Welcome to episode 154, it’s been a tricky week this week, I had planned an interview with an Italian LinkedIn trainer to tackle the important subject of multi-lingual profiles but due to a combination of illness and power cuts, I had to postpone that!

Instead I decided to cover a subject I am very enthusiastic about - research, specifically researching people.

But first…..

Interesting Stuff I saw This Week

LinkedIn’s founder Reid Hoffman has been wondering what to do with himself since he found the the company he had a major stake in had been sold for $26.2B…..tough life!
Anyway new parent Microsoft have come to the rescue and offered him a role on their main board.
Personally, if I had $2.8B coming my way soon, I think I could find something better to do with my time!
The Mission Continues: Joining the Microsoft Board

Mobile Update

LinkedIn have updated their mobile app.
As is the norm, the app store information on the new update was full of interesting facts (note the contrast to Facebook)!

Instead we have to try to figure out the changes for ourselves although they did announce in their blog that the new version now has profile picture edit options;

There are some other notable changes. The ‘Me’ menu has disappeared….wait! I thought they redesigned the desktop experience to be more in line with mobile…but now they are dropping the Me menu from mobile?!!

This was how the menu looked before the update;

This is how it looks now

As you can see, the Me menu has been replaced with jobs (boo hiss!). So how do you get to the profile edit page?
…You now have to tap on your profile pic, top left as shown above.

They have also improved the controls you have over your feed. Now when tapping on the edit link (see below) you get more options.

One of these options is ‘Improve my feed’

This isn’t new but it then provides another new option ‘Clean my feed’

I wonder how it decides who is high up on this list…perhaps it is those you have engaged with the least?

Have you noticed any other changes?

LinkedIn Warn Cheaters!

LinkedIn are sending out emails to users who they spot are logging into another persons account, this currently only seems to happen when they are a Sales Navigator or Recruiter Lite subscriber.
I can only assume this means they are tracking IP addresses.

A listener sent me this screenshot of an email they received recently

I Know You…..Profile Research

There are so many things you can find out about someone from their profile. In this section I talk in more details about;
Contact & Personal Info
Summary
Highlights
Articles
Activity
Experience
Recommendations
Psychometric assessment - CrystalKnows.com

No episode next week (probably)

I think it’s likely that I won’t get an episode out next week as I will be networking and learning like crazy at the Social Media Marketing World Conference in sunny San Diego….can’t wait!

Welcome to episode 153, this week I discuss my thoughts on @ mentions in LinkedIn posts. There seems to be a growing trend out there and I’m not sure it’s all good.

But first……

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week

It looks like LinkedIn are making no headway with Russia;
Russia says ‘nyet,’ continues LinkedIn block after it refuses to store data in Russia

Perhaps Jeff Weiner needs to have a word with his new President…..I believe he has some good contacts in Russia!!

Update

Last week I featured a question from Jamie…..firstly I used the wrong name! It was actually from Robert Curley….apologies Robert.
Giles got in touch with a solution to this issue. Apparently the URL;
http://www.linkedin.com/people/invites
still works and will take you back to the old sent invites page, this version allows you to see the message you sent (assuming you had personalised the message in the first place)

Thanks to Giles Davis for that.

New Desktop Design Update

LinkedIn are now rolling out more ‘advanced’ filters in search, I don’t have the feature yet but I saw this screenshot this week.
<adv filters back>

Whilst LinkedIn are clearing adding features back in, they don’t seem to be fixing bugs as quickly! Recommendations are still badly broken and I’m finding the lack of the ‘hover over profile preview’ really annoying.

@ Mentions. Are they being overused?

I’m noticing an increasing amount of posts that are using the @mention feature in what I feel is an inappropriate manner.
The above example is one but I have also seen it where someone posts something less promotional - maybe some content and @mentions a ton of people.

This would be OK if those people are asked to contribute or answer a question but in isolation it feels a bit pushy to me.
The hidden message seems to be ‘Please share my content’ but there are better, more personal ways to ask someone to share your content.

I have also noticed a growing trend towards @mentions in comments.
This can work very well for instance the below example where I am being asked to help or you might ask for someone’s point of view;

But I have also noticed a lot of people just tagging someone…no comment or question just their name.

This is being used as a way to share the post with someone, which is good but the right way to do this is to ‘share’ the post via a message

That is how I see it but I’m interested to know what you think.

Drop me a line at mark@linkedinformed.com or better still, leave me a voice mail by clicking on the link at the side of this page (see image below)

Q - Why don't I get notified when all my contacts post an article?

Previously we received a notification when one of our contacts had published a Pulse blog (now article). Now I only see a few notifications from my contacts publishing articles. This week I know of two people who published an article, but it did not show in my Notifications!

Ans - The algorithm has definitely changed on this front. The problem is that so many people are publishing articles and LinkedIn does not want to overwhelm you! I think they will only notify you when someone you have shown more interest in posts.
Activity and engagement definitely helps the algorithm to make better decisions for us so perhaps try engaging more with those members and their articles.

Q - Where do I go to browse through my draft articles. Is this missing from the new UI?

Ans - No the link you need is shown below;
<draft article>

Social Media Communication Talk

I’m delivering a short TED style talk this coming week in Manchester.
It’s not specifically about LinkedIn but more about how we are all learning how to communicate again with social media.
If you are in the area, why not come along and say hello. This is also a brand new talk so I would really appreciate some feedback.

TED Discussion Group Event. 14th March 7-9pm, Manchester

Welcome to episode 152, this week I’m going to cover the new Neptune design quite a bit as there have been quite a few developments.

Firstly a big thank-you to Kurt Shaver, Darrel Griffin and the mysterious ‘LoveWeb’ for giving the show 5 star reviews on iTunes - I massively appreciate your support.
Darrel Griffin can also be found on Instagram and is my ‘go to’ contact on anything to do with graphics - especially those we use on LinkedIn. So I have a question - what size should we be making our LinkedIn profile background image?
The official dimensions from LinkedIn are 1536 x 768px but this doesn’t seem to work as it zooms into the image.

New Desktop Design Update

It would seem that there is no way to see your sent invitation messages - this is crazy!
When someone has a paid account and the ‘open profile’ feature enabled, it is free to send them a message, this used to be shown on their profile by changing ‘send InMail’ to ‘send message’ but now they have removed this.
Video autoplay has been deprecated…which is odd because every other social media channel is moving towards video!
LinkedIn have removed the link ‘structuring your search’ which explained how to use Boolean operators. This might be because they now realise the information they were providing was actually incorrect! Irina Shamaeva (who knows her stuff) has exposed LinkedIn’s advice in this article below.
LinkedIn Tip Sheet Error And a New Hack - Irina Shamaeva
So it would appear that we now need to use the operator Title: in front of every job title in an OR search string!

The Great U-Turn

LinkedIn have had to face an enormous amount of negative feedback about the new design.
There was the online petition I mentioned last week which got c1800 signatures plus a huge response to their various posts asking for feedback.
Sometimes people are so rude and negative, it really is unnecessary and if there is one comment that annoys me more than anything it’s…
“If it ain’t broke don’t fix it”
What a load of crap!
We should never wait for things to break before improving them. All the best ideas and progression come from taking the complete opposite view.

Anyway the good news is that LinkedIn are listening and David Flink published this article this week;
We heard you: we're making some changes to LinkedIn Search

It would also appear that they are seriously considering bringing back postcode radius search…which would be massive!

I really applaud LinkedIn for their approach. Taking criticism is not easy and to take this approach is refreshing and progressive. But……
Why did it ever get to this stage in the first place?

I could have told them about all these faults in October but no-one was listening!

LinkedIn say they survey members before making changes but either;
They are asking the wrong people
They are not listening.

Such a massive u-turn on so many features should not be necessary at this stage. Waiting until almost full roll-out before listening means they have lost a massive amount of credibility.

Thanks to Sandra Clark for her voicemail question about Sales Navigator.

For me the three key benefits are as follows;
Focussed home page feed. This massively improves your chances of engaging with those people you are especially focussed on.
You can filter search results by ‘posted on LinkedIn in last 30 days’. I have found this to be really useful

Saved searches are better, partly because of the above filter. You can receive daily email alerts about people who meet your criteria and are active

Question:
How do I create a showcase page in the new groups design?
Answer
You can’t!
But you can if you revert back to the old design where you will find it in the menu on the edit button.

Question:
The messaging segment sends the message by pressing enter (which is not a good thing as the enter key is often used to insert a line-feed for starting a new paragraph). You leave no clue how to insert a new paragraph so my message is on solid block of text. How do I start a new paragraph in a message?

Answer
This depends how you are messaging.
If you go to the specific messaging page you can change the default as seen below

If however you are using the ‘in page’ messaging feature then you are effectively using a chat feature and every ‘return’ is a ‘send message’. This makes sense to me. If you want to construct a nicely laid out message, using the Messaging page.