me?
Is this useful to my followers (inc connections)
Do I wish to engage with this person?
Does this person normally post relevant content?

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 sure they will fix it soon but a short term workaround would be to add your own unique hashtag to every post and then search on that hashtag to see who has shared it.

I’m using #MrLinkedIn on all my posts until they fix the problem. What will your hashtag be?