Since the start of this year, the first cohort on the Creator Accelerator Program have been posting content on LinkedIn. So are they accelerating or misfiring? Let’s take a look at the five I selected to follow.

There are lots of good reasons why you should use LinkedIn's post search feature...and they've just some excellent new filters to it!

• New Podcast network
• Why video captions are important
• What to do if your post gets taken down
• Better post analytics coming soon
• Does reducing connections improve post reach?
• New features to services page
• CAP expands to India
• Post of the week

I’ve been thinking about profiles and what we could do to make our profiles more interesting and personalised so I’ve come up with some ideas...

We all know that posts on LinkedIn that are 'personal' attract more engagement and views but taking a personal approach to content, is not an easy thing for most of us.

In this episode, I share some useful tips on how to bring your personality to your posts

Who are your followers and how many of them are your target audience? In addition, how many of them actually see your content?

We work hard to produce great quality content but are the right people seeing it? Is this something we can control?

The answer is yes…and no!

Have you ever blocked someone on LinkedIn? This week I chat with John Espirian about useful ways to use this feature.

What changes can we expect and hope for on LinkedIn this year?

In this episode, I will go through my hopes, fears, and predictions for 2022…I think it’s going to be a good one!

Christmas is almost here and this is the last episode of 2021 so let’s take a look back at what’s been happening on LinkedIn this year.

A fantastic new notification feature was introduced this week but does this now require us to look more closely at our notification settings?

LinkedIn have announced the first cohort of 100 creators to benefit from funding and guidance support. I take a look at who they have selected and whether they are deserving of this support or not!

“Why should I bother creating awesome content, when it is arbitrarily limited by my connection network and not the quality of the content?”

I saw this comment in a thread this week and do you know what, it’s a really good point! …I think LinkedIn needs another feed, a feed where content is purely there because the algorithm thinks we will be interested - connecting, following and relevance do not count - just the quality and subject of the content.

Do you want followers or connections? Is a connection more valuable than a follower and can you build relationships with followers without the need to connect?

This week I deep dive into this and explore the relationship between followers and connections

I have been calling for employee verification on LinkedIn for years and LinkedIn have finally implemented it for company page admins…Unfortunately, they have done it for completely the wrong reasons and it doesn’t help at all!

It takes a leap of faith to be authentic on LinkedIn.

More than that, it takes real courage!

But the benefits are massive... it's time to take that hat off!

With the rumored introduction of a LinkedIn digital wallet and the announcement that Events will the first feature likely to utilize it.
I take a look at what features of LinkedIn could be monetized by users and explore whether this would be a good thing for the platform.

LinkedIns new initiative to support creators is now in full swing.

Is it any good?

LinkedIn are putting their money where their mouth is regarding their initiative to support creators with the announcement that they are offering $15,000 (c£11,000) grants plus other support to 100 creators in the US. I take a deeper look into what this means and how it might be used in practice.

Welcome to LinkedInformed 336.

This week I chat with fellow LinkedIn Trainer Teddy Burris about the challenges we all face with the posting and engaging…the fear factor!

What stops us from engaging more on LinkedIn? Is it really a time thing, or is it for normally more complex and deeper reasons.

Why don’t they tell us the truth?

Why do LinkedIn keep things hidden from us?

LinkedIn have no obligation to tell us what is going on, they are a private organisation and are perfectly entitled to their secrets…but is it clever to keep your users second-guessing? What impression do we form of a company when they lack authenticity in this way? Does it matter to you?

LinkedIn will continue to evolve but they could achieve so much more by adopting a more open style of communication.

This week I chat with Brynne Tillman about Social Selling and her take on how to conduct a successful outbound strategy without being ‘icky’ or pushy. Those of you who listen to the podcast regularly will know that I favour a more inbound focussed approach to social sales on Linkedin but I have always admired the different approach adopted by Brynne and believed that having her on the show would provide a great balance to what you normally hear…she didn’t disappoint!

The news that LinkedIn were launching a Freelancer booking service similar to the likes of Fiverr and Upwork was originally broken in February this year…since then we have heard very little until last week when a number of people reported a new feature allowing them to ask for reviews of their services.

With the full Marketplace feature planned for launching in Autumn/Fall this year, I thought it was time to start planning for its arrival.

Welcome to your weekly dose of all things LinkedIn. This is the first installment in a new series focusing on the subject of social selling. I believe that we all need to understand this subject in order to succeed on LinkedIn, whether we be directly in a sales role or not. Marketeers, job seekers, recruiters, business owners, and anyone wanting to enhance their career by becoming more influential should master social selling.

In this first episode, I chat with Ian Moyse, an experienced Sales Leader in the Cloud industry who has been involved with social selling for many years, he was even a guest on one of the first episodes of the LinkedInformed podcast back in 2014!

From humble beginnings in May 2003, LinkedIn has become a global phenomenon and one of the true social media powerhouses with over 774 million members and a turnover now in excess of $10 billion a year. In this edition, I’m going to look into why and how they have achieved such success.

Welcome to this weeks dose of all things LinkedIn.

I've struggled through the heatwave that has hit the UK this week to bring you this episode, I hope you appreciate it!

Having missed last week, I have a number of things to cover but no one topic that dominates this edition, hence why I’m calling it a catch-up!

Welcome to a special edition of LinkedInformed where I debate with Michelle J Raymond the merits or otherwise of LinkedIn company pages.

Michelle is a big fan of Pages and has built her business by helping her clients to successfully win business through their company pages, I say that her clients would be far more successful if they focus the vast majority of their time on developing their personal content, engagement, and relationships…you can make up your own mind as to who won the argument!

LinkedIn content has changed almost beyond recognition from where it was 10 years ago, even perhaps 5 years ago.

We now see pictures and videos of pets, people talking openly about their emotions, and posts designed purely to entertain us so the question I want to ask in this episode is this;

Have we gone too far and where is the line of appropriateness?

This week I chat with Kim Arnold, the author of the brilliant new book 'Email Attraction' about how to write better direct messages and InMails.

Plus a couple of news items and a brilliant post of the week.

In this episode, I share my views on why taking a more diverse approach to LinkedIn and how it can help us be more successful. I also tackle the tricky issue of profile pronouns!

This week I chat with Greete Eluri from Denmark about how she not only managed to get a new job but also changed careers through the visibility she gained from actively engaging on LinkedIn.

Have you made your cover story video yet? Don’t tell me you haven’t got the feature yet…so what? You can still make your video in preparation for getting it soon.

This week I’m going to give you my tips on how to put together a great cover story video with the help of some great examples.

I asked listeners if they would be prepared to have me critically appraise their LinkedIn posts...Funnily enough, I didn't get many volunteers but all credit to Patrick Twitchett for being brave enough to give it a go.

In this episode, I take a look at four recent posts, two that did well and two that somewhat bombed!

This week I chat with Craig Brookes who runs a home improvement business in Sheffield, England.

Craig has had a huge impact on LinkedIn by being genuine, authentic, and straight-talking.

Need to launch a book or promote an event on LinkedIn?

A great way to do this successfully is to collaborate with influencers.

This week I chat with Gordon Glenister about his new book "Influencer Marketing Strategy'.

Michael Frackowiak faced a very uncertain future for his tailor-made suit business when the Pandemic hit last year...then he found LinkedIn!

Now his business is thriving! 

Tune in to hear Michaels amazing story.

This week I chat with Kelsi Cory, A Recruiter who recently found herself banned by LinkedIn.

Kelsi was just doing her job - no automation or spam! A warning to us all!

This week I focus on one of the best new features LinkedIn have announced in recent times. Video 'Cover Story' profile introductions.

Can you generate leads and new business successfully without a sales navigator account?

Native LinkedIn video posts have been around for some time but I still find it a challenge to get my clients to post them. With that in mind, I have decided to create a step-by-step guide for starting out with LinkedIn video.

04.30 - LinkedIn news

25.35 - Video posts

01.02.50 - Post of the week

Welcome to your latest dose of LinkedIn news, tips, and discussion. Thus weeks I’m returning to the subject of Followers, in many respects, these people are the key to our success on LinkedIn so I want to look more deeply into how we attract more of them.

Welcome to this weeks LinkedInformed which is primarily going to be a continuation of last weeks chat with Andreas. I would recommend consuming that before continuing as it will provide you with more context for what is about to follow

A special episode this week as I chat with Andreas Jonsson, the CEO of the LinkedIn analytics company Shield.

Sit back and enjoy listening as we get into all sorts of details about the LinkedIn algorithms, what types of posts engage, and plenty more.

We know LinkedIn groups aren't what they should be and that LinkedIn have left the functionality woefully short of Facebook groups but that doesn't mean that we can't make them work for us.

It's time start taking responsibility ourselves and stop waiting for LinkedIn to pull their socks up.

Dylan Jones is doing just that!

Welcome to another LinkedInformed. This week I want to focus on how we communicate on LinkedIn.

There are lots of ways to communicate with others on LinkedIn and I will cover them all but the overriding principle of effective communication is that it needs to be a two-way process.

One of my first tasks every year involves disconnecting with people who are no longer relevant or adding value to my LinkedIn network. Why do I and others do this and what are the benefits?

Whilst many of us would prefer to forget about last year, I do think we can learn a lot from our experiences on Linkedin across the last 12 months.

With contributions from Mark Lee and John Espirian, I take a look back at 2020

This is the final episode of 2020...and good riddance to it, what a year!

I thought it would be fun to give you my predictions for next year but also to look back at some of my previous predictions to see whether I'm a visionary or not!

By reputation, most LinkedIn users believe groups to be the place where people pitch their wares but don't start or engage in round-table discussions.

Is this still true and should we be taking a closer look at groups again?

Native video posts have become a popular way to share ideas, provide helpful tips and build relationships with your followers, and with the recent addition of Stories, where video typically features heavily, I thought it would be worth revisiting the topic.

David Kilkelly is one of my favourite video experts on LinkedIn. I have followed him for some time for a source of inspiration and helpful tips so I thought I would have a chat with him about LinkedIn video. Interestingly our chat was as much about content as it was specifically about video.

What happens after you connect with someone on LinkedIn?

In this episode, I talk through my recommended post connection process.

Plus my rant about the LinkedIn top voices lists and a brilliant post of the week.

Your LinkedIn profile is clearly very important and underpins everything you do on LinkedIn – I think we all know that these days.

Building an effective, optimised profile is actually pretty easy, once you have been shown how. But one section, in my experience, causes us untold levels of anxiety – the About section (previously summary).

Most About sections are about as interesting as watching paint dry!

So why do we find it so hard to write something interesting and informative about ourselves?

In this edition of LinkedInformed I’m going to focus on how to write an excellent About section and demonstrate some great examples.

Loren Greiff has an innovative approach to using LinkedIn, especially regarding two techniques that she explains in detail in this episode - Triggers and Ethical Line Jumping!

It always happens whilst I’m away…

LinkedIn finally brought stories to the UK. Unfortunately I was too busy swimming in the crystal clear water of the Ionian sea to pay any attention to it!

Not only that, they also brought out another new feature just towards the end of the week that would have been really useful for the whole of my holiday but pretty useless right at the end!

So this week I’ve been spending lots of time experimenting and having fun with LinkedIn stories

Are Followers better than connections?

Does scheduling content have a negative impact on post reach?

plus a hack that can improve your re-share reach

Join the party for a celebration of reaching 300 episodes.

A look back at some earlier episodes plus lots of lovely messages from listeners.

A few new things about LinkedIn to discuss plus I ponder the question 'Is it worth posting something controversial?'

We also have a post of the week from a job seeker and a question about attracting post engagement

There are plenty of myths out there about LinkedIn so this week I discuss my favourite 5 plus others from other LinkedIn specialists.

In addition, there are plenty of changes to the design and functionality of LinkedIn to talk about this week

With episode 300 fast approaching I would be very grateful if you could send me a short audio message to be used in show 300.

Anything will do, just say whatever you wish!

Could Newsletters be the saviour of LinkedIn Articles?

Also;

How The Economist achieves success with it's company page

A small change to profiles

Is the horrible copy & paste hack coming to LinkedIn?

How a start-up raised £200k from LinkedIn

Cross-platform posting

and we have two posts of the week!

This week I chat with Amy Woods from Content 10x. I've previously covered repurposing from a DIY perspective but that can be time-consuming. Amy offers a service to outsource your repurposing and has some interesting and valuable experience to bring to you.

This week I chat with Neal Schaffer about his new book 'The Age of Influence'.

Can influencer marketing be applicable to LinkedIn?

At a time when there is an unprecedented number of job seekers on LinkedIn, the potential for fraud via fake jobs is greater than ever.

It is an absolute scandal that LinkedIn allow anyone to post a job under the name of any company on LinkedIn.

Let's talk about authenticity! It seems to be a popular buzzword these days but what exactly does it mean in relation to your LinkedIn activities

You know you need to post great content on LinkedIn on a consistent basis but finding the time and inspiration for content can be challenging.

Producing long-form content that is designed to be repurposed can be a fantastic way to ease that challenge.

This week I chat with John Esperian about his new book Content DNA.

Amongst other things John tells us about his CHAIR framework for getting started with content on LinkedIn or elsewhere.

The current crisis has unfortunately left many people without a job so this episode is specifically for anyone who is using LinkedIn to find a new job.

In a world of fake news and social media manipulation where influential people such as politicians and even presidents can incite violence and hatred. Is it OK to censor content on LinkedIn?

Does the new dwell time factor change the way we should produce posts?

Plus;

LinkedIn push Groups again

Ad's retargeting

Ryans first words as CEO

Tagging the right people

Post of the week x2

A question about polls

I've never been a fan of live streaming on LinkedIn but it's possible that the combination of LinkedIn Event s and live streaming could be a game changer.

This week I chat with Restream's Anya Razina about all things LinkedIn Live.

Enjoy!

LinkedIn Polls have returned after an absence of 7 years or so.

It’s great to have them back and I had high hopes that LinkedIn might have improved on the product in those 8 years…In this episode, I, with the help of Andy Foote, investigate whether they have.

Not just that but I cover LinkedIn Stories, the end of SSI  and a new feed algorithm that considers “dwell time’

What's it like to work for LinkedIn?

This week I chat with ex LinkedIn employee Jenae Kaska about her time at LinkedIn and the work she did supporting users via the @LinkedInhelp Twitter account.

Hey Mark, how are you in these crazy times? You around for a catch-up next week? I'm taking this time to talk to people in my network who I've not spoken to for a while!

This is a message I received from a connection this week and it reminded me that I'm not doing enough of this...Are you?

We all need to help each other at this time.

As we enter the 3rd week of isolation, I tackle the issue of how to post effectively when our feeds are full of Covid-19 related content.

- Do we try to post about something different or is it best to just join in with the noise?

Welcome to this weeks episode. I hope you are keeping well in these weird times we are having to cope with.

Some of you may be working from home whilst others may have been furloughed, either way, I hope this weeks episode helps to take your mind off the crisis for a while.

This week I going to let you listen to an interview I recently did with Scott Millward on his excellent Thought Bubble podcast. You may remember Scott from episode 265 where I chatted with him about how to go viral on LinkedIn.

We had a really interesting and thoroughly enjoyable chat and I thought you might like to hear it.

Well well well, a lot can happen in a week!

Last week I casually mentioned Coronavirus at the end of the episode, like it was something of minor importance, now it dominates everything!

Including this episode.

Amongst all the panic and negativity out there, I thought I would share with you my own personal journey in dealing with this challenge. I like to think I'm pretty good in a crisis, in truth I'm really not but a few sleepless nights finally got my head into a better place.

On December 4th 2019 Steve Phillip received the kind of call we all dread. He was informed his son Jordan had committed suicide.

As Steve reeled from the shock and devastation he turned to the place he knows best...LinkedIn

Who are your followers and what do you do with them?

This week I look at how to find your company and personal followers and what to do to ensure your content is reaching those that are most important to you.

LinkedIn have announced that they are currently testing Stories.

This short form, 24-hour type of content was made popular on Snapchat and Instagram.

Will it work for LinkedIn?

I’m back! What an amazing holiday that was and I’m not going to lie…this week has been really difficult with jet-lag coupled with a desire to stay in Thailand forever somewhat messing with my workflow!!

So what happened whilst I was away?

In short – not much but what did happen was massive!

Jeff Wiener is stepping down and will be replaced by Ryan Roslansky. I’m not sure how much this was covered whilst I was away but let me tell you…This could be HUGE!

So in this episode, I want to look back at the reign of Jeff and dig into the background of Ryan to assess how much things will change under his leadership.

I also have a brilliant new feature to tell you about

And a post of the week.

Welcome to episode 277 which should have been 278 but I failed to get an episode out last week so apologies for that.

Despite missing a week and thereby needing to search the internet back across the last 2 weeks, I found hardly anything of interest! It seems Jan is a very quiet month for LinkedIn news – checking back this time last year was exactly the same!

We do, however, have a brilliant post of the week to talk about as well as the main subject of relevancy.

Welcome to the second episode of the year. I’ve been seeing some great results on LinkedIn through direct messages (DM’s) recently and yet 12 months ago, I was recommending people only send them with people they already know well.

So what has changed?

More of that later but as usual I will start with…

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week...

Happy New Year and welcome to the first episode of 2020!

I thought it would be a good idea to start this year by looking back and what was a fantastic 2019 for LinkedInformed.

In this episode, I will reveal the top ten episodes of last year as well as reminding you of what we covered in the top five of those.

I also have a post of the year for 2019 and an overview of the challenges that lay ahead for LinkedIn.

Welcome to episode 274 and Merry Christmas!

I think the week before Christmas is one of my favourites of the year. It’s never a busy time for LinkedIn training so I get to enjoy the build-up to the Christmas break…Christmas shopping, which largely involves answering the door to the Amazon delivery person these days! Plus carol concerts, Christmas films on TV and lots of nice messages from customers, associates and listeners to the show.

Unfortunately, Christmas is not always a happy time for everyone and I want to spare a thought for my buddy Steve Phillip. Steve bravely wrote an article this week announcing that he had recently lost his son to suicide. I’m close to Steve and when he told me the unexpected news I was completely numb with shock. I know it’s supposed to be a jolly time of year but I would ask all of you to take a few minutes to read his heartbreaking article..it’s important because we all need to more aware of the dangers of mental health issues.

I have two main topics to cover this week – the new LinkedIn groups features and an Article written by a listener to the show ‘Lessons from my 2019 Linkedin experience’

In addition, I have some feedback from last weeks show, a couple of new features LinkedIn are testing and a fantastic post of the week.

Hashtags and @mention tagging.

Two often misunderstood and misused features of LinkedIn.

Should you use them and what are the best techniques.

This weeks episode is mainly dedicated to this years 'Top Voices' list. Whilst there are certain aspects of these lists that I find bewildering, it is also a genuine opportunity to discover great content producers and assess why they are successful

 

LinkedIn have announced the top 10 company pages of 2019...but are they actually any good?

Welcome to this weeks episode in a baron week for news I’ve been noticing some subtle changes that suggest LinkedIn might be testing out falsely boosting the distribution of reshares – this got me thinking about a much broader issue about how much LinkedIn try to control our behavior.

Welcome to this weeks episode after a break for a week in the sun, I’m back fully refreshed and raring to go…oh and hating the cold, wet UK weather!

I have had a couple of listeners contact me this week to tell me about a strange message they received from LinkedIn regarding missing InMails, at first I thought it must be a hoax…it wasn’t!

Here's what you can found in this weeks episode;

06.00 - 11.30 Interesting stuff I saw this week

11.40 - 24.06 New Features

24.16 - 32.33 Do we need 30,000 connections?

32.44 - 45.20 The InMail Scandal

45.30 - 49.10 How our feed could be improved

49.20 - 53.18 Post of the week

53.28 - Question about the Daily rundown

Welcome to a new episode, this week I pick up again on the final section of settings…Communication. These settings are pretty important and may have changed since you last took a look!

For more go to https://linkedinformed.com/episode268

Welcome to this weeks episode, a shorter one due to work commitments but I’ve had a week to play with the new Events feature and wanted to share my thoughts.

More at  http://linkedinformed.com/episode267/

Welcome to episode 266.

So the time has finally come, I’ve been waiting in nervous anticipation for this for months and finally, LinkedIn have announced their new company page features. It, therefore, makes sense to focus on them this week although I will also continue with the series on LinkedIn settings.

Welcome to a new and special episode on LinkedInformed.

A shift from the normal format, this week I’m chatting with Scott Millward, the Marketing Director of Matt Burton Associates.

Scott only started posting on LinkedIn in February 2019 and in a matter of months he was producing posts that went viral. How did he manage to do that so quickly?

Prior to our interview I checked back and counted the average engagement he received on his last 10 posts;

Reactions (Likes etc) – 1289/post

Comments – 193/post

In this fascinating interview, Scott reveals the techniques he has utilised to gain this level of success – enjoy!

Welcome to this weeks fill of LinkedIn news and information.

In this episode, I continue to cover Privacy and settings but before that…….

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week

• A LinkedIn Video Experiment: Does Native Video Drive Reach for Salespeople?
• LinkedIn Announces Updates to Talent Solutions: Benefits for Recruiters
• Best of LinkedIn Pages 2019: Nominations Are Now Open!

For the rest of the notes go to http://linkedinformed.com/episode264/

Welcome to LinkedInformed 263.

This week I continue with my tutorial on settings with probably the most important section of all - Privacy

But before that...

Go to http://linkedinformed.com/episode263/ for the full notes

Welcome to episode 262, I hope you had a great week.

I thought I would cover a more educational topic this week by going through a very important but often ignored part of LinkedIn – your settings!

Once I started recording I realised this was far too big a subject to cover in one episode so I will break it down across 3 or 4 episodes. This week I’m covering the Account settings.

Also covered;

• The Linked Inn in Grimsby
• Have LinkedIn dumped one of Sales Navigators best features? 
• New features (they don't all work properly)
• New items in our feeds
• Why do Document posts achieve higher views?
• Post of the week
• Are hashtags really worth bothering with?

Hello and welcome, I’m back from my week away in San Francisco and I can tell you that my Find Nearby experiment yielded zero results! I had it on the whole time I was there and I checked it several times in busy places but never once saw anyone nearby!

How disappointing!

This week I want to return to Articles which we have covered recently but a listener highlighted an Article on LinkedIn about long-form content and I really felt I should counter it with a different perspective.

Firstly let me be clear……I definitely don’t believe long-form content is dead or even dying, I just think people need to recalibrate how they use it.

Anyway more of that later

Continued at http://linkedinformed.com/episode261/

Welcome to episode 260 which has been inspired by two separate incidents that occurred this week.

Firstly I had a session with a client who was really struggling to come up with ideas for content – I recommended she should start by using other peoples posts as inspiration to create similar posts.

Secondly, a friend found out that someone had been copying his content – word for word, A clear example of plagiarism.

This got me thinking about the differences between the two and where the line of acceptable practice sits.

More of that later…

Welcome to episode 259.

It’s great to have followers but to increase the visibility of our posts we need to get more of them to engage.

This isn’t just about what we write but also about how we treat our followers, especially new ones!

This week my main focus is on my new (and not fully tested) engagement blueprint. I have covered elements of it before but the extra part that I want to focus on in this episode techniques to get our followers more engagement.

Welcome to episode 258. We all know that post engagement is crucial for you to become visible on LinkedIn but not all ‘engagement’ types are equal. We know shares are pretty useless to you but what about Likes and Comments. Which one is best?

Following some interesting research I saw this week, I thought that would be an interesting topic to explore.

Welcome to episode 257 where this week I want to cover a really important aspect of using LinkedIn in a productive and successful way… finding great content! As usual with LinkedIn, we have an algorithm that makes choices (often the wrong ones) for us but we can take actions to help us find and engage with the best content.

Also covered in this episode;

• Main LinkedIn automation bot recommends it’s users to stop using it before their accounts get closed down!
• Another story about a fake account, easily created due to poor LinkedIn design that was used to con financial journalists
• A LinkedIn bug that allowed a fake job to be posted – CEO of Google!
• LinkedIn will be moving its servers to the cloud!
• Why is your post trending and is it something to celebrate?
• What exactly is a ‘Top’ comment?
• Do hashtags in comments count?
• Post of the week. A video post with over 350 Likes, 200 comments and over 17,000 views
• Question – Can you see the activity from someone from when they were blocked (after you unblock them)

Welcome to this weeks digest of all things LinkedIn.

Today I want to address and issue which has always been a tricky question for LinkedIn users to answer…Should you connect to competitors?

More of that later but first…..

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week

• LinkedIn Member number exceeds 645 million
• Iran-Linked APT34 Invites Victims to LinkedIn for Fresh Malware Infections
• Help clients discover your services with a new feature on LinkedIn

For the full show notes go to https://linkedinformed.com/episode256/