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

• WikiLeaks publishes identities and information about ICE employees amid intensifying anger

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.

• The graphics are truly awful. Who do LinkedIn employ to do this stuff?
• It's purely an activity, a post so there is nothing permanent about it. It doesn't show on your profile and there it's not searchable.
• I haven't seen many Kudos posts, my guess is that it will be largely ignored and fizzle out.

I also got the new QR code feature

• This is pretty useless until it's full rolled out to all users.
• Once the above has happened it can make connecting easier when you meet someone. People often say they can't find me on the app (there are 3500 Mark Williams'!) so it would be handy to simply let them scan my Q code
• Could this be useful for events? I sense it might be but I haven't quite worked out how! Any ideas?

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 Pages

This 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?

• People on LinkedIn are much more interested in engaging with people
• Company page posts are usually promotional and less engaging
• Even when you do comment on a company page post, it's highly unlikely you will get a response because the administrators are not alerted (unless they are on the page)
• Have you ever @mentioned a company in one of your posts?......What response did you get?

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;
Employees using LinkedIn to get their own back on former employers and vice versa
Political posts or comments from someone who is in business - what does this achieve?
Posting pictures in factories that may include commercially sensitive material that contravenes an NDA (commonplace in China).
Overly religious posts or comments. Everyone is entitled to their beliefs but LinkedIn is not the place to preach!
@mentioning someone who does not speak your language!
Keep them coming!

I have been spending some of this week getting familiar with the new communities feature on LinkedIn and I’m so excited by it that I’ve decided to feature it on this weeks episode.

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;
Globally, IP video traffic will be 82 percent of all consumer Internet traffic by 2021
Live Internet video will account for 13 percent of Internet video traffic by 2021
Smartphone traffic will exceed PC traffic by 2021. In 2016, PCs accounted for 46 percent of total IP traffic, but by 2021 PCs will account for only 25 percent of traffic
It would take an individual more than 5 million years to watch the amount of video that will cross global IP networks each month in 2021!
You read the full report here

New on LinkedIn

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.
More importantly, will anyone use it? I suspect it will be missed by most users unless LinkedIn do something to really highlight it.

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.
If they can do it for ad’s why not allow us to post ‘story images’ as normal posts?

#Communities

Having played for almost a week now, I’m convinced this new feature has the potential of being a game changer for LinkedIn.
I’m not saying it will….that depends on how many people use it but if they do, it will fundamentally change the way we use Linkedin.

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)
> Unfollow those Topics LinkedIn has assumed you are interested in or those you no longer see as key.
> Check the other topics for any you wish to follow

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
Something very closely related to what you do (product or service you provide)
Something that interests you.

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.
When you focus on people, it leads to direct messaging and unwanted invitations to connect - these actions kill engagement and lead to lower levels of activity.
My belief is that, if people adopt the right approach to this, that those less active members will start to get more involved - that’s potentially amazing and why I believe this could be a game changer!

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 ;
Learn from others
Engage with a wider range of people
Expand and diversify our networks
Increase our own visibility

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.

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.
I massively struggle with that mindset - I can remember people in recruitment saying exactly the same thing about LinkedIn “Don’t support a business threat” was a common view and look at where we are now? You can’t put your head in the sand on things like that, a perceived ‘threat’ can become an opportunity but only if you embrace it.

This week I’m looking for your help…
I’m thinking of writing a book about my famous ‘rants’ about LinkedIn - I want to focus on the things that people do wrong or the things that go wrong on LinkedIn. Ideally from a humorous perspective.

What have you seen happen on LinkedIn that is a good example of a mishap or poor practice?
You don’t need to name names, just tell me the story.

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.

But first…..

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week

Airline sources a plane via a LinkedIn post!

Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t consider LinkedIn to be a competitor

The Company (Drift) that did that cool video takeover thing on LinkedIn
Here’s an example of one of the videos posted by one of the team at Drift

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

1. Poor quality profile. I’m amazed I still find myself saying this one! Bad profile pics, unedited headlines, non existent summaries, no background images….the list goes on and on. When will people realise that this is their professional identity online?!
2. Promiscuous Connecting. Whilst it once made sense to grow very large networks and adopt a LION philosophy, those days are gone….in fact they have been gone for at least 5 years! Oversized networks add little extra value to your visibility, confuse the algorithm and potentially expose your other connections to scammers. Many automation tools facilitate this behaviour and it’s a massive mistake
3. Inactivity. Linkedin are lucky to get 25% of their users to log in more than once a month….and that’s in a good quarter! There really is very little point in LinkedIn if you don’t at least engage in some activity every week. These ultra passive users are missing all sorts of opportunities. Even those that are active often ‘hold back’ on LinkedIn and are too scared or shy to post or comment on others posts, another missed opportunity.
4. Direct selling. Sometimes is just blatant spam but more common than that is the blunt ‘I want something from you’ messages, InMail or posts. It’s like trying to french kiss someone when you first meet them on a first date! Another aspect of this is the ‘McFly’ posts you see all the time ‘Look at me’ ‘Aren't we wonderful’ and ‘look how we can help you (at a cost)’ - it’s all about you!
5. Lazy Networking. Similar to the post of the week as shown above. Extensive use of short canned messages such as ‘congrats’ or only ever liking posts and never being bothered to comment, invitations that are not personalised or personalised with a message that is clearly sent to everyone (automation)
   

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

What is LinkedIn ProFinder?

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;
A good, professional profile photo
Experience and a headline that reflects the categories you are applying for
A clear summary that explains what you do
Strong recommendations appropriate to your application
Have published several articles relevant to your specialism

Once accepted, LinkedIn will create your ProFinder profile (you can’t amend this other then by changing your main LinkedIn profile).

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)

The Process

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 you click on the ‘Get free proposals’ link in Marjorie’s profile it takes me to the same predetermined questions for the category I have selected and that RFP will also be sent to 4 other people (despite starting this process from her 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.
ProFinder has been in existence for a couple of years now but there is currently no word from LinkedIn as to when it will be expanded beyond the US…if ever.

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!

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.

 
Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week

Actually not interesting at all! I got back from holiday to an email inbox that could only be described as GDPR hell! A plethora of emails asking me to read a new privacy policy (necessary but annoying) combined with a series of ‘Do you still want to hear from us’ followed by ‘Are you sure you want us to go?” emails encouraging me to opt-in to future emails. I’m not expert but I thought the idea of GDPR was to reduct the number of emails?!! I guess we may feel the benefit in the longer term. I have to say (again not from any position of expertise) that these people who are sending out ‘opt-in’ emails seem to be doing unnecessary damage to their business by culling lists they have built up over years.

Here is a post I published this week on the subject, which generated quite a debate!

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

Is It Time To Re-think How We Use LinkedIn To Win Business?

LinkedIn has made it much harder to direct people to your own website. A client recently told me that their website referrals from LinkedIn were down by 50% over the last year!
Increased legislation regarding data privacy and email marketing (such as GDPR) is only likely to increase.

What is wrong with using LinkedIn to gain greater visibility to generate more business. If LinkedIn goes away, we just move with our audience.

I’m not suggesting we move away from email lists but I do think the ‘build a platform’ with the intention of building a list methodology might be worth challenging today. Is it still as relevant?

Michael Hyatt’s Platform book influenced me years ago and it’s still mostly relevant but I now question the ‘don’t build your brand on someone else platform’ philosophy.

Could it be time to focus more of our time on interacting with people on LinkedIn via posts, articles and groups rather than relying on building email lists?

The ‘passive income’ model is a myth. Everyone I know who makes decent money online does it through lots of hard work.

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
They measure success by engagement but also by looking at Buzzsumo
It’s important to develop an understanding of the markets you service
When you focus on narrow/niche vertical markets you can ‘tune in’ to your audience and really give value in your content. Recruiters should be doing this.
Rule: Never sell in any content you post
Great content allows their consultants to be seen differently and with more respect.
Content creation forms can be a useful tool to help those who find writing difficult or time consuming
Articles often work better than in markets that involve complex or technical subjects
Consultants become better at their job by understanding their vertical market and subjects that are relevant and interesting to their clients and candidates

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.

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!
More of that later, but first…

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week

LinkedIn Turns 15

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?
The LinkedIn search algorithm is a complex and ever changing beast. Search results are highly personalised so how can you tell whether your profile is easy to find by the people who you wish to be found by?

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
Account 2 - 5785 connections, inactive, based in Manchester, UK
Account 3 - 291 connections, moderately active, based in London, UK
Account 4 - 3 connections, inactive, 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.
I assessed the importance of the following profile attributes for the top ten results (1st page) for each of the four results. Keywords in headline Keywords in current job title Keywords in Company name Keywords in Summary Keywords in experience (other than current job title) Total keywords throughout profile Network connection (1st, 2nd, 3rd tier or beyond) Shared connections Location Activity (Likes, Comments, Shares, Posts and Articles) Profile Strength Skills Endorsements Interests (number and mutuality)Then I added a location filter of London to all four searches and re-analysed the results.

Each result was also filtered to see how many 1st, 2nd and 3rd tier connections there were.

The ResultsThe first thing to note is that I performed the same analysis last year (more information here) and the results this time were significantly different. This shows how LinkedIn are constantly changing the search algorithm and/or it is adjusting itself (machine learning).
Out of the above 14 criteria, only 3 appeared consistently in the top 10 results of each of the 4 searches.
Keywords in headline Location Skills

Keywords

All 40 profiles (top 10 in each search) had one or both of the keywords in the headline. The number of times the keyword appeared throughout the profile was not important and the keywords did not always appear in any of the other sections.Conclusion: Ensure your 120 character headline field is stuffed full of keywords and phrases

Location

You would expect location to be an important factor when used as a filter but it was also key when no filters were applied. All of the top 10 results in each search were local to that account.Conclusion: Your location is critical in LinkedIn SEO. If you are a jobseeker you should change your postal code to where you believe the jobs are most likely to be.If you are using LinkedIn to win more clients, consider changing your postal code to where your prospects are based.

Skills

Whilst you can't search for skills (other than with a Recruiter account) it appears that skills are now a key factor in the search algorithm ranking. All 40 profiles had 'Copywriting' (copywriter isn't a skill) as a skill.Endorsements: Whilst the number of endorsements didn't seem to have an effect, it did seem important for the skill to have been endorsed at least once (the lowest number of endorsements I saw was 2 and they ranked pretty high).Conclusion: Ensure you have all your important keywords covered by your skills. The max number of skills is 50. I would advise starting with 20 and once they are all endorsed at least once, increase this number gradually to 50. A skill without an endorsement is pretty useless!

One more thing....This one really surprised me and is a major change from my previous tests.

First Tier Connections perform poorly in search results!

Much to my surprise I found that in each of the 4 results, first tier appeared almost nowhere! In the search on my account with 9900 connections, there were 712 first tier in the c1.7 million result yet the first one only appeared in 123rd position but it met very similar criteria to those who appeared in the top ten.The first page of results was almost always 2nd tier with an occasional appearance of a 3rd tier.

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.
If however, you are using LinkedIn as a business development and social selling tool then it's significantly less important.
How many people use LinkedIn to find suppliers?...Not many in truth. People generally don't use LinkedIn search the way they use Google. That said, it is worth being mindful of how optimised your profile is.

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
Simon developed his visibility because he posted honest, authentic content about his personal and business journey.
LinkedIn success is not about View or Share Numbers it's about the reaction you get from followers, on and off line.
Quote “it's not about selling your products, it's about developing your brand”.
You can be more promotional with your posts once you have built an engaged audience.
The power of storytelling. Authentic stories are the way to develop a brand, you must stir emotion to gain engagement.
Never follow what other people do on LinkedIn. Be you and show your authentic emotions.
Once you are visible and your followers are emotionally invested in you, it becomes relatively straightforward to sell to them.

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.

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week

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!
The settings have disappeared which renders it useless!

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

You might find Andy Foote’s article on the reasons behind the new profile design interesting

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;
headshot AND title:photographer
then select ‘people’ and add your location

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)

Welcome to episode 205, this week I’m joined by Robert Indries to discuss content marketing on LinkedIn.
But first…

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week

The ‘Find nearby’ feature on the mobile app actually works very well (once you have asked others to switch it on) as I found when I experimented with it this week at a course I ran

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
You can now add subtitles to your native videos via desktop, it’s a bit fiddle but the video below explains it very well

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

• Content should be designed to create connections and conversations.
• Long form content is great for SEO but less suitable for LinkedIn
• Most LinkedIn content searching is actually"Passive" searching.
• Most people perceive LinkedIn is a place to find and engage with people. Google is the place to search for answers, LinkedIn is the place to search for people who might provide answers.
• Video posts usually have the greatest impact in passive search largely down to autoplay.
• Short-form text content is also effective at "Drawing in" the viewer.
• Posting allows people to associate us with a subject or niche and we tend to remember the first names and faces (profile photos).
• Article listings in a profile only work well when you have a singular niche subject.
• Media in your summary will be improved in the new design profiles. Five pieces of media show (allowing you to demonstrate five subjects) Plus they are visible before the ’show more’ link.
• Long form content is most effective as a secondary impact on the viewer. It is better to use posts to get someone's attention initially.
• Content should be driven by your own personal experience or by interviewing others who show their experience.