Welcome to episode 155, I’m sorry I wasn’t able to deliver an episode last week, the conference was so ‘full on’ I had no opportunity to put together the full episode although I did manage to record a few short snippets.

Now that I’m back, albeit somewhat jet lagged, I thought I would share with you my experiences last week in San Diego

But first……

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week.

LinkedIn revamps timeline with Trending Storylines: curated, algorithmic news clusters
This seems like a good move on the face of it, note that the trends are personalised so not everyone will see the same posts. It’s currently only available in the US (desktop & mobile) so I haven’t had a play with it yet and I will reserve judgment until then.

LinkedIn could be moving firm's IP to Ireland after Microsoft's €24bn takeover
So, not happy with making more money from it’s members, LinkedIn want to pay less tax!!

Social Media Marketing World (#SMMW17)

So last week I made the trip to San Diego, a trip I had thought about making every year since this conference started. It was a big commitment both financially and in terms of time….so was it worth it?

The conference was held at the massive convention centre in downtown San Diego. SMMW had c3000 delegates but we barely took up ⅓rd of the convention centre!!

The conference began officially on Thursday but they ran a series of practical workshops on the Wednesday so my first experience was a practical session led by David H. Lawrence 17th and it couldn’t have been a better start!

How to create videos that build authority at a moments notice. David H. Lawrence XVII

I made more notes in this session than in any other. Very impressive speaker with a background as a Hollywood actor!

I met up with listener Gary Stockton afterwards to get his feedback

Key points;

• 
  Good lighting is important (2 in front, 1 behind)
• Use the rule of ⅔rds to position yourself. Stand slightly side on and turn your head towards the camera. Look through the camera, not at the end of the lens and look away occasionally.
• Never use your RBF (resting Bitch face!) instead always use your BFF!
• To correctly position your hands hold your left hand finger with your right hand and position then at the bottom of the shot.
• A good lavalier mic is the Audio Technica ATR335015 (I already use this)
• A good camera to use is the Canon LEGRIA HF R706
• If you are interviewing someone, position yourself on the right of the shot.
• Never tell an interviewee what you are going to ask them.
• Never explain a question, keep it short “tell me about…” and let the guest shine.

How to create highly shareable social media images - Rebekah Radice

I am a big believer in the importance of images in our posts and articles on LinkedIn so I had high hopes for this workshop……it wasn’t as insightful as I hoped but I still picked up a few tips;

• Understand what images do well in your market.
• When using text in an image, use 2-3 different fonts
• Infographics are still popular
• Carefully name your images with keywords
• Great quote “Learn rules carefully so you can break them properly”!
• Check out relaythat.com for producing LinkedIn images - some great templates and 10 free downloads a month.

Day two keynote - Michael Stelzner

• Rather than try to second guess the algorithm, focus on understanding the company’s objectives. If you know what LinkedIn are trying to achieve then you can be sure the algorithm will be programmed in line with that.
• 
  Facebook posts are not related to the time they are posted so scheduling at specific times does not have an impact anymore….this is definitely not true for LinkedIn though, not yet anyway.
  Great quote - “Become known as being helpful”

Artificial Intelligence - Christopher Penn

This was a very fascinating but complicated topic and I think I understood, at best about 20% of what Christopher covered! He was clearly a very competent, technical guy and as a result he communicated as you would expect of someone of such a ‘techie’! The main highlights were as follows;

• 
  Machines are very capable of understanding sentiment (in comments for instance)
• Google have developed AI that is more capable at lip reading than humans which sounds pretty scary from a privacy point of view!
• Machines will be able to write better content than humans within 2 years (Really?!!)
• In the future there will be 4 jobs in the workplace;
    Those that tell a computer what to do (subject matter experts)
    Those that are told what to do by a computer.
    Sales
    Entertainment
• Chatbots are this years big deal in the social media world. Try out Mitsuko and Growthbot

How to become an evangelist - Guy Kawasaki

Guy was one of the real ‘Superstar’ presenters at the conference and he didn’t disappoint! He can be pretty controversial at times but also very entertaining. He was talking about being an evangelist and the things I learnt were as follows;

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.

Welcome to episode 151 at the end of another traumatic week for LinkedIn and it’s new design!

Following on from last weeks episode, I want to dig a bit deeper into what communication techniques work and what really don’t work on LinkedIn.

But first…..

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week

Workplace from Facebook is now live…..will it cause LinkedIn problems?

Are LinkedIn understaffed and overworked?….or just low quality or ignorant? I suspect they are severely overworked and understaffed….ironic for a site that makes 60% of its revenue from recruitment!

LinkedIn Salary - Did you know that premium users no longer have to add their salary to be able to use the salary feature.
Salary can be found in the ‘More menu’

New Desktop Design Update

Now that the majority of users have the new UI, the heat is really turning up on LinkedIn…members are really not happy!

Someone has even created an online petition!
New LinkedIn - Petition - Bring Back Tagging, Advanced Search and Rankings!

Whilst I think it’s important to provide LinkedIn with feedback, I don’t think ranting helps (other than the person that wrote it might feel better!).
The above petition does not really tackle the most important or realistic issues.
Let’s be realistic, LinkedIn are not likely to bring back advanced search and tagging (which is not actually related to the new UI) has moved to Sales Navigator so they are not going to reverse that and rankings (a pointless feature anyway) are hardly worth raising a petition about!

I’m not happy with the new design either but I am trying to be constructive and find realistic solutions.
The biggest issue for me is quality - there are just far too many bugs or features that seem to have been accidentally forgotten! This is unforgivable and LinkedIn need to ‘up their game’ and sort these quickly.

Here is my list of bugs, it is worth noting that this list was almost double the length in November, so things are slowly getting better.

Bugs or ‘forgotten’ features

• Hovering over names (quoted in updates) does not open up a preview box.
• You can’t see who shared your article
• Notifications do not take you to the exact place in a thread
• Typing responses to comments is impossible to see
• Recommendation order can’t be changed - despite appearing though it can views of post’ on homepage is totally out of sync with the real number.
• Page load times are slow for many
• When someone comments on an image update you can’t see the image in your feed…making the comment often impossible to understand

Have you found any more? Let me know if I have missed any.

New UI fact: Did you know that emoji’s in name fields make the person impossible to find in a name search?
Remove all emoji’s from your name field (they should never have been there in the first place!)

Communication. The Mirror Effect

How many times do we receive a message on LinkedIn or email that shows a clear lack of understand as to our interests and needs?
How often do we see a message that is clearly a standardised format, sent to multiple recipients?

What is going on here?
People find it harder to communicate online because they have no signals to read, or at least they think they don’t…..so we get the mirror effect! The computer screen acts like a mirror and all we see is our own need and wants….net result is poor, ineffective communication.

Let’s consider a better example;
Mike Richards is specialist treasury recruiter.

Mike noticed that following an article he wrote on LinkedIn (aimed at being of value to treasury professionals) he was getting a lot of new followers.
He sifted through these followers and picked out those that were of particular interest.
He found 22 interesting followers, all potential clients or candidates.
He then sent them all a personalised invitation to connect which read as follows;

I noticed you recently reviewed my profile maybe after reading one of my articles, you may also have seen this post about improving your LinkedIn profile if it helps you?
http://www.treasuryrecruitment.com/10_linkedin_tips/
Feel free to connect if you want to?
Regards
Mike @ MR Recruitment

All 22 accepted!

This is no surprise because he acted on a clear signal that they were interested in him, rather than assuming they would be.
In addition he provides value in the link with some LinkedIn tips and the very ‘non pushy’ line ‘feel free to connect if you want to’
Mike knows his market and the tone of his invitation is perfectly suited to Treasury professionals.

This is what I mean by effective communication.
Move beyond the mirror effect and communicate in a compassionate, person centred way.

I would love to hear about more examples, both good and bad.
Please drop me a line on LinkedIn or to mark@linkedinformed.com

Welcome to episode 150, that seems like a pretty good milestone to have reached but I think the main celebration will be at number 200!

Something interesting I saw this week

Well there hasn’t been much news at all this week, it seems everyone is so pre-occupied with the new desktop design (which I am trying to avoid covering in this episode).

LinkedIn did announce that they had re-vamped their premium accounts, I’m not sure they have changed much to be honest and Business account holders are still getting a raw deal but there are a few changes worth noting, especially to the jobseeker account which is now called ‘Career’.

Here is the article;
What’s New With LinkedIn Premium?

Coaching

If you are interested in a one to one coaching session or just want to have ask for some quick advice, you can book a free 15-minute consultation with me at;
https://mrlinkedin.youcanbook.me/

New Book - I need your help

I’m starting to research the topic of online relationship building a communication for a book I will be writing.
Please drop me a line to mark@linkedinformed.com if you have any examples of good or bad online communication.

Social Media Content. What matters most - When or What?

I read a great article this by Jay Baer that really got me thinking about what matters when posting content on LinkedIn.

The Truth About How Often To Post In Social Media

I did some vary crude research myself on 6 posts I did last week on LinkedIn.

Jay makes some great points but I also think that consistently high engagement will lead to more people seeing your posts initially (before the algorithm can judge how interesting it is).

His main advice is spot on;
“Post when you have something to say”

I would just add - also at the right time, with an image and ask a question!

Lars asked via voicemail which browser I thought worked best with LinkedIn.
I use Chrome mainly but I have a feeling that LinkedIn behaves better in Firefox these days. I like Chrome because of the various extensions I use but LinkedIn don’t approve of extensions so perhaps that is why they favour Firefox.
Of course that all might change when Microsoft gain more influence!!

The second question was regarding viewing the activity stream of followed companies in the new UI.

This is a bit crazy and complicated to explain so I made a video to explain

Welcome to episode 149, it seems that the roll-out has now reached about 75% if users so I thought it would make sense to get through some of the many questions I have been receiving.

It’s funny for me, I feel like I have been talking about this for so long with very little feedback and then all of a sudden….everyone is talking about it and asking questions!

Before I get into that tough, I have a couple of updates for you;

Published Post Comments

Firstly LinkedIn have officially announced a new feature within published posts - the ability to switch off comments and report inappropriate comments - woop-de-do!
Not only is that tame but the blog article announcing it is very annoying!
Giving You More Choice Over Your Content on LinkedIn

Maybe it’s just me (probably) but I find it hard to read those ‘corporate’ type posts that say nothing at all for the first two paragraphs!

Update to Mobile App

LinkedIn have quietly added an interesting new section to a personal profile, it’s on on mobile currently but I suspect it may come to desktop eventually.
When you next go onto the app you find you are asked this question;

When you tap on add topics you are given a list of topics (presumably based on your profile & network) from which you can pick 3.

Then you add them to your profile

And this is what they look like

I’m not sure if these are searchable yet but that could become an option. It’s certainly worth adding them for now.

Your ‘Neptune’ Questions answered.

How do I create a new company page?

This is a bit hidden but you will find up at the bottom of the ‘more’ menu (you do need to scroll down).

How do I find my own company page or one I’m an admin for?

For some reason this is in a different place to the above!
For this you need to go to the ‘Me’ menu and you will see the pages you own or manage in the list.

How do I personalise invitations?

Don’t invite someone from anywhere other than their profile! If you click ‘connect’ from a shortlist or ‘people you may know’ it just sends a blank invitation.

Has the recommendation button gone?

No but it has moved. See below

How do I conduct a search within my first tier connections?

This actually hasn’t changed, the best way id via an advanced search…..wait! Advanced search has gone!! No worries, you can still do it, this video shows how;

How do I sort my homepage feed by ‘most recent’

Unfortunately you can’t but I believe there is a strong possibility that this feature may be coming and that it will be much better than before…let’s hope so!

How do I revert back to the old UI?

Sorry you can’t! My suggestion is that you focus on making the most of Neptune, it has it’s faults but also some good points and I’m certain it will improve in time.

Welcome to episode 148, this week I interview a young chap called Jack Parsons who is the CEO of an exciting start-up called YourFeed.

Jack and he team are about to launch a brand new website and social network called YourFeed, here is how they describe themselves;
Yourfeed is a disruptive online platform that helps ambitious professionals find employment, network with like-minded individuals & gather advice through experienced mentors. The platform connects hiring companies with ambitious professionals favouring skills & ambitions over experience when recruiting.

I found this a fascinating conversation about the challenges that LinkedIn face with the younger generation.
How can LinkedIn become more interesting to this demographic?
How can LinkedIn structure their premium accounts to avoid alienating the younger generation?
Is the solution within LinkedIn or is it too hard to cater for such a wide demographic?
Do you think this is seen as an important issue to LinkedIn?

I would love to hear your views on this. Please leave me a voicemail or send an email to mark@linkedinformed.com

New User Interface Update

LinkedIn announced (after I recorded last weeks show) that they are up to 50% roll-out of Neptune (internal name for the new UI) but if you are in the half that doesn’t have it, I may have a genius solutions for you!

So long as you keep open the tab that this opens, you have the new UI…as well as the old one!

Unfortunately this doesn’t seem to work for everyone, some are getting 404 error page and others see an earlier version of Neptune that is completely useless.
I’m not sure why this happens but I wonder if it is because those people haven’t imported contacts previously.

This weeks question is about the new user interface.

Question: Where have groups gone?

Answer Groups are now accessed via the ‘More’ matrix menu

Welcome to episode 147, this week, I had planned an interview but that didn’t happen so I thought I would talk about something that I know is very important to many of you…..advanced search in the new desktop design.

But first….

New Desktop UI Design Update

LinkedIn have changed the way the data archive operates. Now you can download a smaller set of data more quickly, this is presumably meant to replace the connections download which has been deprecated in the new UI.

Update

On last weeks show  I explained that you can create a custom audience on Facebook from your downloaded LinkedIn connections. I still think this is a good idea but it is worth noting that this is against Facebooks rules.

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week

Here are the articles I refer to in this weeks episode;
LinkedIn Data Reveals the Most Promising Jobs of 2017
Human bot hybrid finds LinkedIn email, phone number-filching holes
Microsoft Promotes LinkedIn's Kevin Scott to CTO

Advanced Search With The New UI

LinkedIn released anew video this week showing how you can search for people in the new UI, it’s very basic but they did go on to explain that for more advanced users they have brought back some important boolean operators.

The five operators you can use in the search field are;

firstname: Finds members based on first name

lastname: Finds members based on last name

title: Finds members based on their current title (this one is likely to be the most useful)

company: Finds members based on their current company (keyword search)

school: Finds members based on schools attended (keyword search)

Search operators complement the filters on the right-hand side of the results page and the AND, OR and NOT boolean operators.

Here’s a quick example: to search for current software engineers not named Doe, who have attended either Harvard University or Stanford University, try: title:"software engineer" NOT lastname:doe school:(harvard OR stanford)

When using search operators, remember to use quotes for multi-word search terms, and parentheses for AND, OR and NOT phrases.

If you don’t have the new UI yet, you can still start practicing this technique in the old UI by simply using the main search field at the top of thee page (rather than advanced)

Question: Can I adjust my Sales Navigator Lead builder search results so that I see someone’s headline rather than their job title?

Answer: No you can’t but don’t forget that for the vast majority of profiles, the two are the same.

It is worth noting that job seekers might want to consider making their current job titles a little more descriptive.

As you can see in this screenshot, the information highlighted is my current job title and not my headline.

Click here to get your step by step guide on how to download your connections and upload them to Facebook.

Welcome to episode 146, this week I have an idea to share with you about what you can do with your LinkedIn connections on Facebook. More of that later, but first…..

New UI Desktop Design Update

Saved searches are returning (end of Jan)
Interests will show in your public profile
Contact & personal information will return (end of Jan)
Post searches are now available including hashtag searches.
It seems as the though the roll-out has accelerated this week and the rumour is that everyone will have it by end of January!
LinkedIn Announcement: LinkedIn Desktop Redesign Puts Conversations and Content at the Center

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week

LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner Shares How to Effectively Scale a Business in a New LinkedIn Learning Course
LinkedIn may move its 10,000 employees off Google Apps – and not because of Microsoft
LinkedIn Gives Access to B-to-B Insights Through DataSift Deal
The announcement of the above deal from DataSift
“Now I’m raging” — LinkedIn ban for “swearygate” Perthshire shed-maker
Cara Mackay’s F***** LinkedIn posts!

Here’s What You Can Do With Your Downloaded List Of LinkedIn Connections

I’m always encouraging people to regularly download your list of connections and it’s even more important now as you won’t be able to directly download them in the new UI (you can via the data archive). The question has always been…What do I do with them now?

Well the answer to that is not to add them to a newsletter email list, that is not something they have given you permission to do and it’s actually against the law!

I would however consider uploading them to Facebook and creating a ‘custom audience’. That way you can run a low cost ad campaign specifically directed at your LinkedIn connections - genius!

Click here to get your step by step guide on how to download your connections and upload them to Facebook.

Welcome to episode 145, this week I want to revisit something that so many people ignore or underestimate the importance of….your LinkedIn profile picture!

But first a few interesting things I saw this week;

An open letter to Jeff Weiner by Oleg Vishnepolsky

The main highlights from this were;
Anonymous like and dislike buttons
Managing your feed
Better management of followers/connections
Who is most active
Who engages with you the most
Bookmarking of updates and posts

LinkedIn tell Windows app users it is no longer supported…and then say it was a mistake!

Russia completes LinkedIn ban by demanding Google and Apple remove the app

No Fake news from LinkedIn. Really? These comments are very misleading from Daniel Roth, Editors do not control all published posts and certainly not all updates. That said, fake news is pretty rare on LinkedIn.

New Desktop UI Update:

There are strong rumours that LinkedIn have had to put the roll-out on hold due to problems.
One of the problems seems to be that users are getting their account suspended for no reason, just as I did!
According to this interesting post from Andy Hawkins, it would appear that Boolean does still work in the new UI….despite LinkedIn previously stating it didn’t! It’s hard to know what to believe, my experiments suggested it didn’t but maybe they have changed this since.

Is Your Profile Picture Up To Scratch?

I found an excellent article this week that reminded me of the importance of this subject;
Can an AI perfect your LinkedIn profile picture?

The new service this refers to is a fantastic idea - Snappr Photo Analyzer

Analyse your LinkedIn profile photo here (make sure you are logged into LinkedIn in another tab first)

Unfortunately I didn’t score so well!;

This is a subject I always cover in my training, as does pretty much every LinkedIn or social media trainer in the world - it’s the most obvious thing to get right and yet so many people get it wrong.

As a random experiment I ran a search on LinkedIn with the following criteria;
10 miles radius of my office
3rd tier +

Then I viewed the first 20 profiles and here are the mistakes I found;
Out of focus
Poor lighting
An action shot of 2 men playing football - one might be the profile owner?
Too far away - full torso in view
Two people in the image
Dressed for a night out on the town.
Looking away from the camera
Wearing a safety hat
Wedding photo
The grey ‘thing’ - no photo

So only 10 profiles had decent profile photos and out of those I would only give 4 of them a 8+ out of 10 score.

Other common mistakes I often see;
Holding or standing next to a product
Image includes or is only of their kids
Any obvious selfie, especially ones taken on a train!
Showing too much flesh - especially cleavage!
Looking too serious or miserable
Sunglasses

The 5 simple rules of a great profile photo

Close up - head and shoulders max
In-focus and current
Clothing you would wear for a business meeting
Smiling
Just you

With the new desktop UI design, all profile photos will be circular - across every section and on mobile so it is important to check what your current profile photo looks like in a desktop search result or on the mobile app.
I found this interesting

Question: What’s the verdict on showing other things as well as you in your profile, like famous people, awards, the FA cup you once stood next to in a football museum etc?

Also:
Should I have my LinkedIn profile picture taken by a professional photographer?

I answer both these questions in the podcast and refer to an episode of the winbusinessin podcast where I interviewed ‘The Headshot Guy’ John Cassidy

Season 1 Episode 5. LinkedIn Profile Photo’s with ‘The Headshot Guy’

Welcome to episode 144 and a very happy new year to you all. I hope you achieve great things this year and I trust that LinkedIn will be with you every step of the way!

I thought I would start the year with a focus on searching. As we know, the much loved Advanced search feature will be gone once we all get the new UI so it seems a good time to focus on the subject.

But before that I saw a few things this week that I thought you might find interesting….

The Twitter account you should use to get the attention of LinkedIn’s published post editors has changed!
I saw this from John White this week;

Worth knowing about if you publish a lot on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn Censorship

Following on from my rant about LinkedIn censorship in the last episode I was reminded by someone of the infamous Candice Galek and how much her posts get censored by LinkedIn. I have to admit that many of her posts actually do need censoring as they often used to include inappropriate images but it seems she is now getting censored for criticising LinkedIn - not good LinkedIn, that really is Soviet style tactics!

The above post has now been removed by LinkedIn!

Searching in 2017

I saw a very interesting presentation this week from Shakhina Pulatova who is the Search and Discovery Product Lead at LinkedIn, based in San Francisco.

You can watch the full presentation from the Global Big Data Conference in August last year here;

Instant and Personal: Searching Your Network at LinkedIn

This presentation was about how LinkedIn design their instant search feature on the flagship mobile app. It’s especially relevant as the new UI seems to use the same system.

Highlights include;
Search results are effected by ‘global popularity’. This must refer to profile views so getting profile views will improve your search ranking.
Results are also personalised. Your activities and profile information will have an impact on who finds you.
Machine learning. It sounds like this is still a new area for LinkedIn but it’s clear that the algorithm is constantly learning what you want from your actions. We need to consider this when growing through our search results.

Results ranking: She gave us some interesting clues about how a search resulted is ranked with network distance, similarity of network (shared connections) and global popularity appearing to be important. She also referred to ‘spammy content in names and headlines’ counting negatively.

Recruiter Lite vs Sales Navigator

With the impending demise of advanced search in the new desktop design, many users are reluctantly having to consider upgrading from a free or Business level premium account.

So what option do you go for?

Why is this even a question?!!

Surely the clue is in the name - If you use LinkedIn to win new customers then Navigator is the correct solution (it is!) and if your role is to fill job vacancies then Recruiter Lite is the obvious choice (and it also is!).

But what if your role involves both?…..

That is the dilemma facing Recruitment businesses throughout the world and it's more than just a choice between LinkedIn products, it actually addresses a key question about how that business operates!

To help with this dilemma, I wrote a post on LinkedIn covering a comparison between the two;

Sales Navigator VS Recruiter Lite

Welcome to episode 143, before I get into anything else I just want to extend my warm wishes for the festive season.

Happy Christmas everyone!

Is This LinkedIn Censorship?

I posted the ‘Dear Satya’ image on LinkedIn last week and a number of people were @mentioned and several commented.
One individual decided to @mention Satya himself and I am wondering if this resulted in the post being deleted by LinkedIn and possibly why I found my account suspended this week!

On Wednesday 21st December I was unable to log into LinkedIn and only saw an error message stating my account had been suspended!

I had to sweat this out all, wondering what on earth I had done wrong! Eventually I received this email from the safety team;

At first I assumed it was just an innocent mistake, then I tried to find the Dear Satya update and my conspiracy theory started to grow!

What do you think? Am I letting my imagination run away with me here?

Updates

The excellent browser extension Dux-soup has updated and is now compatible with the new User interface - great work!
The only problem is that having the extension enabled seems to be slowing LinkedIn down. I’m sure they will sort that out soon.

The Google Chrome browser has also recently updated and this now includes a LinkedIn notifications feature - nice.

Another Security Breach

I’m not sure this is something to lose any sleep over but it is another sign that LinkedIn are often vulnerable;

You can read more about it here;

LinkedIn's training arm resets 55,000 members' passwords, warns 9.5m

Question;

Could you discuss the difference between connections and followers?

I get connection requests from people that I really don't know and don't want to connect with. However, I would like for them to follow me on LinkedIn.

I know that I have seen profiles where I could choose to follow the person, but not connect with them.
Is there a setting that I don't know about? I would like to have less connections and more followers.

How do you recommend that I accomplish this?

Answer

Whilst there is no perfect answer to this question, I do discuss the differences between followers and connections and what steps you might be able to make to encourage more people to follow you rather then send an invitation to connect.

Scroll to the top of this page to listen to the show.

Welcome to episode 142, on the week that the roll-out of the new desktop interface has really begun……Have you got it yet?

Please get in touch and let me know your thoughts if you have.

I found out from a very good source this week that LinkedIns internal name for the new user interface is ‘Neptune’ which got me thinking “How do they come up with these names?”

You might associate Neptune with the Roman God of the seas but Neptune is also a planet - Interestingly I read that Neptune is not visible to the unaided eye and is the only planet in the Solar System found by mathematical prediction rather than by empirical observation.

Could these be a reference to the removal of Advanced Search I wonder?!

Want the Old UI back? There is a short-term workaround

The guys at Autopilot for LinkedIn have devised a short term way of accessing the old UI if you wish to (I’m not recommending you do).

Here is what they had to say;
We found a temporary solution for those of you who have already been rolled over to LinkedIn's "New UI" and who still want to be able to use Autopilot.
For now, you can use a VPN software that allows you to change our IP address location to a country like Spain, Romania, Finland, Italy, etc (not the USA or Canada). When you are logged in to LinkedIn from an IP address that originates in an obscure country, you will be shown the OLD UI.
This will buy you time for a little bit while we work on fixing the issue with how our tool works inside of LinkedIn's new UI.
Go here and click the Link that says "Hide My Ass", and try out their 1 month subscription for €9.99/month, which I believe is around $10.63 USD/month.

I’m not sure this will work so be careful, I personally found that once I had the new UI, my view limits were drastically reduced in LinkedIn.com and I found my account suspended in no time!

Tags/notes and Sales Navigator

Following on from LinkedIn’s announcement that Takes and notes were no longer supported in the free version of LinkedIn and to continue using them you need to upgrade to Sales Navigator I thought I would take a closer look at how this transition works.

It doesn’t - it’s a disaster!

Yes you can upload your tags to Sales Navigator but all that does is add them to the list of tags, they are not officially assigned to a profile until you save that profile as a Lead, they are greyed out until you save.

This shows a complete lack of understanding of how we use tags.

The whole point of tags is that they are an easy way to find people you have categorised in some way - the reason you do this is because you won’t be able to remember everyone by name.

In Sales Navigator, Tags can only be used as a filter in a search result but the imported tags are not assigned to profiles until they are saved as leads….so how do you find those profiles you tagged in LinkedIn.com?

You can’t!

Slideshare Update.

An update on this subject from last week about the potential demise of Slideshare. Someone pointed out that a plausible explanation would be that LinkedIn are looking to merge Slidehare and Pointdrive.
Pointdrive are a business acquired by LinkedIn earlier this year who produce a product that is used to communicate and share content with customers and prospects.

Boolean Search in the New User Interface

I have seen several people state that you can still use Boolean search queries in the new UI. I really don’t believe this is true.
LinkedIn have clearly stated it is no longer supported in Recruiter Lite, so why would it be possible in the free version?
I think it is easy to believe that boolean is working but this may well be the algorithm doing the work for you.
I recently demonstrated the best way to search LinkedIn in this video;

Are Recruiters Walking Away From LinkedIn…..And Is This Such a Bad Thing?

I read this excellent article this week from Katrina Collier;

Recruiters, would you accept this from any other service provider?

This brings us back to the Facebook argument again! I know a little about Katrina and I have always considered her a highly credible expert in social recruiting. She doesn’t elaborate on what she means by ‘being creative’ to be able to recruit successfully via Facebook - unless you buy her training but my guess is that it involves some form of search (although career data is weak on Facebook) combined with building communities and groups.

These are all viable methods and I can’t argue with the logic of sourcing candidates from a variety of sources and the data she backs her argument with in favour of Facebook is pretty compelling.

Judging by the comments on her piece and the feedback I am getting from Recruiters, I think it’s probably true that many Recruiters will soon be spending a lot less time on LinkedIn.

Whilst LinkedIn don’t want this, I suspect they have factored it into their plan - sales of LinkedIn Recruiter are less likely to be affected, I suspect its the lower level premium accounts and free users that will walk away and LinkedIn, now backed by the financial powerhouse that is Microsoft can afford to lose some revenue in the interim period before Sales Navigator really takes off.

Are LinkedIn users going to miss Recruiters?

I doubt it!

Good Recruiters who build relationships will continue to stay active on LinkedIn (as well as other places). Facebook could be a place to talk about jobs and careers but it is not a place to talk about business, LinkedIn allows us to keep our personal lives personal and not have our Facebook time interrupted by work related subject matter.

I believe the vast majority of people feel this way.

Recruiters who are only interested in posting endless jobs and sending inappropriate messages to potential candidates will probably go to Facebook….good riddance.

This could actually help make LinkedIn a better place!

1. A voicemail question fro Jaz about the annoying habit that some users have developed of putting keywords in their name field.

2. I recently purchased the Sales Navigator. Thank you for all the information that you have put out about it. It really helped me decide if I was willing to pay for it. Now that I have it, I have a question about segmenting prospects and the recommendations that LinkedIn provides. I am a financial advisor, but I also volunteer with a couple industry organizations. So here is the issue I am having. I have many connections that are other financial professionals. They are not prospects to become my clients, however, they are prospects for joining industry, or professional organizations that I participate in. I think that because I have all these connections, LinkedIn thinks that I want to prospect other financial professionals. However, these are not the sales leads that I need. Is there a way to segment leads into potential clients and potential colleagues? How do I tell LinkedIn Sales Navigator that I want client leads that fit my target demographic (professional women, 25-40)?

I answer both questions in detail in the podcast. Go to the top of this page to listen to the show.

Welcome to episode 141….the calm after the #linkedinthebin storm of last week!

The feedback was great from last weeks show, thanks to everyone who voted. The result was a draw between myself and Angus.

If you want to hear another round of Linked-in-the-bin, let me know and I will have a think about who I can invite as contestants.

Interesting stuff I saw this week

Search Filters are being removed

A Business account holder received the following message this week

Message from LinkedIn reads;

At LinkedIn, we're always looking for ways to simplify and improve your experience – helping you be more productive and successful. This sometimes means removing features that aren't heavily used by most of our members to invest in others that members tell us offer greater value.

As such, we're removing the Premium search filters feature that allowed you to apply additional advanced search filters to find people on LinkedIn. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you.

If you'd like to continue using this feature, it's available on our Sales Navigator platform, which you can now enjoy for a free trial period of 3 months*. LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a product we launched a couple of years ago and is targeted at sales professionals - it lets you keep track of your existing relationships, research your network, and find new leads faster with tailored recommendations.

Please feel free to contact us with any questions regarding your Premium account.

The LinkedIn Premium Team

This would appear to suggest that the premium filters are the only thing they are removing but that is definitely not the case with the new UI - perhaps this is an interim move whilst the roll out to the new UI takes place?

Do you have a business account? What do you see in the advanced search area now?

I checked someones free account and the premium filters were still showing

As usual with LinkedIn, a lack of clear communication leaves us all confused!

Tags & Notes

A number of people have also contacted me this week to say they had received notification that Tags and Notes were being removed.

This was originally announced several months ago and I haven’t see the relationship tab on connections for some time now so I was surprised to see this.

As with search filters / advanced search these features have all moved to Sales Navigator.

Whilst I’m a big fan of Sales Navigator, I do think it’s a very poor show to remove these features from free users as well as Job seeker and Business account holders.

Sponsored InMail

LinkedIn Releases Sponsored InMail Campaigns for All Advertisers

This could be useful for some although I fear more spam is likely to come our way!

Microsoft deal approved by EU due to Xing concession

Microsoft Said to Use German Site to Appease EU Over LinkedIn

Great article from Greg Cooper about Sales Navigator

Should I Upgrade to LinkedIn Sales Navigator? A Guide for SMEs (SMBs)

Don’t Trust LinkedIn

I was reminded by a follower this week that I warned people against using Tags in June 2014

when I wrote a post on LinkedIn titled Be careful LinkedIn......

Which included the lines

“For instance. LinkedIn Contacts is a fantastic feature, effectively a free social CRM system built into LinkedIn. So why aren't people using it? Well what happens if I write notes, add reminders etc and then find they have all disappeared because LinkedIn changed its mind and decided that this was not the direction they want to go in!”

So now LinkedIn are basically saying the following;

“I know we gave you something and asked you to use it and now we want you to pay to keep using it but please use it…..we promise we won’t take it away or suddenly increase the cost.

The lesson? Don’t use features that tie you into LinkedIn….period.

This is not a reason to upgrade the Sales Navigator in my opinion, unless the info you wish to add is non essential to your business

If your content and followers are all on LinkedIn - diversify where you place your content. Keep writing posts but don’t just rely on LinkedIn.

By all means link Sales Navigator to your CRM but don’t add any valuable data into your LinkedIn account.

I hate to say it but we have to learn from experience. LinkedIn are not a company to be trusted!

With these changes and the impending outcry when everyone gets the new UI, I fully expect the likes of BeeBee to encourage a migration away from LinkedIn.

Whilst I understand the sentiment and the desire to protest, there really is no point in cutting your nose off to spite your face!

LinkedIn is useful to us because of it’s members, the company that run it may annoy us and at times act in ways which prove they are not trustworthy but that is no reason to leave.

The right response is to keep using LinkedIn because the majority of professionals will be there. I have no loyalty to LinkedIn but I believe that the point of social media is to engage and build relationships with those that you wish to do business with and to do that you need to be active where they are…and most people are on LinkedIn.

Voting with your feet and migrating to other smaller networks is not the answer, the vast majority of people on LinkedIn will never leave so neither should you.

Just don’t trust them with anything of value or importance to your business.

Stop ‘Bigging’ yourself up!

Don’t tell me…let me find out

This week a connection of mine posted a status update showing a screenshot of a recommendation they had received on LinkedIn!

This loses all impact - stop telling me how great you are (even if it’s someone else words)

A product with a testimonial printed on it is seen as blatant, untrustworthy marketing. A product with a review attached to it is seen as credible…both the same thing

Slideshare - RIP?

Following a voicemail from Gary Stockton, I started to investigate the rumour that Slideshare could be shutting down.

I haven’t asked LinkedIn about this (because they never tell you anything!) and the ‘Todays Top Slideshares’ feature has now been updated but I still smell a bit of a rat….watch this space!

Below is the article referred to;

Is LinkedIn Killing SlideShare?

Welcome to episode 140, this week I thought we would have a bit of fun with our new gameshow!
Hopefully it will not only put a smile on your face but also provide some useful information & tips.

But first……

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week

Ransomeware
There have been lots of articles and scaremongering about images on social media this week. This article actually sums up the ‘ransomware’ issue quite accurately.

The Truth Behind Malware On Facebook, LinkedIn; Google's New Policy On Malware Sites Freaking Scary

The reality is that you have nothing to worry about by browsing your LinkedIn feed, viewing and sharing images.
The only time you should ever be concerned is when you download images to your PC (Mac not affected).
This is not likely to happen, the only situation I can imagine you being at risk from is if someone sends you a message with an image attachment - in this situation, only download that image if you are 100% sure of the source.

Whilst we are talking images, I noticed this week that LinkedIn have still not corrected the image sharing issue I highlighted in this post I wrote back in May;
Please Don’t Share My Image

I had heard that one of the reasons they have redesigned the desktop experience was to allow them to fix such issues (apparently the old platform made it difficult to fix issues such as this) so optimistically I checked out the new UI to see if had been fixed. Here is what I found…..

Microsoft Takeover

Apparently Microsoft had their eye on LinkedIn for many years…I bet the price wasn’t anywhere near $26.2b in 1996! You can read the article here;
Microsoft has courted LinkedIn since 2006, founder says

Introducing our new game - Linked-in-the-bin!

I’m trying something new this week. It’s mainly a bit of fun but I’m hoping you might find it useful as well.
The format is based on the BBC TV series Room 101 where contestants nominate something they wish to be banned and sent to room 101.

In this version I have invited two of my respected colleagues/competitors from the world of LinkedIn Trainers to nominate which LinkedIn feature they would like to dump ‘in the bin’

The format works as follows;

• Each person has up to 2 minutes to explain why their chosen feature should be dumped in the bin.
• The other 2 contestants get to counter this with their own argument as to why the feature shouldn’t binned. Each person has up to 1 minute of rebuttal.
• The original nominator gets the final word. Just 30 secs to come back on the others arguments.
• The winner is decided by you, simply vote by Tweeting your vote using #linkedinthebin and the name of the person whose feature you agree should be binned.

For example Tweet : #linkedinthebin I vote for Mark.  Of course you don’t have to vote for me!

The contestants.

As well as myself I have invited Steve Phillip and Angus Grady to this inaugural Linked-In-The-Bin show. Both are respected UK based LinkedIn Trainers (click on the images below to view their profiles;

Features for the bin;

Angus - Default invitation to connect messages
Mark - Skill endorsements
Steve - Groups

Have a listen to all three arguments and vote for the one you think is the most compelling by tweeting #linkedinthebin and one of the names above.

New Desktop Design Update

I tried to write a recommendation for someone this week and this is what happened;

Drop me a line if you get the new desktop ‘experience’ this week at mark@linkedinformed.com

Welcome to episode 139, this week I’m mainly exploring a subject which many people find a real challenge - how to promote you or your products/services without appearing cheesy or being too pushy!

But first….

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week

The three articles I refer to are shown below;

• Microsoft set to win EU approval for LinkedIn buy
• LinkedIn files suit to stop bots from data scraping its site

I also have a further update on the article about LinkedIn being banned in Russia I covered in last weeks show. It seems LinkedIn have been somewhat arrogant in their handling of this issue which could have been sorted out before going to court (according to a contact I have in Russia).

The Art of Social Selling

A good rule of thumb when selling or promoting something on LinkedIn is to take your lead from off-line behavioural norms.

You wouldn’t walk into a networking event and think “right, how am I going to sell sell sell to this lot”!

In reality you would ‘work the room’ talking to people, asking questions, building rapport and getting to know them. You probably wouldn’t try to ‘sell’ anything unless they enquire.

This is how it works on LinkedIn.

In this section I explain my thoughts on how trust is built on LinkedIn, the actions that we take to generate a magnetic profile where prospects feel motivated to come to you.

The New Sales Navigator Inbox / Messages experience.

This is a big improvement to this area of Sales Navigator so I made a short video to demonstrate what is new and different.

Welcome to episode 138, this week I thought I would address the issue that many are talking about…Facebook’s perceived threat to LinkedIn.

Facebook Vs LinkedIn

As far as I see it, Facebook will never be a realistic alternative to LinkedIn for online business networking.
This however, is not a view held by all and the debate has recently resurfaced due to Facebook's entry into the job advertising market as well as the publication of a recent survey which suggests that C-suite executives are more likely to get thought leadership articles from Facebook.

Read the article here;
Senior executives use Facebook more than LinkedIn when seeking thought leadership, report suggests

You will find a link in the above article where you can download the full report from Grist but the main sections I refer to are below.

The most important number here is that only 28% of C-level executives source leadership material from social media.

It is surprising but out of the 28%, more are influenced by Facebook but in truth we are only talking about 44 versus 38 executives.

I can't imagine a world where we are comfortable engaging with business Contacts, Family members and personal friends from the same profile and on the same network.

That's my view but I'm not saying I'm right!

I would love to hear your views on the subject.

Let me know by sending a voicemail via the link on the right edge of this page or you can email me at mark@linkedinformed.com.

LinkedIn’s Q3 Results

These results showed a continued slowing of LinkedIn growth to just 23% in comparison to the same period last year.

LinkedIn could be banned in Russia

Interesting report suggesting that the 6 million members in Russia could be frozen out of the site unless LinkedIn can negotiate some sort of solution….I think they probably will.

You read the full article below;

LinkedIn faces ban in Russia after court ruling

Question:

I have a list of approximately 5000 first degree connections but I have never kept in touch with them or indeed kept on top of them. I'm now looking at this massive list and wondering how I should engage with them.
I would like to introduce them to a new products that I have but I obviously don't want it to be spammy. That said, sending out an individual messages to all of them will be impractical.

What do you think is the simplest, most practical and least invasive way of getting my message out to these people?

I answer this question in detail towards the end of this episode. Click on the play button at the top of this page to listen to the show.

Welcome to episode 137. Well what a crazy week it's been, quite possibly one of the craziest weeks in living history!
I thought I would take this opportunity to answer some of the many questions you have been asking regarding the new desktop user interface.

But first…..

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week

LinkedIn Record is rumoured to be rolling out soon to all members. I haven't seen any official confirmation of this from LinkedIn and I'm not exactly sure how it would work but the opportunity to post 30 second videos to our followers would be great!
You can read the article I refer to here;
LinkedIn’s Big New Feature – Native Video

Facebook have announced that they will provide ways to advertise job openings on business pages. Journalists are getting excited thinking that this is in some way a threat to LinkedIn not realising that the majority of LinkedIn's success in recruiting is through its search capabilities not recruitment advertising!
You can read about here;
Facebook threatens LinkedIn with job opening features

You can read the full article here;
Scam Says LinkedIn Team Needs Your Photo ID for Account Verification

Connect 365

This is not a scam but a product that is getting a lot of people excited….. Apart from me!
For "Just" $1497 of your hard earned cash you can buy a lifetime subscription to this product that has three elements to it.
A three module training program (which will be out of date when the new UI is released)
A messenger software extension that will allow you to send Messages to all of your connections on a rotational basis (spam in my opinion and against linkedIn's terms)
An Implementation Group (Facebook group with other customers)

I have several problems with this product;
The price reflects the fact that it is sold via an affiliate network and not the actual value of the product.
The messenger software will not work with the new user interface
The limited time offer is somewhat suspicious given that we know that linking is about to undergo a massive change.

These are just my opinions and you should take a look yourself at linkedinselling.com rather than just take my word for it.
Given the imminent changes with LinkedIn I would not advise anybody to buy any product of this nature (good or bad) until the new user interface is fully released.

The new UI - your questions

In this episode I provide answers, The best I can, to the following questions that were sent to me.

Which of the 17 missing features will return?
I have a business plus account. Is it worth keeping this account now that the new user interface is coming?
Can I opt out of the new UI?
I saw Pro-Finder in the menu in your video does this mean that it's now available outside of the US?
Do we still see a public profile URL in the new LinkedIn profile?
Is the search function exactly the same as it is in the mobile app?

A new scam email has been circulating recently which encourages you to verify your identity with LinkedIn. This is fake and an attempt to steal your identity - be careful!

Hello and welcome to episode 136 at the end of another crazy week in the wonderful world of LinkedIn!

I have spent this week working in the beautiful and sunny Costa Del Sol, it’s my annual escape from the wet and cold of England at this time of year.

LinkedIn have now said that the version of the new desktop UI I have is actually in ‘beta’ ie it’s not ready for general release…..you don’t say!!!

I covered this extensively in last week’s episode and don’t intend to cover too much more now because it’s clear that things are likely to keep changing.

I did mention recommendations which have improved. You can now see ‘given’ and you can now recommend and asked to be recommended and the option to edit your recommendations has returned although this still needs some work.

It’s very frustrating to be in a position to spot omissions and bugs and not have anyone (sensible) to report them to!

New Company Pages

The new design of company pages are now being rolled out, all admins should see the new design.

As far as I can see, the functionality is pretty much the same but the design has be refreshed. One change that will effect all admins is the need to upload a new background image to all company and showcase pages.

Advanced search

I see the removal of advanced search as the key test as to whether LinkedIn have correctly judged the difference between the hunters and the hunted (see episode 134 for more information on The LinkedIn Paradox).

The key question here is on the fringes between hunters and the hunted. LinkedIn need the regular users (the hunted), without them they are nothing and the super users (hunters) have no reason to be on LinkedIn either.

Super users just need to upgrade, no question. But if regular users feel they are being pushed towards upgrading then we all have a problem and LinkedIn have messed up big time!

Do regular users feel they have a need for advanced search?

Have LinkedIn misjudged the definition of a regular user?

Only time will tell but it’s a big call by LinkedIn.

No More Boolean Searches!

Irina Shamaeva broke this story this week. Apparently LinkedIn are dropping the ability to search via boolean from all but it’s top level Recruiter accounts.

Another example of pushing Recruiters to pay more for LinkedIn….the squeeze continues!

Read the excellent article below.

Boolean Is Dead. On LinkedIn Only

LinkedIn Salary

This is a very exciting new feature from LinkedIn and potentially a game changer for recruiters!

Individual users on free accounts in the UK, Canada and US can now check the average salary and benefits for their job (or one they are applying to) against other LinkedIn users.

To do so, however, they need to enter their own compensation information (this will be kept confidential)

This is a fantastic idea, give people highly valuable information but ask for their data in return, thus increasing the quality of the data!

IN addition, and most importantly Recruiters using a Recruiter premium account will be able to add salary as a filter in their searches - genius!

You can read more about this below

Introducing “LinkedIn Salary”: Unlock Your Earning Potential

Or watch the promotional video below

Welcome to episode 135 and what a week it has been!

This episode is 100% dedicated to sharing with you the new desktop design that I woke up to on Saturday morning.

It is still early days for the new user interface (UI) and it still has many bugs so things are bound to change over the coming weeks but having spent the last 4 days investigating every link, page and angle of the UI I can confirm the following;

• LinkedIn are unifying the mobile and desktop UI’s
• Recruiters & sales professionals are targeted as members who should upgrade to premium
• The focus of the design is to encourage more activity
• This is a massive gamble by LinkedIn!

This 2 minute video will give you an idea of how to navigate around the new UI

Lost features

1. Advanced search   (inc connection search)

Desktop search is now the same as mobile search. You have to start with keywords but you cannot combine keywords with current job title. Once the initial search is performed you can then filter the results although you cannot see a number next to each filter.

2. Saved searches

You can no longer save a search result with alerts and it would seem that our previously saved searches have also disappeared!

3. View your followers

4. emoticons in messages

Gutted….not!

5. Out of network profiles.

When you find a profile out of your network in a keyword search result you are no longer able to open that profile, here is what you see;

6. Edit display name in profile

7. Rich media in profiles

8. Move profile sections

9. Move current positions

10. Cant move or edit which recommendations show

The above points 6-10 are all covered in this video;

11. Posting updates to Twitter

The option to post a status update to Twitter no longer exists;

12. Video autoplay.

This might just be a bug but as it stands videos no longer autoplay in the stream.

13. Top/recent updates option

Our updates are now 100% based on what the algorithm think we want to see, we have no control other than by our actions.

14. Introductions

They only just fixed this feature but now it has gone. 2nd tier profiles show mutual connections but there is no option to ask for an introduction.

15. Last 3 posts in profile - just 1 now

This is to make way for activity. You can see this in the above video.

16. Additional info section - interests - personal details - advice for contacting.

If you have spent time adding valuable information here in your profile, I would suggest you copy and save it somewhere. When you get the new UI it will be wiped!

17. Pdf Download.

You can still share a profile from the 3 dots menu but the pdf download has gone.

It also goes without saying that all Chrome extensions have stopped working in the new UI (until their developers get to work on them!)

Additional features

1) Many links open in a new tab

This is so handy but I wish they did it for profiles in search results as well.

2) Summary at top of profile

3) Last 3 activities show in profile

4) New size for background image 1536 x 768 (1400 x 425)

5) All profile/thumbnail pics now circular

Points 2-5 are also covered in the above video

6) No need to give a reason when inviting

At last!

7) Personalized invites much more visible

This is what you see when you click on ‘connect’ in the profile or in a shortlist

<first invite message>

That’s it for now, I will start digging into more specifics next week.

Questions

I’m sure you have plenty, so please fire away! I am more than happy to take a look at whatever you need to know about the new UI

Welcome to episode 134, this week there won’t be much to read in the notes because the whole episode is dedicated to an interview I recorded with fellow LinkedIn coach Bruce Johnston.

Bruce and I discuss his recent post ‘The LinkedIn Paradox: The Hunters And The Hunted’ which is all about how LinkedIn need to carefully walk a tightrope between growing their revenues (appealing to hunters) and growing/retaining enough active members (the prey)

Read The LinkedIn Paradox: The Hunters And The Hunted

I think this is a really important subject and getting it right will be critical to the future of LinkedIn.

Bruce and I cover a lot of ground in this episode and I hope you find it interesting and thought provoking.

What do you think about the paradox. Is this the most critical issue LinkedIn face?

Welcome to episode 133, this week I get stuck into a whole bunch of things.

Is Sales Navigator essential to get a good SSI score?

First up, I saw this interesting update from Ankur Chaudhary

LinkedIn say that using Sales Navigator is a major help in improving your SSI but they don’t go so far as to suggest it’s essential. Ankur’s experience would suggest different!

Premium Members Get LinkedIn Learning for Free - well some do!

If you are interested in LinkedIn Learning then you might want to read this article;

How LinkedIn Learning Helps You And Your Team Achieve More

Job Seeker, Business Plus and Executive accounts get full Learning memberships for free, which is amazing but I fail to understand why the higher level Sales Navigator and Recruiters get nothing - crazy!

New Feature! LinkedIn Introduce Mobile Update Insights

We used to have this feature on the desktop version until they removed it a few years ago, much to my annoyance as I always liked to analyse the performance of my updates to work out best practice.

Now they have re-introduced it to mobile only for now but my guess is that we will probably see this as part of the new desktop design (whenever that comes!)

How to see your insights

1) Go to the 'Me' page and you will see the link in the bottom right section

2) Tap here to reveal the list of your shares and scroll down until you find the one you wish to view.

3) Now tap on the icon highlighted below which gives you the number of total views

4) Now you will see the viewer stats by company initially

5) Now swipe to the left to reveal the breakdown by job title and again by location.

I found that image updates are performing much better than video or link updates

The average number of views for my last 30 status updates are as follows;

Link updates - 236

Video updates - 462

Image updates - 854*

*These updates were also all done first thing in the morning

The lack of video playback ‘in the stream’ on the mobile app is partly responsible for the lack of attention video updates are getting. Here is the image update I posted last week to demonstrate the comparison with Instagram (ironically this update was the most viewed of the 30 I analysed!)

6) Now scroll down to see where your viewers are in your network. This will usually mostly be 1st degree but if you get a high number of likes/comments you may find other tiers are higher.

Now you will be able to get a much better sense of what updates are working for you and resonating with your followers/connections so that you can make adjustments accordingly.

Other articles I cover in this episode

• I Paid Linkedin $59 Last Month. They Gave Me Back $59,000
• Just When You Think The LinkedIn Algorithm Is Really Smart, It Does This
• The BAT Job ad’ article

Welcome to episode 132, I’m busy with training & speaking engagements this week so I pre-recorded this episode. Therefore if any big news has recently broken, I won’t be covering it till next week!

You may recall in episode 79 I interviewed the founders of an interesting product called Autopilot about their Chrome extension that automatically viewed LinkedIn profiles.
As I have mentioned in recent episodes, I have experienced several issues with Autopilot recently and really didn’t feel that it was a product that I could continue to recommend.

I still believe autoviewing is a valuable and a potentially highly productive action on LinkedIn so I set about finding an alternative product to recommend.

What is Autoviewing?

Autoviewing is a simple task conducted via a browser (normally Google Chrome) extension. Once the extension is installed you are able to ask it to view a list of profiles from a search result on LinkedIn.
Autoviewing extensions are ostensibly bots, i.e. a software application that runs automated tasks (scripts) over the Internet. Typically, bots perform tasks that are both simple and structurally repetitive, at a much higher rate than would be possible for a human alone.

As a free LinkedIn member you are currently only able to view 150 profiles per day** whereas a premium member (Business Plus, Executive, Sales Navigator, Recruiter lite & Recruiter Professional) you can view up to 1000 a day*
*These numbers are subject to change at any time
** A LinkedIn ‘day’ is from 5pm to 5pm EST or

By the nature of autoviewing, it’s a numbers game so to get impressive results, you really need one of the above premium accounts.

Why do it?

LinkedIn’s most popular feature is ‘Who’s viewed your profile’. On average 8-12% of people viewed will view your profile in return, this figure can be much higher if you view people that are known to be more active (possible with Sales Navigator).
So viewing hundreds of profiles in a day will lead to gaining a high number of profile views which raises your profile, increases the number of invitations to connect you receive and may even help to win you business.
In addition, this high level of activity can have a positive effect on how the algorithm views you, i.e. you appear to become more ‘interesting’ and this can have a positive knock on effect to other areas of LinkedIn.
The effectiveness of autoviewing is significantly improved with;
A strong profile, with a good headshot and clear, compelling headline
Viewing targeted (not random) search results, appropriate to your objectives.

Do LinkedIn Allow it?

I have never seen a quote from LinkedIn that expressly bans the use of autoviewing extensions but I think it’s fair to say that by using them you are in breach of the user agreement.
Here’s what the user agreement has to say about the use of bots;

This however, does not mean it’s wrong.
The definition of ‘wrong’ is entirely up to you - it’s a personal decision.
I personally think that viewing profiles is a harmless activity whereas I believe that sending automated messages, skill endorsements and invitations is spam and therefore, ethically crosses the line.

LinkedIn has limits on the number of profiles you can view and this is subject to change so it is essential that the company you purchase an autoviewing product from is completely on ‘top of their game’ in this respect.

Whilst LinkedIn do not openly approve of autoviewing, it’s also pretty obvious that they benefit from it;
It increases page views which helps them sell more advertising
Users have to buy a LinkedIn premium account for effective autoviewing

The net result is that it is very rare to hear of people running into problems with LinkedIn when they autoview - provided they stick to the guidelines which are made clear by all providers.

At the end of the day, you have to make a decision on what feels right to you. As previously mentioned your ethics do not have to mirror LinkedIn’s rules!

The Options

I have come up with two alternative solutions, Dux-soup and eLink Pro, I like both for different reasons.

I looked at a product called LinMailPro initially but it’s main features are automatic connection requests and messaging and I believe those actions to be unethical - it also Autoviews but it’s more expensive than the following two options (due to those extra features).

eLink Pro

Features

Autoviewing of up to 800 profiles per day.
Compatibility with Sales Navigator
7 day scheduler
Download viewed profiles & who viewed you.
Drip marketing feature. Posts motivational quotes for you.
Will favourite a tweet from every applicable person you view.
Semi automation of invite accept message.
Adds some icons to profiles
Shows number of followers in profile.

Advantages
Substantial business that was established in 2014, has strong backing and 20 employees providing good customer support.
Scheduling feature is very useful for when you are on holiday or away from the office for a few days.
Free trial for 5 days and at the time of writing they are extending that to 1 another month for $1

Disadvantages
Using LinkedIn in a different tab (whilst autoviewing) sometimes causes issues.
It’s expensive at $147 every 3 months or $95 per month
No ‘skip’ already viewed feature.

Dux-Soup

Features

Configurable autoviewing of up to 1500 profiles per day (not advised)
Advised viewing numbers of 150/day for free LinkedIn users, 400 for Business+, 600 for Sales Navigator premium accounts
Profile skip feature (skipped if viewed within the last x number of days)
Google X-ray search feature (400 per day)
Group members autoview
Download of visited profiles (to .csv)
Auto endorse skills
Variable visiting speed (configurable)
Re-visit based on previously downloaded CSV
Notes and tagging of profiles
Searching by tag

Advantages

Free service allows an extended trial to see benefits
Tagging very useful, especially for this not on a Sales Navigator account
Cost - only $15 per month for Pro version

Disadvantages

Small and somewhat anonymous business behind the software
No scheduling
Auto endorse feature encourages bad practice.

Summary

I have used both products extensively over the last month or so, interchanging between them regularly to make a realistic comparison.
At the end of the day I think both are great and well worth considering.

Dux-Soup’s greatest benefit is pricing whereas eLink pro has the useful scheduling feature and the company behind it does give me more confidence of longevity and capable customer support is something not to be sniffed at given that the reason I am looking at these products is due to Autopilot’s deficiencies in that area!

Welcome to episode 131, this week’s episode is mostly dedicated to the big news announced by LinkedIn last week.

I believe these changes will have a significant impact on how we use LinkedIn, it’s going to take a fair bit of getting used to…once we have it.

Before I get stuck into the announcements I did see one interesting article about Facebook for Work, which is going to be launched very soon.
Personally I think it will be a major flop…..What do you think?

The New LinkedIn Design

This is Amy Parnell, Senior Director, User Experience Design on stage, explaining the new design.

Below is a screenshot of the new homepage with arrows pointing to all the subjects I discuss in the podcast;

I also made a short video explaining some of the changes
<embed https://youtu.be/iTuHCOV-RpE>

and here is the new look profile;

The New Feed

This doesn’t actually look much different but apparently they have been making lots of changes ‘under the hood’, the idea is that we should see more relevant posts and articles in our feed and under ‘trending’

New Messaging

Potentially very exciting! This is how the new messaging app will look in the main page (as opposed to the Messages page)

LinkedIn Learning

I’m not convinced about a subscription model for pricing but they are allowing Job seeker, Business Plus and Executive premium account holders free access to LinkedIn Learning. Shockingly though Sales Navigator and Recruiter premium account holders do not get access. Where is the logic in that?

That’s it for this week, I hope you found that useful.

If you get the new design, please get in touch and let me know what you think.

Welcome to our 130th episode.

Interesting Stuff I saw this Week

Here are the links to the interesting things I saw this week

Your Guide To Generation Z
What LinkedIn’s ‘Social Selling Index’ Really Measures
Searching and Viewing Profiles from Sources Outside of LinkedIn
LinkedIn’s original 2004 pitch slide deck
Jeff Weiners full interview with Oprah

Thought LEADers

A key focus of social selling is to engage with your Leads on subjects that are of interest to them (rather than what you are offering them). There are however another set of people that you should work just as hard to engage with that aren’t leads, they are Thought LEADers.

You are highly unlikely to do business with these people but they could be the key to unlocking the most difficult Leads.

Building relationships with thought leaders can pay off big time. Your Leads will see you as more credible, you will have your finger on the pulse regarding topics that are important to your Leads and this will also help you write better, more relevant content.
If you do this really well, you might even find that your Leads are chasing you rather than the other way around!

Three Critical Questions

If you are in a sales role or you are hoping to win new customers on LinkedIn then can you answer the following questions;

What business subjects are important to your Leads?
Who are the thought leaders in these subjects?
Where do these thought leaders actively post and engage online?
You can answer these questions by conducting the Six Steps outlined in my published post.

Welcome to episode 129, at the end of a busy week for LinkedIn having delivered their social selling conference Sales Connect in New York.
I was keenly watching the Twitter feed and some updates from people I knew were there to hear reaction to some of the big announcements made.

In this episode I’m going to dive into the 5 main announced changes to Sales Navigator. Don’t worry of you don’t have a Sales Navigator account, this could still be very relevant to you.

But before all that I spotted these interesting things in the news this week;

Reid Hoffman is so against Trump, he created a card game!
LinkedIn Siri integration goes live with the launch of iOS 10
3 new LinkedIn services in India

Sales Connect 2016

I wasn’t able to make it to New York but I did the next best thing and followed on Twitter.

Various speakers talked about the exciting world of social selling including several case studies, Chris Anderson from TED talks appeared to be the most popular but I bet Malcolm Gladwell was pretty good too!

Various statistics were quoted, many I have heard before but these did grab my attention;

“Sales & Marketing are blending into one”

“Personal value has to 2X the impact over business value. 71% of B2B buyers who see personal value will purchase”

“92% of B2B buyers engage with sales professionals who are known industry thought leaders”.

“EY have 30,000 Sales Navigator licences”!!

The five really big announcements

Sales Navigator is becoming an open platform (at last!). Initial CRM partners are Oracle, SAP Hybris, SugarCRM, Hubspot and Netsuite.
New search filters for Lead builder. Size of department, Senior leadership, revenue, HQ zip code, department growth and content keywords.
InMail 2.0. Improvements to SN inMail allowing a compose box to the side, attachments and ‘write to CRM’
Notes & Tags. This includes the ability to filter searches by tags.
Gmail extension. Very similar to Rapportive.

Welcome to episode 128, this week I want to revisit the subject of advertising.

Firstly some interesting stuff I saw this week;

A company called We are Flint interviewed just over 2000 UK adults to determine the level of social media usage. The results for LinkedIn make interesting reading;

LinkedIn Advertising

This still seems to be a thorny issue for LinkedIn with another set of less than inspiring results announced recently.
In Q2 marketing revenue was $181, just 19% of their income and over 60% of this came from sponsored updates.

You may recall we covered advertising in episodes 85. 92 and 94 when listener Peter Gold experimented with LinkedIn ads. The conclusion wasn't very positive!

So I was intrigued when I came across someone who describes himself as a ‘LinkedIn ads evangelist’!

AJ kindly gave up some of his time to chat with me this week about LinkedIn ads.
How they work and who should and who shouldn’t be using them. It’s a fascinating insight and finally puts to bed the question once and for all.
Summary
If your typical customer has a high lifetime value (tens of thousands plus) then LinkedIn ads can be very powerful (if done correctly).
So it seems that, as usual LinkedIn are solely targeting large enterprises.

Does having an email address in your headline still penalise you in search results?

This questions relates to a blog post I wrote in 2014;
LinkedIn Search is Changing

The answer is yes, nothing appears to have changed since that post.
I have just checked this on 5 different searches and on every occasion the person who either has an email address or a telephone number in their headline or name fields comes either last or last page in a search result - even though they were active (key factor in the search algorithm) and 1st tier connections

Welcome to episode 127, I hope you all had a fantastic week.

In this episode I attempt to get my head around the millennial problem - i.e. Why don’t Millennials use LinkedIn?

Firstly though a few things I found interesting this week;

• New content search on the LinkedIn app

• LinkedIn Profinder expands to the whole of the US
  New iOS 10 launch this month will include deeper SIRI integration into LinkedIn

  The Millennial Question

  I read a very interesting article this week from Allen M. Quinn titled 5 Reasons Why Millenials Aren’t Using LinkedIn.

  I thought this was a very interesting subject and worth further consideration. As a father of two millennials (who are both nowhere near LinkedIn!) I have a particular perspective to bring to the issue and it struck me that you might also.

  I contacted the author Allen and despite viewing my profile, he didn’t come back to me - Bloody Millennials!!!
  To be fair, I only reached out yesterday so he may come back yet but I was unable to arrange to interview him for this episode - perhaps that might work for another episode.

  I would urge to read not only the piece itself but also the comments, which include contributions from millennials and those of an older generation - it’s very interesting.

  What is a Millennial?
  Whilst there is no definitive birth date range, Most experts state that a Millennial (formerly known as Gen Y) is someone who was born between the early 1980s to the early 2000’s so effectively they range between age 15 and 35 although I think most people think of millennials as being in their 20s.

  Earlier this year LinkedIn published some analysis showing that 87 million millennials were on LinkedIn. At the time LinkedIn had 433 million users so that is 20% millennials and not the 38% quoted in Allens article.

  My first point is that I am not sure that's 20% is necessarily such a bad figure.
  The US census of 2015 showed that millennials accounted for about 28% of the population so it could be better but it's not disastrous!

  Allen details five reasons so I thought it would make sense to address each one individually.

  
  Too many "rules"/ Too structured:

  This really covered two subjects, Firstly it seems to be about etiquette with millennials being unsure about what to say and what is okay.
  I think this is an issue created out of being a minority rather than a millennial, if you are only 20% of any community you are bound to find it intimidating!
  My advice would be to encourage millennials to take more risks and not be intimidated by negative feedback.
  Allen states that he has witnessed someone's update getting slammed by LinkedIn users and publicly shaming that person for it but surely this happens across all social media, In fact LinkedIn is significantly “tamer" than most - have you seen Reddit?!!
  Millennials should aim to show humility in their posts and be open about their desire to learn more about online networking, this approach will inevitably lead to greater success.
  Finally I think the 80% of users who are not millennials need to show a much higher level of empathy towards this demographic.

  
  2. It's not a "Fun" Social Media:

  Isn't that what Facebook, snapchat, Instagram and twitter are for?
  I don't think there is anything wrong with having a bit of fun on LinkedIn but it is essentially a business network and therefore one would expect it to be less ‘light hearted’ than social networks that are focussed on your personal life.
  Social media doesn't have to have a singular purpose (Fun), what about;
  Career advancement
  Learning and personal development
  Network expansion and relationships.
  These are all areas of great value to millennials, even if they might be perceived as "less fun”

  3. It's neither private nor exclusive. EVERYONE can see your stuff

  Why does LinkedIn need to be private?
  As opposed to social networks that are more geared towards your personal life, LinkedIn is focused on your professional life and the biggest difference therefore is that your professional life is something that you do want people to see.

  That said, If someone really does want to be more private they have settings they can adjust and in my opinion those settings are no more complicated than settings in other social networks.

  
  4. No one to connect with:

  This is a difficult one for millennials because by default they are bound to know less people but we all have to start somewhere and there is no rush to get to thousands of connections!

  In the article he talks about the idea that it appears to be ‘weird’ to reach out to strangers with an invitation to connect - I couldn't agree more! It is pretty weird and millennials would be wise to not do it and that goes there every other age group as well!

  
  5. Premium is way too expensive:

  This is undeniably true, LinkedIn price their products for large enterprise sized organisations who are less cost sensitive.
  That said, there really is no need to upgrade your account.
  The jobseeker premium account is pretty much a waste of time in my opinion. Millennials can get plenty of use and value from Linkedin without having to upgrade their account.

  Conclusion

  Despite my comments above I do agree that there is a problem here, millennials are not using LinkedIn as much as they could and here is what I suggest could be done to resolve that;

  LinkedIn could do a lot more to showcase LinkedIn to millennials, they seem far too focused on generating revenue from large corporates at the expense of their members including this cohort.
  Earlier this year LinkedIn produced a Millennial Playbook which was a good idea implemented very badly. When you click on the link above you'll see that you have to sign up with your email and contact details in order to receive a free copy of the playbook. This is far too restrictive and not helpful. LinkedIn need to make this a simple PDF that can be downloaded without the need to enter any information.

Video is much more user-friendly, especially for millennials so LinkedIn should produce a series of videos showcasing examples of how millennial's have had great success using LinkedIn. I would suggest they use a different company/production team though as most Millennials I know would cringe at their normal style of video!
We all need to encourage millennials on LinkedIn. It is our responsibility to show more empathy and encouragement to this generation.
The greater use of gamification could be very helpful. Why not show users how ‘interesting’ they are? We know the algorithm is constantly assessing our profile and activities so why not showcase this on our home page. Millennials typically respond well to gasification and it will make LinkedIn appear to be more fun.
I think a mentoring programme would work exceptionally well on LinkedIn, this could be user driven via a group but it would be much more effective if it was implemented by LinkedIn. Over 35’s could volunteer to mentor a millennial and help them, not just with LinkedIn but business networking in general.

Welcome to episode 126, this week was a special week for me as I had the opportunity to attend a two day InStruct course at LinkedIn’s office in London.

In this episode I want to address two topics;

1. The experience of spending time with LinkedIn
2. An update on Sales Navigator

InStruct is a training programme designed to assist those responsible for implementing and managing the adoption of Sales Navigator in their organisation. It is in effect a ‘train the trainer’ course but is really aimed at corporate in-house trainers rather than an independent external trainer such as myself.

Sales Navigator is a premium upgrade version of LinkedIn designed for sales professionals with a focus on a social selling methodology.

LinkedIn London

In the 8 years I have been a LinkedIn trainer my relationship with LinkedIn has had it’s ups and downs.

In the early days of the London office I met some great people who I developed trusting and productive relationships with.

Things seemed to change around 2011 when the company went through an IPO and people like me seemed to be ostracised, I still had contact with LinkedIn but always felt a sense of distrust, defensiveness and blatant secrecy from them.

So you can imagine that I was feeling an interesting mix of excitement and trepidation as I signed in as a visitor this week.

First impressions were equally mixed, the reception area was very cool with funky iPads required to sign in that sent a message to the person you were visiting, on the negative side though part of the signing in process involved signing an NDA (non-disclosure agreement) which immediately had me wondering if nothing had really changed beneath the surface!

And then I met Miguel and Donna.

The amazing Miguel and Donna at the traditional London phonebox in LinkedIn London’s reception.

I can’t speak highly enough about Miguel and Donna. They both have a deep understanding of social selling and a genuine passion for LinkedIn, they also made me feel extremely welcome and valued.

Within an hour all my reservations about secrecy and distrust were dissipated.

These guys are great ambassadors for LinkedIn because they are honest, open, funny and  knowledgable.

Cultures do not change overnight and I’m sure there are plenty of things that LinkedIn can still improve but if these two are an example of the ‘New LinkedIn’ then we have a lot to look forward to (so long as Microsoft don’t decide to change things!).

The offices are some of the nicest I have seen (and I have seen many), each floor has a different theme but all based around London/England.

We spent time is a Musical themed room, a Fish and chip shop room, a Sweet shop room and my favourite of all, the classically English ‘afternoon tea’ room.

On the second day I had to deliver a 30 minute presentation on Sales Navigator that was assessed, a score below 70% would result in failing the course so I spent some time the night before practising!

Fortunately I managed to pass with flying colours - Can you image the embarrassment if I failed?!

So now I just have to complete a post course assignment and I will be a LinkedIn-approved Sales Navigator Trainer!

Whilst that will be nice, the most important goal for me was to establish a more productive relationship with LinkedIn and thanks to the attitude of Miguel and Donna, I’m confident that has been achieved.

Sales Navigator

This is an update to my original review of Sales Navigator (SN) in episode 83.

The main difference I see now is that they have improved on the most important element of this social selling tool - focus!
LinkedIn can be a very distracting place and sales people often have a tendency to get easily distracted so LinkedIn have worked hard to ensure that a Sales Navigator user can stay on the SN platform all the time without having to keep flicking back to Linkedin.

This is critical and I’m impressed that LinkedIn have improved it in this way.

The home page in SN has no distractions, just a stream of updates, comments and news articles from and about saved leads (people) and Accounts (companies).

You can create status updates of your own (including images) from the SN interface and comment and like your leads and accounts updates. The only thing you can’t do is create a published post, which is probably the next thing they will address.

I also gained a better understanding of the unique TeamLink function.

TeamLink helps you find the strongest path to someone you’d like to meet by
showing you the best routes to an introduction. Those routes can be through
your direct connections or via others on the sales team, even if you
aren’t directly connected.

For instance if a colleague in your sales team used to work at ABC plc and during that time your target (prospect) also worked there then SN will show your college as a TeamLink introduction opportunity. They (prospect & colleague) do not have to be connected, just ex colleagues.

Again this is only likely to be required in large sales teams but in effect you are growing your range of possible introductions exponentially.

Unfortunately they still have a separate inbox for SN, the argument also being focus but I have a problem with this.

What happens if an individual sends you a message on LinkedIn enquiring about your services?

This message will land in the messaging area of mainstream LinkedIn.com and if you are spending all your time in SN then you might miss something critical. They do provide a link in SN to messages but it does not indicate you have an unread message as it does for replies to your messages sent from the SN Inbox.

My sense is that this is far too convoluted to work and a more simply unified inbox is required.

They have also added tags and notes to profiles in SN and the likelihood is that these will become a lot more useful (maybe searchable) although at the moment they are for information only.

I still take issue with their pricing though, It is pretty clear that LinkedIn are focussing on Enterprise clients and the pricing reflects this, especially now that they have removed the Navigator Basic account that I currently have.

Conclusion

If a company with a substantial sales team (over 50) is serious about social selling then I believe Sales Navigator is a no brainer. The tool os designed to help you win more customers through greater engagement and introductions.

For smaller businesses the verdict is less clear. If they still had the Basic level product and pricing I would be more tempted to recommend it but at £650 per year for each user, it’s a much closer call.

Social selling is relevant and important to all B2B businesses, large and small but LinkedIn are just not (yet) focussed on SME’s.

So I’m on the fence but it’s definitely worth taking a months free trial.

As for Recruitment, if you believe your job is about finding people and advertising jobs then Recruiter or Recruiter Lite are your most suitable upgrades. If however you believe that relationships are key to successful recruitment (as I do) then I actually think SN is more tailored to your needs. It also has a fantastic search function plus a reasonable InMail allowance but most importantly it focuses on what is more important - people and engaging with them.

If I had my old job back and was running a 30 consultant recruitment business, I would be investing in Sales Navigator licences.

Welcome to episode 125, I’m back from an amazing holiday in Italy and the English Cotswolds so plenty to catch up on this week……

Whilst away my Linkedin messages built up and it occurred to me that LinkedIn could really do with  an ‘out of office’ auto reply feature similar to that which you get with emails. LinkedIn is unique in that being work related, people are less likely to login whilst they are on holiday.

LinkedIn are renown for copying features from other social media sites but on this one I would like to see them innovate.

What do you think?

Autopilot

Due to a string of problems I have stopped using Autopilot for LinkedIn and can no longer recommend it. I still believe in the idea of auto viewing though and I am looking into a couple of alternatives.

I will keep you informed.

The data scraping bots issue

LinkedIn sues 100 individuals for scraping user data from the site

LinkedIn suffers huge bot attack that steals members’ personal data

LinkedIn are saying very little about this but the lawsuit they have filed suggests they are trying to discover the names of people who have created false accounts and used sophisticated bots to circumnavigate LinkedIn’s security to obtain information that is being sold on. I suspect this might be email addresses or possibly full profiles for out of network members.

It could be that some extensions or 3rd party products are involved (although none have been mentioned anywhere), I noticed that the email finder extension Prophet have revamped their terms of use - coincidence?

LinkedIn Quietly Publish 2nd Qtr results

These results were released with little fuss and no earnings call, I assume because of the proposed Microsoft takeover. After all investors really don’t care how well they are doing now that a price has been agreed!

I still care though as the quarterly results are one of the best ways of finding out what is going on at Linkedin.

Highlights

• Members grow to 450m
• Unique visitors plateau at 106m
• Revenue $933 (31% yoy growth)
• Revenue split was 64% Talent solutions, 19% marketing, 16% premium (Mostly Sales Navigator)
• No word on member growth in China but given the slow down of overall member growth I assume it’s not that impressive.
• 59% of LinkedIn traffic is via mobile

Links;

The financials spreadsheet

2nd quarter announcement

The Welcome Return of the Hashtag

A few years ago LinkedIn had a wonderful feature called LinkedIn Signal. It was a very popular tool that allowed you to search for status updates via keywords and is still greatly missed.

The good news is that we can now search status updates again via hashtag searches.

This is important for two reasons;

1. You can use hashtag searches for research purposes to find people that are posting content about subjects that are important to you. This is a great way to find information and new contacts to expand your network.
2. Your updates have a greater chance of being found if you remember to use a hashtag.

It’s not as good as Signal was but it is definitely a step in the right direction.

The only downside is that the hashtag only becomes active (a tappable link that creates a search) on the mobile app.

This may just be a feature they are testing so it might disappear or it might be rolled out to desktop soon as well….let’s hope so!

In the meantime I would advise adding hashtags (just a couple) to every status update you post.

LinkedIn Influencer Videos

A big fuss was made about this while I was away…personally I think it’s rubbish!

So someone from LinkedIn sends out a question to a select list of Influencers who (via a specific new app) post a short 30 second reply….whoopdeedoo!

Don’t get me wrong, this could be a positive move if LinkedIn A) roll it out to all members and B) allow people to post what they want (rather than answer a stupid questions such as the shown one below)

What’s the first thing you do every morning to prepare for the day?

Welcome to episode 124, this week I’m relaxing in Italy on vacation so I thought I would pre-record this episode of questions that I have been asked recently.

Below are the 5 questions I covered in this episode, you will need to listen to the audio for the answers.

Question 1

I recently decided to get rid of some dead wood connections, people that I'll never speak to that I either don't remember connecting with, or when I first joined and didn't really know what I was doing. I managed to get rid of 2000 people, mostly overseas, and now my news feed is looking better, and more relevant. I have noticed one significant change though, when I had around 5,000 connections, I'd get maybe one person sending me connections requests every week, they could be anything from people I actually recruit for, or SEO specialists wanted to sell to me. Now however, since dropping a couple of thousand people, I'm getting about 8 per day, which seems very strange. Do you know if the less connections you have, the more you appear in searches, or that people can find you easier? I've never heard anything like that but that's all I can think of Any clues would be greatly appreciated.

Question 2

Hi Mark, as an active job seeker I am curious to know what Recruiters think of LinkedIn endorsements?

Question 3

Hello Mark, I have a question I hope you can answer.
I am wanting to add links to several web pages with Lead boxes.
I have tried to do this under my summary but the thumbnail image is the same for all three. How can I change the image that LinkedIn selects?
Thank you.

Question 4

Hi Mark, I have a question about invitations.
Where can you see a list of people who you have sent an invitation to connect?
Thanks

Question 5

Hi Mark,
I want to change my status to read ‘open to opportunities’ but I can’t recall where this is done.
Can you help?

That’s it for this week. If you have any questions please feel free to send me a voicemail (link on the right edge of this page) or email me at mark@linkedinformed.com.
In case you are curious, the website I used for the voices in this episode is http://www.fromtexttospeech.com/

Welcome to episode 123, I’m back in my office this week with plenty to talk about.

Interesting stuff I saw this week

LinkedIn are in the process of rolling out a new feature that automatically makes you a follower of someone when you invite them to connect. If that member subsequently rejects your invitation by selecting ‘ignore’ then you will cease to be a follower.

Also

• Interview with Jeff Weiner where he refers to some skills endorsements having a greater value than others.
• New profile views limit warning. Does this mean that LinkedIn are now tracking views by the IP address used? This could be a problem to those using Google searching as a workaround to the commercial use limit.
  
  
  

Welcome to episode 122, the weather has been amazing this week so I thought I would venture out and record the show in one of my favourite spots in Delamere forest…I think the BBC call these things an ‘outside broadcast (OB)’!

I tend do this once or twice a year as I’m really unproductive when I try to stick behind my desk in hot weather!

Using LinkedIn with Empathy

Some people are naturally empathetic and some find it more of a challenge, I believe it is a great strength to have when using LinkedIn.

Definition

The ability to share someone else's feelings or experiences by imagining what it would be like to be in that person's situation (Cambridge dictionary)

Some people just have an instinct to know how someone else would feel whereas others need to stop, take a step back and think about it. Whichever you are, it pays to practice empathy in social media and especially on LinkedIn.

In this episode I talk about some examples of where empathy can be important on LinkedIn;

• Invitations to connect
• Liking or commenting on someones post or update
• Reaction to profile viewers
• Group conversations
• Introductions

Quote

“It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others succeed”

Napoleon Hill

Other interesting stuff I saw this week:

Koka Sexton announces he is leaving LinkedIn
Millennials are Thriving in the Workplace, According to LinkedIn Data
LinkedIn enhances Sales Navigator, adds CRM, email, mobile
The enforcement of the 30k connection limit probably means you have lost some connections and as a result some visibility.

Welcome to episode 121, we are back after a break last week which was due to work commitments requiring me to be out of the office every day in Ireland.

Interesting stuff I saw this week

• Google, LinkedIn strike stunning 'grand bargain' for property swap in Mountain View, Sunnyvale
• LinkedIn Top Attractors - UK list
• It would appear that the 3 most subscribed Pulse channels are now all Chinese language channels

I was interviewed for another podcast this week. Andy Paul interviewed me for his Accelerate podcast which is a show for sales professionals;

How to Use LinkedIn to Grow Sales. With Mark Williams. #198

LinkedIn profiles are just too boring!

I want to encourage everyone to realise just how important your profile is and that, by just listing boring facts you are doing nothing to impress the reader…on the contrary, you might be sending them to sleep!

Why not take a look at your summary and try to write something more interesting about yourself, something about you in a professional context but something that authentically shows how interesting you are.

I think Gareth Burton does a great job with his profile

It also occurred to me recently that profiles are going to become even more important soon as Microsoft start to integrate them into Outlook email, the 365 dashboard and Skype profiles.

Interesting things I saw this week

Following on from the news that LinkedIn are now in forcing the 30,000 connections limit it has now been announced that all connection above the limit will be converted to followers

This interesting thing is that for the first time LinkedIn have admitted that large networks cause them problems.

Microsoft takeover. I was at a TEDx Event over the weekend and one of the speakers was Steve Clayton  from Microsoft. It was interesting to hear him say that Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella is much more collaborative than his predecessors.

Perhaps this could be a positive sign for LinkedIn?

LinkedIn published posts and Pulse. It seems that the new format for published posts has now been rolled out to everyone with many people contacting me to ask about the new format.

The Pulse page no longer shows under the Interests menu so you have to go to your home page feed and change is the order to recent

Alternatively you could do what I did which is to create a bookmark for the Pulse page.

If you want to find the Pulse channels you have to scroll down this page until you find some recommendations to personalise your news. Click on "Discover more to follow" and you will find the channels.

It's been a very difficult week for those of us based in the UK following the ‘Brexit’ vote. I have never seen this country so divided and this has inevitably spilled onto LinkedIn.

Whilst you may have strong views on the subject I would recommend avoid discussing such an emotive topic as this on LinkedIn.  At least for now and, perhaps in time it will become and easier subjects to discuss.

Working with Ali

Ali is short for Algorithm, in this case LinkedIn’s algorithm.

Whether we like it or not LinkedIn is constantly collating data about us. Which groups we join and which conversations we get involved in, what skills we have and how often they are endorsed (and by whom), which companies we follow, who we connect with and how much we interact with them.

Ali also measures which status updates and publish posts we click, like or comment on.

It may sound creepy but that's just how things are in social media and the wider Internet.

Understanding this and understanding how to use it to our advantage is one of the key aspects to been successful on LinkedIn

LinkedIn can only react to actions, it can’t (as yet) interpret feelings or opinions - just actions.

I was reminded of this recently when someone contacted me to complain about the amount of inappropriate posts and status updates they were seen on their homepage. When I asked them what they were doing about it, their answer was that they were commenting in order to show the person that posted that they disapproved….BIG MISTAKE!

Not only does this ensure that the post is distributed further it also teaches Ali that you are interested in this type of content….no wonder they were seeing more and more inappropriate content!

In the links below you will find a link to a fascinating list of patents that LinkedIn have filed over the years, the most recent one relates to this very issue - i.e. how LinkedIn decides what to show you on your feed.

The Microsoft Acquisition

 Welcome to episode 118 of the LinkedInformed podcast at the end of a truly historic week for LinkedIn.

As you would expect I am going to concentrate all of this episode on evaluating Microsoft's acquisition of LinkedIn.

Advantages for Microsoft

• Entry into the social media space. An area they have neglected to get involved with previously which was beginning to look like a serious weakness.
• An opportunity to increase sales of Office 365 via extensive integration with LinkedIn’s functionality.
• Dynamics (Their CRM solution) will benefit the most from this acquisition and potentially allow it to become the market leader (currently Salesforce).
• Content from LinkedIn publishing allowing greater advertising opportunities.
• Big data. Rich information about people and their online behaviour.

Advantages for LinkedIn

• $26 billion!
• Greater resources to enable new products such as Profinder to be launched and rapidly expanded.
• $26 billion!
• Use of Microsoft’s massive cloud infrastructure.
• A way out of their stock-based compensation conundrum.
• $2.3 billion into Reid Hoffman’s bank account!

Advantages for Members

• I expect the under-resourced help centre to improve significantly
• Skype integration
• Integration with Outlook 365 & Dynamics.
• Better distribution of published posts

Disadvantages for Members

• Less Google optimisation
• Another secretive ‘closed’ culture
• Focus on corporates at the expense of SMB’s
• And …..

LinkedIn : Too many to-do’s to do

Very interesting document outlining why LinkedIn are a bad investment from an Equity Research firm. Here are their main 5 reasons;

(1) Lack of key functionality in its flagship Voyager app.

(2) Relevance of proposed job openings or “Sponsored Updates” hasn’t improved.

(3) A slow ramp to get the right content on lynda.com to make it more attractive to Enterprises.

(4) High penetration of Hiring Solutions – translating into slowing growth in FY16.

(5) The technical immaturity of Sales Navigator.

Other highlights;

• New company pages will provide salary data and allow for anonymous employee reviews (similar to Glassdoor). This could provide LinkedIn with a "Tricky balance” to find as many of these organisations are their biggest clients!

• The SMB Recruiter product will be slow growth and likely to have a high cost of sales.

• 20% of LinkedIn members are students.

• Advertising solutions will be opening up their API to third-party operators.

• New members are less engaged.

• Less than 2% of members upgrade to a premium account.

LinkedIn Changes

• New Company Page insights.

• More information on job postings.

Other interesting stuff I saw this week

• Is LinkedIn disconnecting us?

• Contrary to rumours LinkedIn has not removed the connections download feature.

• Some people are reporting a 403 error which may be due to LinkedIn being hyper sensitive

about suspicious activity following the recent sale of passwords. It may be good advice to

reduce activity in the short term until things die down.

• The return of the Galek! The interview with our beloved infamous swimwear entrepreneur!

• Exaggerated LinkedIn profile question.

Hey! We have a new website! The url is still the same www.linkedinformed.com. Let me know what you think. It's Linkedinformed Episode 116.

News

• Changes to LinkedIn
• How big should your network be?
• You Want More Business? So Get on the Phone!

Interesting Stuff I saw this week

•  How LinkedIn Is Able to Consistently          Increase Pricing                                        
• 'Social worth' and creditworthiness: Need                  loans? Just raise your popularity level on                    LinkedIN

Question:

"Recently, I have noticed my profile views are not good as they used to be. My target keywords are "Engineering Manager" and "Engineering Director". In the past when I search for those phrases my profile was always number one listed. Lately is buried deep down in the list.

Welcome to this weeks episode where we continue the discussion with Rosie O'Hara we started in in episode 110 regarding 'Words that change minds'.

In this show we talk about;

• How to reply to accepted invitations
• What sort of message to send to someone who has viewed your profile
• The dangers of commenting without taking time out to calm down!
• The recent 'Gracegate' issue where a senior banking executive causes a storm by posting a screenshot of a comment made that she found offensive.

Vote for the podcast

I would really appreciate it if you could take a few minutes out of your busy day to vote for me in the UK podcast awards.

This is a Facebook poll, click here and scroll down until you find LinkedInformed (and Winbusinessin if possible) and vote.

As always you can find links, images and everything else mentioned in this episode at LinkedInformed.com

Thanks

Until next week....

Welcome to Episode 114

Would you like to buy someone’s login details for LinkedIn? How do you feel about someone else's buying your login details for LinkedIn? This week’s 114 episode we talk about security.

LinkedIn Security

• Millions of hacked LinkedIn IDs advertised 'for sale’
• LinkedIn’s statement about the issue
• Test your email address here

I would really appreciate it if you took a few secs to vote for the podcast by clicking on the link below and scrolling down until you find LinkedInformed  and also Winbusinessin.

Click here to vote for the show: http://bit.ly/voteforLinkedinformed

Interesting stuff I saw this week

•  LinkedIn Buys Run Hop, Seeks to Make Feeds More Engaging
•  LinkedIn help refugees find jobs in Sweden
• Why I Write On LinkedIn - And It’s Probably Not Why You Think I Do

Cool Thing

This week’s cool things are 1Password and Dashlane. Store all your passwords, PIN codes, documents, credit cards and more. Automatically log in on every website and every device.

AFQ

This week’s question comes from Paul Copcutt via voicemail who’s asking if there’s an issue with the formatting of a published post on LinkedIn.

Here are the images Paul sent me of the issue:

How it looks when editing.

How would you feel if when you joined a company they asked you to changed the name of your LinkedIn profile from your name to the company name and when you left that company, you are then required to close that account down? This week I talk with Greg Cooper about an article from a top law firm that suggests the above as best practice!

Welcome to episode 112.

Investors are now speaking more positively about LinkedIn Shares after a solid performance in Q1 2016. For this episode I’m going to dig deeper into those results and find out what else we can learn about where LinkedIn are heading.

Welcome to episode 111, more of the mobile dilemma later but I want to start with an ongoing issue that everyone seems to be talking about;

It’s NOT Facebook!

LinkedIn is clearly different to Facebook in that it is a business & professional network but it’s not different in that it is a network of people and it’s social!

Rather than complain about inappropriate posts wouldn’t it be better to pay more attention to those connections who are posting more interesting content and building stronger relationships with them?

I saw a comment this week which I thought hit the nail on the head;

How about you focus on what you do, what value you bring, who you help, who you identify, contact in an authentic not all-about-you-and-what-you-want way, meet in person, build rapport, work out how you might help each other.

The key is to understand, truly understand what you want out of being on LinkedIn (& out of Business/Professional networking in general) and then... realize it's all about people, other people.  Get good at researching using LinkedIn and 'what's in my feed' will be less of concern to you because that won't be where you find the value. The value will be in what YOU do.

Well said!

Interesting stuff I saw this week

• Lynda is now available on Apple TV
• Recruiters welcome updated LinkedIn Recruiter product
• LinkedIn passes 20 million users in China
• LinkedIn top execs harvest pay raises

I also came across this legend of business on LinkedIn this week!

LinkedIn changes

Some people are seeing the number of followers on profiles rather than connections, this might be an experiment, I don’t have it yet but it could just be in the early stages of being rolled out.

We can now ‘like’ comments in status updates

It is now possible to remove yourself from a group conversation in Messages

The Field Of Study search is being discontinued on May16th.

This weeks cool things is another free Chrome extension called Prophet.

This handy tool will often be able to locate the email address of people you find on LinkedIn.

AFQ

This weeks question came from James Muir regarding the issue of only seeing the last ten notifications.

James didn't specify whether this was a desktop or mobile issue, so I have answered both;

Mobile

I suspect this is what you mean as I only see the last ten on my app.

You can refine which updates you see in the app notifications in your settings, this is done as follows;

Go to the 'Me' section and click on the settings 'cog' as below;

Now tap on 'Communications' and select 'Push notifications' as below;

This will allow to reduce the amount of less important notifications appearing in your last 10. Alternatively, you can ensure that you receive emails to alert you (see desktop solution below)

Desktop

Firstly I am not experiencing the same issue on my account, I can see numerous updates going back weeks. This may just be that the changes haven't reached my account yet or it may also be a short-term glitch on your account. I know that contradicts what the help center told you but it won't be the first time they have given out incorrect information!

It is certainly worth logging out, clearing cookies and trying again. If you haven't already done so.

Secondly, there are a number of ways around this;

If you are mainly interested in responding to activity/comments on your updates and activity then you should be able to do this by viewing your activity. Go to Profile>Your updates - there you will see the last 2 weeks.

Alternatively, you could refine your notifications by unsubscribing to certain ones that are of no interest to you, this would mean that more of your important ones will show in the last 10. This is done by clicking on the 'x' in the top right of a notification.

Finally, you can compensate for the lack of notifications by adjusting your email settings

> Go to settings

> Select 'communications'

> Select 'Email frequency'

> Select 'Notifications'

> ensure 'Comments on posts you publish' and 'Summary of your notifications' are set to on

That’s it for this week, please feel free to get in touch if you have any questions you would like me to answer on the show.

Have a great week.

Welcome to a new episode. This week I thought it was time for a change in format and it's been quite a while since I did an interview so please let me introduce Rosie O'Hara.

Rosie talks about her experience of how the words we use (specifically on LinkedIn) can have a significant effect on how others react to us when we send invitations to connect and other LinkedIn messages.

Welcome to a new episode of the LinkedInformed podcast.

I seem to have had a frustrating week with LinkedIn - glitches and weird mystery settings have somewhat go in the way of productivity!

LinkedIn Typo’s

I was working with a client this week and spotted several spelling mistakes in their LinkedIn profile. This person is highly intelligent and definitely knows how to spell, The problem is they didn't take their time and pay attention to detail when writing their profile.

This got me thinking about how common this might be so I conducted searches for some commonly misspelt words and here are the results;

Mangers (Managers)

Here are the companies with the most Mangers!

Catagory (Category)

Beleive (Believe)

And then there are plenty like this!!

Seriously though, it’s obviously easily done. Check your profile carefully, double check it and then get someone else to check it!

You only get one chance to make a first impression with your profile, make sure it’s the right one!

The 5C Business Development System is now for sale!

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

I’m really proud of this course, I was looking at some of the earlier lessons and I actually started recording the videos 9 months ago! It’s taken a lot of work to get to this position and it doesn’t end here as I will need to update all the ‘settings’ lessons with the new design.

The 5C system contains 5 modules as below;

In total there are 65 videos covering every aspect of using LinkedIn as an effective business development tool.

I’m very excited to see how people react to this course and I hope you can take advantage of the limited time launch price (just £146 but only for the next 7 days, then it will be £396).

I am also giving away a free e-book to those who expressed an interest in the 5C System.

Click on the Image below to get your free LinkedIn toolbox.

Interesting stuff I saw this week

• Job seekers getting caught up in online scams
• Will This Year’s College Grads Job-Hop More Than Previous Grads?
• How dare you put that on LinkedIn!

Cool Thing

Typorama

Images are critical to the success of status updates so I strongly advise using images in the majority of your updates.

A fantastic tool that can help you produce great looking images is Typorama. I produced the image below in seconds as well as the main header image of this page.

AFQ

Question: LinkedIn has removed messaging someone before accepting their connection request. Apart from using InMail is there another way to send them a message before choosing to accept or not?

Answer: LinkedIn haven't actually removed  this feature but they have made it harder to find!

On the Mobile app you can only reply to a customised invitation

but on the desktop version you can reply to any invitation before accepting as follows;

1. Hover over the invites icon (top right) and click on ‘see all’ as below;

2) Now hover over the speech bubbles in the top right of an an invitation card and click on the arrow to reply

Now I have a question for you!

Whilst updating the settings lessons in my 5C training system this week I came across the following new setting in the communications section.

This is found under Communications > Basics > email frequency > Notifications

I have no idea what this setting controls! Any ideas?

I’m wondering if it might be notifications about people viewing my profile but if so it’s a very poor and misleading title!

I have asked LinkedIn and they seem stumped! Someone is running around trying to find the techie who wrote the code to get a definitive answer…..it’s been 3 days so far!

Welcome to a new episode of the LinkedInformed podcast.

I have had an exciting and rewarding week with the successful launch of mine you social selling and business development e-learning programme.

The 5C Business Development System is now for sale!

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

I’m really proud of this course, I was looking at some of the earlier lessons and I actually started recording the videos 9 months ago! It’s taken a lot of work to get to this position and it doesn’t end here as I will need to update all the ‘settings’ lessons with the new design.

The 5C system contains 5 modules as below;

In total there are 65 videos covering every aspect of using LinkedIn as an effective business development tool.

I’m very excited to see how people react to this course and I hope you can take advantage of the limited time launch price (just £146 but only for the next 7 days, then it will be £396).

I am also giving away a free e-book to those who expressed an interest in the 5C System.

Published posts lose view numbers….Does it matter?

I noticed this week a change to publish posts in both the main mobile app and the pulse app.

Publish posts are no longer showing the number of views in these apps.

Interestingly for now anyway, posts on the desktop version of LinkedIn are still showing view numbers

This got me thinking….. Does it really matter how many people view our posts? Surely a post that has a low number of views but a higher number of comments and likes is better than one with high views and low engagement?

Maybe this is where LinkedIn are going with this……. Or maybe it's just a glitch!

I think I would still like to see the number of views but I definitely think we should all be concentrating for more on engagement statistics.

I also refer to this is the AFQ section below.

Interesting stuff I saw this week

• LinkedIn Launches Private Cloud for Growth
• My name is Barbara Roberts but please call me Barbie!!
• Social media use and depression linked in large study
• LinkedIn has snazzy new offices in San Francisco (see pics below)

Cool Thing

Profile views extension

Especially useful if you are notion a premium account but you are also able to see past 90 days so potential of use to premium members as well.

And of course, it’s free!

AFQ

Question: How do I get more views of my published post. I am averaging about 100 per post which doesn’t seem very much.

Answer: Firstly referring to my point earlier, views are not the key measurement to worry about - the aim with content is to develop relationships and trust and this is largely done through engagement (comments).

That said, you need the views to get the engagement so here are my thoughts;

Getting more views involves a planned 'marketing' exercise that should look something like this

• Make the post engaging. Ask questions to encourage comments and always reply to any comments, this helps with distribution. - Don't rely on notifications to get views.
• Always post status updates to promote your post, ideally using a large, attractive image. (type the update, paste the link to the post then delete the link with the thumbnail image and add a large image (quite possible the same one) in it's place. This will be 5x the size of the thumbnail.
• Repeat this status update across several days and at different times.
• Sharing OPC (other people's content) allows you to share more of your own. If all I see from you is (perceived) self promotion then I switch off, if however 60% of what I see (your updates) is OPC and clearly helpful to me then I will take more notice of your own content.
• Be persistent, views take time to grow - overnight success is rare and mostly luck.
• Make sure your follower settings are set to 'everyone'

In summary, posts need to be widely distributed via a series of status updates plus Twitter and Facebook posts if appropriate.

It’s been a very quiet week for LinkedIn, no news to report whatsoever, the bickering about Facebook type posts and inappropriate content continues of course but to be honest, I’m really bored of that now!

LinkedIn have been sending out a survey which suggests that they might be considering having adverts in groups, not display ad’s but in the stream of ‘conversations’ - please no!

We finally have new settings!

The only news of any note is that the new settings design has finally arrived in my account, I’m going to write a full report that will be sent to subscribers of my LinkedIn updates service this weekend so if you haven’t already signed up, now is the time to do so!

The 5C Business Development System is now for sale!

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

I’m really proud of this course, I was looking at some of the earlier lessons and I actually started recording the videos 9 months ago! It’s taken a lot of work to get to this position and it doesn’t end here as I will need to update all the ‘settings’ lessons with the new design.

The 5C system contains 5 modules as below;

<add 5C banner image>

In total there are 65 videos covering every aspect of using LinkedIn as an effective business development tool.

I’m very excited to see how people react to this course and I hope you can take advantage of the limited time launch price (just £146 but only for 7 days, then it will be £396).

Just click here for more information.

Social Selling & LinkedIn.

Standing out from the crowd is increasingly difficult these days…on and offline and especially on LinkedIn….have you seen just how much ‘stuff’ appears on your homepage?!

I believe the key to standing out involves 2 things;

1. Highly visible posts/updates. Using images is no longer a desirable action, it’s absolutely essential if you want people to see your updates. My two favourite tools are Wordswag for mobile and Canva for desktop. Images are much bigger (and therefore more effective) when added directly into Linkedin rather then via a 3rd party app/site like Buffer or Hootsuite.
2. Credibility. This will only be gained through the quality of what you do and what you share - content is critical to building credibility on LinkedIn. Do you share great content? Do you create useful, interesting content? Even if an update grabs my attention, I rarely read it unless it is from someone I trust to only produce or share great content.

Once you have gained views and reader you will gain more followers and most importantly you will be on track to develop greater trust and this is much more likely to result in winning more business.

Social Networking in Real Life - SOCIAL EXPERIMENT

Have you see this great video from Jena Kingsley? It really made me chuckle, especially the bit about endorsements and the anonymous viewer on the subway!

https://youtu.be/_pyJlERCrJE 

Cool Thing

This weeks cool thing comes from a listener, Carl Whalley who found that when linking to his site, LinkedIn often didn’t find the right image on a post - or at times no image at all. This works seamlessly on other sites but LinkedIn seemed to be having problems.

As Carl explains “The heart of this issue is "Open Graph" support, which Googling for will provide more details. Typically, the source site will be Wordpress or Joomla etc, and it’s actually the sites fault by not identifying the images as Open Graph compliant”.

The fix for the site is usually simple - just install a plugin and the correct meta tags will be automatically added to the page, allowing the user to choose the image they want.

So if your blog icon Wordpress and you find you have had this problem you might find adding the plugin to your Wordpress site sorts it out.

Thanks Carl.

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

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

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

AFQ

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Next question:

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

ANSWER:

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

Cool Thing

Profile Views extension.

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

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

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

-See beyond the 5 recent views limit

-View full histories of every profile view at any time

-No upgraded profile needed

-No limit on 90 days if upgraded account

<insert image PF extension>

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

The 5C Business Development System is now for sale!

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

Just click here for more information

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

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

The articles I cover are;

• The LinkedIn faith debate
• Bikinigate and the profile of Candice Galek
• Virgin flights will now have Lynda
• This designer has come up with an interesting new design for the LinkedIn app

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

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

LinkedIn’s to do list

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

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

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

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

Cool thing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LinkedIn Followers

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

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

How to see who is following you

1. Go to ‘Your updates’

2)   Click on the ‘followers’ tab

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

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

Step 1

Step 2

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

Cool Thing

LinkedIn Storage.

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

 LinkedIn AFQ

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

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

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

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

Two main subjects this week;

How do you feel about your home page these days?

The future for LinkedIn?

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

• LinkedIn CEO donating his multi-million stock package to staff

Your LinkedIn homepage

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

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

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

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

• What are your thoughts about the views expressed in this status update below? Should LinkedIn be blocking content and should we have a ‘dislike’ or not business button?

• Are you taking the opportunity to engage with your home page stream? These updates are from real people and everyone of them is an opportunity to build better relationships and raise your visibility.
• Engagement can be very effective but when does it become counter-productive? Take a look at the list of comments below. What impression are these people creating? Where is line between good conversation/debate and petty arguments that reflect poorly on all concerned?

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

Is LinkedIn under threat from Facebook?

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

How Facebook could destroy LinkedIn in a year by Jim Stroud

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

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

How are they going to do that?

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

Cool Thing

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

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

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

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

Update:

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

LinkedIn AFQ

Question:

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

Answer:

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

Back from a week in the sun and raring to go, this week’s show I address some important considerations about LinkedIn’s future direction.

Main Story

“LinkedIn is now, at best, a business card holder. At worst, it’s a delivery service for spam”

It’s been a tough month for LinkedIn, disappointing results have led to many commentators really questioning their strategy and direction.

Amongst the many negative (sometimes harshly so) articles I read this week I found the following one from Techcrunch which includes the horrible quote above the most interesting;

LinkedIn Problems Run Deeper Than Valuation

In response to al the negative press LinkedIn’s CEO gathered LinkedIn staff together to give them a motivational talk, amazingly they filmed it and released it on Slideshare!

They didn’t go so far as to reveal the 7 year plan he refers to but I still have to applaud the openness of sharing this talk.

On a more positive note LinkedIn are running their first advert at the Oscars this weekend to an estimated audience of nearly 40 million.

Narrated by Jeff Weiner himself, the commercial, called "You’re closer than you think," tells the story of when NASA used LinkedIn to look for its next astronaut. The networking website says its data found 3 million users who were qualified to apply for the role.

https://youtu.be/V_cz6Xt-SZM

Save to Contacts has now been retired, the ‘relationship’ tab still shows for first tier connections and anyone you have previously saved (minus the ‘who introduced you’ section) but you can no longer save 2nd or 3rd tier connections. Disappointing but not at all a surprise.

Interview with Joe Pulizzi

The king of content marketing!

You can listen to the full episode here, or simply search for Winbusinessin on iTunes

Cool Thing

This weeks cool thing is a free web tool that allows you to collate content relevant to specific connections for sharing with them via email or LinkedIn message.

The site is called Grapevine6 and this feature is the ‘engage’ feature which can be accessed below;

http://engage.grapevine6.com/

Sharing highly relevant content is a great way to build trust and this tool makes it really easy.

LinkedIn A F Q

Question - I'm looking to transition into a variety of industries and would like to leave my industry space blank. I see many posts in your Help Forum regarding this issue but I don't see any solutions. Is it possible to leave the industry section blank?

Answer - I understand your frustration but at the moment, it is not possible to leave your industry field blank.

I can assure you though that this is a field that Recruiters are advised to ignore when searching because it is notoriously unreliable. Many people select the wrong industry either by accident or misunderstanding its meaning - for instance an HR Manager in an Accounting firm puts 'human resources' as their industry rather than 'Accounting'.

Recruiters are usually aware of this and therefore avoid the field when searching.

Provided you complete your profile thoroughly and use the correct keywords, I am sure you will be found for the right opportunities, irrespective of industry.

Now that we have passed 100 episodes, I thought it was time to give LinkedInformed a makeover. You will notice we have a new logo and the introduction music is different but more importantly we have a new format for the show.

I will no longer have a specific news section but I will obviously always talk each week about any important events that have occurred, if nothing important has happened I will focus the episode on a specific subject.

This will never be an interview show as such but I do plan to conduct more interviews from now on.

I hope you like the changes.

Main Story

This week I focussed my attention on LinkedIn’s Q4 and full year financial results.

A quick overview

• Q4 revenue increased by 34% (vs 2014 Q4) to $862m and that brought the full year to $2,991.
• Talent solutions contributed 62% of revenue (this includes Lynda) compared to 57% last year
• Talent solution showed a 32% increase on last year - mainly coming from the field sales team.
• Online job postings continued to drop.
• Marketing solutions contributed 21% of revenue achieving a growth of 20% (25% last year)
• Sponsored updates are effectively holding this revenue stream up, showing growth of 85%!
• Display advertising continues to plummet, now only contributing 15% (30% last year)
• Lead Accelerator product has failed and will be retired this year.
• Premium subscriptions (including sales solutions) contributed 17% of the revenue
• Sales Navigator is the only bright light in this revenue stream and now represents 38% of all premium subscriptions.
• More than half of Sales Navigator sales are generated by the field sales team.
• As a results Sales Solutions will now be reported separately (at last!)
• General subscriptions have fallen to an all time low, single digit % growth.

You can read the full report here.

Here are a variety of articles about the results;

• LinkedIn stock plummets 43% on tepid outlook
• SHAREHOLDER ALERT: Bronstein, Gewirtz & Grossman, LLC Announces Investigation of LinkedIn Corporation
• Five Reasons LinkedIn Had Its Worst Day Ever
• I also mentioned this article from Itai Leshem

When talking about the results I also mentioned a report in the FT about how Glass door may be thinking about competing with LinkedIn.

Cool Thing

This weeks cool thing is a Google Chrome extension called ‘LinkedIn Connection Revealer’

As you can see, this handy tool allows you to see how many followers (not connections) your first tier connection has. I’m not sure why it only works for connections because you can see followers for all LinkedIn users by going to their ‘View recent activity’ but it’s still pretty cool anyway.

And best of all….it’s FREE!

You can download it from the Chrome store here

LinkedIn A F Q

Question - I have posted a status update to inform people about my up coming training course. I would like to be able to send a note to specific members of my network to share it. I've had people do it with me but I can't see how. Any tips on how to share it with them?

Answer - Rather annoyingly you can't do it that way for an image update, You are only able to send status updates directly to people if they are web link updates or just font updates. For some reason an image update does not allow this option.

My suggestion would be to produce an update linked to the page that promotes your training event on your website or perhaps Eventbrite and then you will be able to send it to your connections.

News

• LinkedIn retire their Connected app.
• Meet the homeless beggar who accepts credit cards and has a LinkedIn page. The Sun show their normal level of accuracy - just look at his profile 
• Manchester needs cameramen and Twitter experts, says LinkedIn

Comments

1. Episode 1
2. Episode 2 
3. Episode 6
4. Episode 7
5. Episode 12
6. Episode 14
7. Episode 18
8. Episode 25
9. Episode 36
10. Episode 38 
11. Episode 40
12. Episode 50 
13. Episode 67
14. Episode 68
15. Episode 73 
16. Episode 81
17. Episode 87
18. Episode 91
19. Episode 98

News

• LinkedIn is once again driving big traffic to publishers
• LinkedIn sees jump in referral traffic to publishers after app redesign
• The most read person in human history
• LinkedIn release a free e-book on social selling
• LinkedIn ask app users for feedback

Commentary

With all this controversy about how LinkedIn reports its post views numbers and how it distributes published posts I thought I would share my thoughts on readership, distribution and engagement.

• Build your audience by doing the following;
• Write great content that your followers find interesting and useful.
• Build a strong and diverse network
• Ask people to follow you if a connection is not appropriate
• Get more profile views via activity including auto viewing
• Engage with other peoples content more, show people you are interesting.
• Promote your posts by sharing them via image status updates on at least 5 occasions.
• Promote you posts on other social media channels - Twitter, Facebook, Google+ etc

At the end of the day we should take responsibility for our own success with our posts and it is always most important to remember that engagement is more important than views.

Questions

1,

How do you add recommendations to your profile with the new messaging system? I previously added it from the message but this seems to have changed.

ANS = Yes this has changed. You can only manage recommendations from the desktop version on LinkedIn.

> Go to your profile and scroll down to recommendations.

> Hover over the section and click on ‘manage’

> You will see the received recommendation under pending where you can accept it and show it on your profile.

2, How do I move my main current position up to the top of my profile?

ANS = You can do this, provided both position are current (to date) by grabbing the ‘grip’ on the left hand side of the relevant position and dragging it up (see below)

You may also need to manually amend your headline in this circumstance because it will have changed automatically when you added the new position.

I will be covering more questions in my YouTube channel soon.

News

• LinkedIn hits 20 million members in the UK 
• How many users are actually active though? I estimate the figure is nearer to 6-8 million that are regularly using LinkedIn - still an impressive number!
• LinkedIn announce UK top 10 power profiles (most viewed) in 6 categories
• Is a LinkedIn takeover of the Financial Times as crazy as it sounds?
• Top Seven Stupidest Titles on LinkedIn

The 5C System.

For a limited time I am allowing free access to module 1 of my new e-learning LinkedIn business development programme.

All I ask for in return is some constructive feedback and, if you like it, a testimonial.

Sign up for FREE access here

Commentary

How do you become a top ten power profile on LinkedIn?

I might argue that Charlotte Proudman must have been in one of those top ten lists but she was excluded - maybe for good reason but who else was excluded?

So what do you have to do to get profile views;

• Being famous obviously helps!
• Laura Chetcuti isn’t famous and her posts are not very well read but she is very active and has 14,000 followers (presumably mostly connections
• Ian Moyse (previous guest and LION) has a massive number of connections (33,772 followers) and came in the top ten technology list.
• Bianca Miller - not especially well read but fairly active and has nearly 11,000 followers. She managed to get into the Leaders list alongside Richard Branson and David Cameron!

Question

is there a polite way to let people know that you are NOT an open networker / LION?  Our marketing strategy has led me to be featured by LinkedIn as "someone you might be interested in following" as part of the on-boarding process of the new app, and this has increased my exposure hugely and I've gone from 3,000 followers (2,500 connections) to 16,000 followers in the last 2 months. Nice. But it also means I get invites from engineering graduates from every corner of the globe.... Can I stop that?

Answer = The best way to deal with this would be to prevent people from inviting you to connect, unless they have your email address.

Go to settings > Communications > ‘select who can send you invitations’

Welcome to a new episode of LinkedInformed, here are the main topics covered this week.

News

• New feature coming - videos are starting to autoplay (without sound) in the homepage feed. This is not something I have seen first hand but John Nemo covered it in a recent post
• This guy wrote to all 1,109 of his LinkedIn connections last year.
• Are LinkedIn falsely reporting their page view numbers? Itai Leshem thinks he knows how they are doing it.
• The new social network called beBee (awful name!) that practices ‘affinity networking’ as detailed in this post from the excellent John White.

Episode 100

I really want to do something different for our 100th episode, I am still open to suggestions but one I had recently was that someone (maybe a listener) could interview me! Any volunteers or suggestions as to who would be a good candidate.

Let me know at mark@linkedinformed.com

Commentary

The 5 things you may have missed on the new app.

I have written a more detailed published post <Rehj, ask me for this link, not done yet> about this but as a summary, the 5 things are as follows;

• Individual Message Notifications.
• Advanced Search
• Desktop Search History Visible
• Invitation To Connect Replies
• See How Many Connections You Have

Questions

1. How do I find my sent invitations so that I can withdraw some of them?

Go to the area where you view your invitations (see all) and then click on ‘Manage invitations’

<add pic ‘manage invitations’

2. A voicemail from Gary Stockton regarding searching for connections with a specific job title.

The bizarre behaviour of LinkedIn users!

Welcome to episode 96. Christmas seems a distant memory and I am very much into the swing of things again now.

News

• A lawyers LinkedIn profile is ‘not an advertisement’ states a US Bar Association.
• LinkedIn’s worst ever chat up lines.
• The new auto viewing tool called Profile Hopper
• I was interviewed this week for Motor Trader Radio. You can listen to the recording here

LinkedIn Publishing. What happens ‘post a post’!

Really interesting and revealing LinkedIn post from LinkedIn top publishing man Daniel Roth about what happens when you press ‘publish’ on your new LinkedIn post.

Key points for me are;

• LinkedIn now accept that it’s OK to connect with someone you ‘want to interact with’ rather than insisting you must ‘know them well’.
• A post always appears on the home page feed of ALL of your connections presumably at the time it is posted (timing is therefore very important).
• An algorithm filters out suspected spam by looking for keywords associated to jobs or events. These posts do not trigger a notification.
• Notifications are only posted to ‘strong connections’ determined by leveraging the connection strength score from the LinkedIn cloud service. Cloud service maintains connection relationships between members. This must be based on activities (profile views, messages, post/update/group interactions) and similarities (industry, company, groups etc).
• Quoting your post to  tip@linkedinpulse on Twitter will increase your chances of getting into a channel.
• There are now 66 Pulse channels including new country / location ones.

Winbusinessin Podcast

Next Tuesday’s new episode will be covering the 5 essential skills for creating great content;

Writing - People - Video - Audio - Visual

Why not subscribe to the show on iTunes or go to Winbusinessin to listen to the first 2 episodes?

Commentary

Are we lazy or just very reactive with LinkedIn?

Why are LinkedIn users so keen to use canned responses such as ‘great post’ or ‘Congrats on your anniversary’?

I think it looks terrible but that isn’t really my point, I’m more interested in why these messages seem to work so well. Any suggestions please leave a voicemail or email me at mark@linkedinformed.com

Suggested replies (such as I see when using Googles ‘Inbox’ app) are highly effective and useful but LinkedIn’s version seems very crude - yet clearly popular!

Finally I am still keen to gather more ideas for episode 100 (it’s fast approaching). Is there someone you would like me to interview? Perhaps a previous guest or someone who you have heard on another podcast.

Drop me a line at mark@linkedinformed.com

Welcome to episode 95 and more importantly welcome to 2016!

News

• French social network Viadeo has closed it’s Chinese LinkedIn competitor Tianji
• Data Shows How Google Drives Search Traffic To LinkedIn

A quick review of the main events of 2015

• The biggest story of the year involved Barrister Charlotte Proudman rebuking a senior solicitor for complimenting her on her LinkedIn profile picture. This story went global and is still being debated by many people today. <pic of Charlotte>
• 2015 was the year when ordinary LinkedIn users really took to publishing posts.
• LinkedIn made a significant attempt to improve groups, upsetting many users, especially group managers in the process

Winbusinessin Podcast

We are now in season 2 of my other podcast which focusses on social selling and business development on LinkedIn. On Tuesday we will be releasing episode 3 which is an interview with Christoph Trappe, a storytelling expert as part of our focus on content marketing.

Why not subscribe to the show on iTunes or go to Winbusinessin to listen to the first 2 episodes?

Commentary

Here are 5 things you can do this year to make 2016 your best LinkedIn year ever!

1. Refresh your profile.
1. Perhaps now is a good time to get a new profile picture
2. Revamp your headline. The new mobile only initially shows the first 68 characters of your headline so consider updating it.
3. Update your summary to express your goals for 2016, this is a great way to show people that you are actively using LinkedIn.
2. Produce more content.
1. Commit to writing more content, either LinkedIn posts or blogs on your own website.
2. Consider producing video content, I am focussing on developing my Youtube channel this year.
3. Perhaps this year could be the time to start producing radio content? If you want to start your own podcast I can highly recommend this free tutorial series.
3. Engage more with updates on your homepage.
1. Take more notice of your home page stream
2. Look for opportunities to comment
3. Try to comment rather than ‘like’
4. Cull your connections!
1. Take a look at your list of connections and disconnect from this that are no longer relevant and hide the updates those who post irrelevant content.
2. Disconnecting is easy, simply click on the link as shown below on their profile. They will not be notified.
5. Get out more!
1. Make the effort to go and meet some of your connections. If you have developed a relationship online, why not take it to the next level by arranging to meet them in person.
2. Take a look at what conferences or networking events you can attend this year and use the opportunity to grow your network.

News

• LinkedIn revamps its job section.
• LinkedIn announced there top voices for 2015 and Paul Drury decides to crowd source his own list from real LinkedIn users (without editorial or commercial bias).
• Brynne Tillman and her social sales GPS team write an open letter to Jeff Weiner.
• Nintendo create a profile for Mario Bros which is quickly taken down by LinkedIn. 
• A London based recruitment firm posts a picture of its female staff at the Christmas party. All hell breaks loose as it goes viral which prompted this post from one of the girls in the picture. What do you think of this. Appropriate or not? let me know - leave a voicemail or drop me an email mark@LinkedInformed.com

Commentary

Why do LinkedIn insist on creating responses for us search appalling "Great post" message which can only be sent when someone has not read the post!

I didn't have time to cover this fully in the episode but you can read my blog about it here.

LinkedIn advertising

Peter Gold updated us on his LinkedIn advertising experiment. It would appear that sponsored updates work in terms of clicks but are too expensive to make it worthwhile.

News

• The new mobile seems to be getting decent reviews but these are from people who rarely use LinkedIn and are therefore not able to see it’s faults.
• Linkedin recruit 100 new people in Dublin and manage to persuade the Taoiseach Enda Kenny to attend an event at their offices by persuading his office that Dublin was LinkedIn’s ‘worldwide headquarters!

Commentary

• LinkedIn new iOS mobile app review
  • First impressions of the app are really good, the design is more modern and the navigation looks more intuitive.
  • The app is split into five sections.

Here you will see status updates and publish posts from your connections and those you follow as well as sponsored updates.

Unfortunately you cannot change from the algorithm driven order to ‘recent’ updates as you can on the desktop version.

This means that you see updates from 15 days ago, then one from 3 minutes ago followed by one posted 20 minutes ago. The order is supposed to be tailored to your needs and interest and I guess we will be able to train the algorithm to be more accurate through our actions but as things stand, my updates were pretty poor. The app updates are also completely different to the order of the desktop ones (that was also the case with the old app).

I noticed that every time I opened the app the second update I saw was always a sponsored advert. This is a significant increase over the amount of advertising we saw in the previous app.

At the top of the homepage you can see links to share a status update or a photo, As with the desktop version the share option also allows you to add an image therefore making it pretty much the same thing!

‘Image updates are broken’

I found it's extremely difficult to successfully post an image update. When tapping on ‘photo’ and selecting an image from my phone (taken with the phones camera) the app just hung for along time before it eventually informing me that the upload was unsuccessful.

I did eventually managed to post a more simple image via ‘share’ but not before posting the same update five times!

I made this short video showing exactly what the problem was

In the top right corner of the home page you can see 9 dots in a square, tap on this to reveal the ‘other apps’ feature which allows you to seamlessly open LinkedIn’s other apps.

Note how the Connected app is missing from the list. Could this be an indication that Connected and it’s desktop cousin ‘Contacts’ are soon to be retired? It wouldn’t surprise me.

The Sales Navigator and Recruiter apps are also missing but this may be because they are premium accounts.

LinkedIn’s strategy has always been to produce multiple apps covering specific areas rather then have one app try to do everything and this feature nicely brings it altogether, this works well with iOS 9 which allows an easy return to the last app used.

On a more positive note they have corrected the issue that meant you could only @mention people by their full name.

I always thought it was very odd to refer to someone you know in an update - your own or commenting on theirs by their full name such as

“You make a good point Teddy Burris”

As opposed to the more natural

“You make a good point Teddy”

It’s these apparently small details that make all the difference, especially when they involve communication.

You have always been able to do this on desktop, now you can on mobile.

My final observation is also a positive one in that you can hide updates from people who post irrelevant things in your stream (quizzes, irrelevant images and posts in a foreign language).

Simply click on the three small dots on the top right of the update;

This then reveals three options as shown below;

Quote;

“We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people."

[Remarks on the 20th Anniversary of the Voice of America; Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, February 26, 1962]”

― John F. Kennedy

I’m back in the cold and windy this week after my lovely week away in Spain, I made a short video of what I learnt in the week away

My Thoughts From Spain

News

• Musician Walter Martin releases his new track on LinkedIn!
• The Most Valuable Social Media Tool You Are Overlooking - article about Slideshare in Forbes.
• LinkedIn confirm that member search in groups will be returning (see group post from a LinkedIn representative below).

Interview with Peter Gold, LinkedIn Advertising Experiment.

You can listen to the initial interview I did with Peter regarding his LinkedIn advertising experiment in episode 85.

Peter has not had a single click on his adverts as yet but is hoping for more success with sponsored updates.

Commentary

Why are LinkedIn so secretive?

Excellent post from Itai Leshem about LinkedIn publishing and LinkedIn’s lack of transparency;

Is LinkedIn headed for an Enron style fiasco?

Quotes;

“Truth never damages a cause that is just.”

― Mahatma Gandhi

“There is not a crime, there is not a dodge, there is not a trick, there is not a swindle, there is not a vice which does not live by secrecy.”

― Joseph Pulitzer

I am calling out for LinkedIn to be more transparent and honest!

NEWS

• Naomi Lewis wrote an article for ‘Look Magazine’

• Here is the new LinkedIn sales tool called elink. It looks expensive but maybe an option to Autopilot if your market is very active on Twitter.

• A LinkedIn success story. A start-up founder get his funding by connecting and building trust with someone in Australia who knew someone who wanted to invest. 

•  Shocking sexist job ad by a company from Toronto that appeared on LinkedIn. 

•  Three changes to LinkedIn this week; 

  • The main font and colour scheme has reverted to the dull black and grey scheme. 
  • You can now embed link to a wider variety of media in LinkedIn published posts 
  • Invitation ‘cards’ have been redesigned making it easier to see a customized message.

COMMENTARY

I have found great success with my new VAR system. 

• 3 charts that prove that LinkedIn is on fire! This article’s most interesting fact is the comparable rate of member/user growth amongst the three main social networks. 
• Woman creates fake LinkedIn profile to give credibility to her Disney scam. This is a timely warning that we should all check that the listed employees associated to our company pages are legitimate. 

• I have gathered more feedback about the new LinkedIn app from Android users and it seems to be universally disliked!  Whilst I can’t make a judgment myself yet, it does seem shocking that LinkedIn are still unable to produce an effective mobile app!
• This week I enjoyed chatting with Sarah Santacroce about her LinkedIn challenge, which starts on 1 December.
• Thanks also to Kate Lister for her voicemail stating her reasons for connecting with someone. Kate is a florist in Grimsby who wins business from her LinkedIn activities, I interviewed Kate in episode seven of my Winbusinessin podcast. 

News

• Tinder versus LinkedIn profile pictures
• Hillary Clinton and her views on LinkedIn in the past
• Ladbrokes are using LinkedIn to find customers
• LinkedIn has a new head of Europe 
• Legal problem of Linkedin on who owns your profile
• LinkedIn overhauled its strategy for Sales Navigator
• LinkedIn China’s new professional networking app Red Rabbit

A big change of scenery this week as I take the podcast out 'on the road' to Amsterdam in the Netherlands. LinkedIn has always been very popular in The Netherlands and as a result some of the most respected LinkedIn experts in the world are found there so this week I jumped on a flight to go and have a chat with two of my favourite LinkedIn trainers Perry Van Beek and Petra Fisher.

News

• Sydney university keeps suits for students LinkedIn profile photos
• LinkedIn 3rd quarter results;
  • Total revenue of $780m broken down as follows;
    • Talent solutions 59% (34% growth)
    • Learning (Lynda) 6%
    • Marketing 18% (28% growth)
    • Premium 17% (21% growth)
  • Revenue is predicted to be $3 billion for the year.
  • Unique visitors have dropped to 25% of total members (27% in Q3 2014, 30% in 2013)
  • 55% of unique visitors are via mobile
  • LinkedIn announce their largest commercial deal ever - with EY for Sales Navigator licences (a sign of the future).

Question:

I am wondering if it is possible to see previously sent invites or messages any more? I'm asking because I usually tailor an invite to a person and want to refer back to it when I send a thank you note and a longer explanation on why I want to connect with them. I can find the pending ones but not the accepted ones. Before you could go into Sent and see everything invites/messages even if they were accepted.

News

• More details emerge about LinkedIn new ProFinder trial
• Have you played the LinkedIn name game?
• New thought leaders are invited to publish for the upcoming new app
• The LinkedIn plugin that works out how old you are!
• Group messages will return
• Is this the most authentic profile ever on LinkedIn?

Commentary

• Group messaging is still possible - workaround hack
• How to post GIFs on LinkedIn

Question

News

• LinkedIn agree to payout $13m to disgruntled users who feel their email contacts have been spammed.
• LinkedIn and Microsoft announce deeper integration with Cortana.
• Bond announce deeper integration with LinkedIn for their recruiting database product Adapt

Commentary

• New LinkedIn messages function update, originally covered in episode 82.
  • Muting conversation only stops the email notification.
  • Email alerts for messages seem to be random and inconsistent.
  • 'Forward profile' feature is broken but there is ahack solution, just delete the https:// in the url of the profile you want to forward.
  • LinkedIn, you arseholes! article
  • Quick reply option in received InMail

In this special episode I take a break from the normal format to concentrate fully on a comprehensive review of LinkedIn's Sales Navigator product.

I believe that this product is critical to the future of LinkedIn who are still trying to break away from an unhealthy reliance on their flagship Recruiter product so I thought it was about time I upgraded and gave Sales Navigator a thorough appraisal.
What is Sales Navigator?

The first thing to understand about Sales Navigator (SN) is that it is not a conventional premium account. It's DNA comes from the Recruiter product and so it sits separately from LinkedIn.com.

To access SN you click on a link from within your normal LinkedIn account which opens a separate tab with a different user interface. Premium accounts are basically normal accounts with added features, SN is very different and is designed for people who are focussed on using LinkedIn as a social selling tool.

It is principally a lead generation and social listening tool, it's not a CRM (contact/customer relationship management) tool....not yet anyway!
Terminology

One of the first things you notice about SN is that LinkedIn have chosen to rename things, despite the fact that they are (mostly) the same as the traditional features on LinkedIn.com. For instance;

Leads - translation = People

Account - translation = Company

Lead builder - translation = Advanced search (with all filters)

New LinkedIn Acquisition. Fliptop, the lead scoring business announces LinkedIn takeover

• LinkedIn launch a new app called Lookup
• Foreign spies use LinkedIn to recruit civil servants
• Ex Tesla engineer joins Apple - How LinkedIn profiles are making corporate secrets harder to keep!
• Slideshape changes it's name to 'LinkedIn Slideshare' and announces an interesting new feature called clipping. It would be great if they brought this technology to LinkedIn.
• LinkedIn share price hit by worldwide stock market crash but hasn't recovered as well as others.

Users are reporting a change to their LinkedIn inbox. The invitations and archive folders have gone now but you can still see your invitations, they are just in a different section.

Commentary

In this interview with Forbes magazine Jeff Weiner (LinkedIn CEO) reveals that they are currently testing a new messaging feature for LinkedIn. This is great news and not before its time. What do you think it will be like? Will it be on the desktop app or mobile or both?

I can't wait to see what it will be like and think it could be a game changer for LinkedIn. New features are always rolled out gradually so if you get it before me then please let me know and send me some screenshots to mark@mrlinkedin.co.uk

I need to warn you about a product called 'Advanced Social Messenger'. Do not use this product on LinkedIn or you might be the next recipient of a message like this!
Finally this will be the last episode for a couple of weeks. I'm going for a much needed break in the sun when I intend to do very little except relax, eat and drink!

A change from the normal format this week as I interview the team behind Autopilot for LinkedIn. A system that allows you to view multiple profiles automatically.

On the call are Scott Offord and Philip Cardwell

I have been using Autopilot for about 10 weeks now and i have been really impressed with the results

• Is this the end for Google Plus?
• LinkedIn Publishing now available for Portuguese speakers
• Publishing soon to cover other languages starting with French & German
• Presumably this provides opportunities for new INfluencers?
• Group discussions seem to be getting more likes. Have you noticed a difference?
• Finally the biggest news of all this week is that this show has been shortlisted in the management and marketing category at this years UK Podcasters awards! Thank you to everyone who nominated the show, I am really excited and honoured to be in the top three in this highly competitive category.
• Now I need you to VOTE for the show to see if we can win! Please click on the image below to register your vote for the show....just imagine if we won?!

• Commentary

  • Social selling Index is now available for all of use, just click here to see yours
  • What is the social selling index?
  • Is this just a ploy to get people to buy LinkedIn Sales Navigator?

  • Question

  • Thanks to Gary Stockton for sending is his voicemail this week with a question regarding the time lag with notifications on the iPad app.
  • You can leave your own voicemail questions by clicking on the yellow 'ask me a question' link on the right of this page.
  • I put Gary's question to the test and found the same lag as seen below. From left to right are the desktop, phone and iPad notifications taken within seconds of each other showing the iPad app to be behind the other two

News

    China passes 10 million LinkedIn members
    Google+ share link disappears from published posts
    There is a bug with skill endorsements
    You can no longer download your connections! Well you can but it comes as part of the archive and takes a couple of days to arrive.
    New LinkedIn Slideshare lead generation feature
    Slideshare presentations are appearing in some channels

Commentary

    LinkedIn ads could work if you combine them with Google re-marketing.....and you have a decent budget!
    Lottery ticket updates have no place on LinkedIn
    How often do females get harassed on Linkedin? This is the blog post I refer to.
    Keeping your profile up to date. These politicians show varying levels of accuracy
        Jo Swinson - good work, lots of information and fully up to date
        Esther McVey - Not updated at all.
        Frank Roy - not much information to start with but it has been updated
    Lynda.com advertise their courses in Linkedin Pulse.....and manage to get into a channel!

News

    Two new LinkedIn apps are rumoured to be in the works. A new Groups app and one called 'LookUp'.
    Instant messaging may finally be coming to LinkedIn!
    LinkedIn's new marketing podcast
    Check out the LinkedIn profiles of your website visitors with this hack. Disclaimer - Do this at your own risk, I'm giving it a try on a dummy account and will report back next week.
    Over 1 million users are now publishing on LinkedIn
    How being a 'hot girl' on LinkedIn attracts attention.
    The Prophet Chrome extension has been working really well.
    You can now add any skills you want, including made up silly ones!

    This podcast has been running for 18 months now and over that time we have built a strong community of loyal listeners and followers. I really enjoy collating all the weekly news, thinking of interesting topics, interviewing guests and getting your feedback (typing up the show notes is less thrilling but I console myself that the alternative would be writing a longer blog post every week!).

    I really hope you enjoy the podcast and get real value from it every week.
    The show has now been nominated for an award at this years New Media Europe conference held in Manchester on the 12/13th September and I would massively appreciate it if you would vote and nominate LinkedInformed for a prize.


Question

    Why do people who don't really know me endorse my skills?
        ANS = Some people do it because they believe they are helping you although I suspect most people simply endorse because they are asked to and they figure it isn't going to do any harm. In truth skill endorsements add little value to a profile because they have been so misused by most people.

Plenty to talk about in this week's show from Web clippers and extensions to LinkedIn admitting they too hate quiz updates!

News

Lynda.com shareholders cash in on LinkedIn takeover and cause LinkedIn's share price to fall.

Evernote updates its web clipper allowing very useful integration with LinkedIn profiles.

LinkedIn are now ranked as the 2nd largest job board in the world....even though they are not a job board!

LinkedIn wins case against Irish domain registrant.

Searching a connections connections is now back! You now can also search the shared connections of a 2nd tier.

3rd tier connections can now be saved to contacts.

You can now follow anyone from the front page of their profile (see below)

Interesting interview with LinkedIn's VP of Engineering. In this piece he reveals that LinkedIn do not look kindly on quizzes and other Facebook type posts (as discussed last week). See clip below and you can read the whole article here.

Questions

1.      Sanity check: I got really excited about the tag system at the bottom of the LinkedIn blogs – thinking I could choose what channels I might get into … but I noticed that the tag options don’t match the channels! Am I correct in thinking that the tags don’t feed directly into channels, but are, in fact, just subsections/buckets from which some posts might be chosen to go into a channel (based on the LI algorithm and editors)?

2.      Question: I would love to post a blog on LinkedIn re ‘How to blog on LinkedIn’ summarising everything I’ve found – but there don’t seem to be any posts like that on LI. Do you think the LI editors would frown on/penalise a blog that actually gave people info into best LI blogging practices – not just headlines & writing – but info into the algorithm/best ways to post etc?

ANS= Sanity check - You are correct. The tags merely help the algorithm pick up the relevance of a post but by no means guarantee that it will appear in a channel, keywords also help but I also believe there is some human involvement in deciding channel content (I suspect it is approval rather than selection). Question - LinkedIn have no problem with this sort of content and there is even a relevant 'LinkedIn tips' channel for it!

 https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/channel/linkedintips

News

    LinkedIn have a private 'invite only' bug bounty program.
    LinkedIn's 'Member first' focus apparently boosts satisfaction and engagement - really?
    LinkedIn appoint a new Chief Marketing Officer.
    Economic graph projects are appearing all over the world
    LinkedIn IT department in top 10 places to work
    There is a better way to search a connections connects, it's not a complete workaround as you can't search keywords but you can filter. All is explained in the video below.

Commentary

Where is the Line? I asked subscribers to my LinkedIn updates service the following question;
Where's the line?

LinkedIn status updates and posts have definitely changed over the last couple of years. What was once a place where we only saw serious topics we now see puppies, quizzes, cars for sale and even naked women (I'm not kidding!)

I'm in favour of LinkedIn being inclusive, I really don't buy into the idea of it only being for a certain 'type' of professional.Why is it OK for a recruiter to post a vacancy but not OK for a car salesman to post a picture of the latest used Range Rover they have on their forecourt?

Surely both have the right to 'do business' on LinkedIn?

Is it OK to post a funny picture? Maybe not, I guess everyone has their own idea on where the line is and that's what I want to hear from you about.

News

    Measuring Gender Diversity with LinkedIn Data

    LinkedIn's weird names for software. An explanation.

    Have you taken up the offer of a free trial of Lynda.com?

    Viveka Von Rosen's excellent article on LinkedIn mobile

    LinkedIn's economic graph comes to Manchester in an attempt to bridge the skills gap. This is also an interesting Q&A from the Greater Manchester Combined Authority perspective.

Commentary

    This week I take a look at LinkedIn's new revamped Pulse mobile app. Are LinkedIn at last starting to get the hang of mobile apps? You can view my video review below

Questions

This week I have a question for you! Although the above post/comments are funny there is a more serious point that I believe is worth discussing in next weeks episode.

    Should LinkedIn just be about 'serious business topics?
    Is it becoming more like Facebook and is that a bad thing?
    Where do you draw the line on 'appropriateness' or does anything go?

 

In this show I talk about how we can all benefit by being more 'sociable' on LinkedIn but first, lets cover this weeks news

News

    LinkedIn group ownership protected in US legal case
    Strange LinkedIn profile phrases spoken by actors in this video
    LinkedIn invitations 'reason' can be seen after all, it's in the archive folder!
    LinkedIn Stock rallies this week.
    LinkedIn's weird New York office
    Does this new LinkedIn group indicate that groups are safe for now?
    Glitch alert! Viewer numbers are not showing in LinkedIn posts
    Are LinkedIn disconnecting us? Let me know if this has happened to you.
    Customized invitations are now seen on the mobile app, but still not on the desktop shortcut.

screenshot2015-06-03_07-36-07_am.png

Commentary

    Are you being 'sociable' on LinkedIn?
    A recent survey conducted by Pew Research Center found that only 13 percent of LinkedIn users engage with the site on a daily basis.
    What holds us back from engaging with people? I believe everyone will get more out of LinkedIn when we can all 'ease up' and start chatting to each other more.

Questions

    Will purchasing premium accounts for our staff allow us to retain ownership of their accounts if they leave?
        ANS = No! This is not possible with any level of LinkedIn premium or corporate account. LinkedIn Recruiter does allow the retention of messages but never connections. My advice is to ask departing employees to download their connections for retention by the company, that way both parties get to keep the data.

News

• CEO's prefer LinkedIn & Twitter. In fact LinkedIn is the outright winner really!
• Why Asia matters for LinkedIn
• Unfortunate names on LinkedIn!
• LinkedIn are now restricting group messages to 50 a day.
• • Hilary Clinton signs up to LinkedIn but hasn't put skills in her profile - sensible lady!
  • Indian woman 'outs' LinkedIn sexual harasser

  Commentary

  • This week I interviewed a florist from Grimsby about how she has had success with LinkedIn for my other podcast Winbusinessin and she revealed several real golden nuggets.

  • I recently put some LinkedIn profile autoview services through their paces and my conclusion is that they have a part to play in how we use LinkedIn. Services mentioned were;
    • Autopilot
    • Dux-soup

  Question

  • Has anyone got any experience of LinkedIn in Germany? If sop please get in touch at mark@linkedinformed.com

Show notes

News

• LinkedIn imposes a limit of the number of group messages that can be sent.
• Confirmation that the commercial use limit on search is not just the amount of searches but also the number of profile views.
• Groups lose stats feature but gain a new 'about' page which includes the members section.
• 27,000 US intelligence staff on LinkedIn revealed in a recent report.
• LinkedIn introduce 'who's viewed your posts' feature.
• LinkedIn celebrate their 12th anniversary by featuring members stories, I especially enjoyed this one.
• India surpasses 30 million LinkedIn members
• LinkedIn's share priced dropped below $200 last week and still remains weak.

Commentary

• This new web product claims to assess someone's personality from their LinkedIn profile. It sounds crazy but my experience is that it is amazingly accurate! Here are the results for me;

If you haven't done so already, check out my new Winbusinessin podcast, this week I interview 'The Headshot Guy' John Cassidy about profile pictures.

Question

Why do some people put their name in their professional headline?

ANS= This allows people to be able to see your full profile even if they are outside of your network. When you search for anyone by name you can always see their profile but when you search by keywords you can only see up to your 3rd tier.

News

• The LinkedIn advertising hack that gained a company $100,000 funding for a penny!
• LinkedIn Announce their Q1 results. Financial analysts are OK with the results but hate the revised prediction for Q2 and shares plummet!
• Sponsored update advertising grows by 40% and the number page views grows at impressive rate again.
• LinkedIn hints that the Lynda.com acquisition will result in 'cross selling models and integration'. What exactly will this mean?
• So this is why LinkedIn bought all those copies of Reid Hoffman's new book

  Commentary

  • LinkedIn published posts desperately need a 'read it later' feature. We all lead busy lives so the chances of having the time to read a long form post when we see it are limited. Perhaps a feature similar to Twitter's 'favorite' link would be the easiest option. At the moment I suspect we are kidding ourselves if we believe the 'read' numbers as people who have actually read the post. What do you think? Drop me a line at mark@linkedinformed.com.

  Question.

  This week's question comes from Carl, it's more of a point/commentary than a question but a really interesting one;

  • Hiya Mark,
    
    I was just thinking about LI buying Lynda, and the imminent arrival of
    Facebook at Work.
    If LI wanted to go mega they'd be tackling this by looking at systems
    like Slack https://slack.com. This would really get them into companies
    by becoming an actual part of the employees daily workflow, which is
    what I'm betting the FB at work thing will aim for. Right now, LI is
    still broadly seen as the thing you use when changing jobs (rightly or
    wrongly).
    We all know how big mobile is now, and how it's just getting bigger each
    day.
    Slack has massive take up and is really well respected. The need for LI
    to get a better collaboration tool will come soon anyway, 4G is here now
    with rich services growing daily.  We're about to be hit by the wave of
    "realtime videoisation" - all apps will be able to use it (its in the
    next Android SDK) - think Twitters Periscope, which I know you love, but
    for any app. And obviously phone/video calls. Right now, how can a LI
    user call another LI user? Use their phone number. That's 3G and earlier
    - old style GSM. This next IP-only system allows username to username
    calls within a closed system, such as LI, FB etc - and its much more
    than a traditional phone call.
    • ANS = I totally agree with this. LinkedIn challenge is to combine moving with the times and giving users a really valuable tool with protecting members from spam - unwanted messages and calls. To be honest though I suspect this is way beyond their capabilities at the moment. I have unofficially heard that they are already really struggling with mobile as it is so this seems a bit of a stretch for them! Perhaps this is inevitable outcome of rejecting partnerships with 3rd party developers? Opening up the API provides so much opportunity for innovation but LinkedIn are closing down their API and trying to do everything themselves.

  ---

Show notes

News

•  LinkedIn applies for a patent to check the accuracy of facts and statements in profiles.
•  LinkedIn spends $500,000 on buying Reid Hoffman's new book.
•  $115,000 are donated to a local teen centre
•  America's three most hated companies;  Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn!
•  This Chinese article about fake accounts is a timely reminder to us all.

• Are you frustrated with the commercial use limit on search?The following searches are all "free" and do not count against your monthly allowance
  • Alumni search
  • Fieldof study search
  • Connections network search
  • Tagging
•  Are InMail responserates dropping?

Questions

How do I post a job on LinkedIn for free?

ANS = There are four ways in which this can be done;

•  A job discussion in a relevant group
•  A personal status update
•  A published post
•  Company page update (pinned to the top)

News

• Yahoo Mail Contact cards
• Key senior executive leaves LinkedIn
• Update on the Lynda.com deal
• LinkedIn launch their new corporate Elevate product
• LinkedIn are top payers!

Commentary

• Check out my new podcast Winbusinessin
• • Tip - This is what to do if you can't save a 2nd tier to contacts
  • Keywords in name fields. It works from an optimisation perspective but it is still against the rules. What are your thoughts? Drop me a line at mark@linkedinformed.com

  Question

  • How many different type of emails do LinkedIn send you and how can you stop them?
    • ANS = There are 20 different types of emails (excluding group emails) which can all be controlled from within your settings. Go to Communications> Set the frequency of emails.

News

• Character from Ex-Machina film has a LinkedIn profile - even though she is a robot! Update since recording - it looks as though this profile has been taken down.
• If you have a really good post that you believe should be featured in a channel on Pulse then you can try tweeting @linkedinpulse to ask if they can help to get it promoted.
•  Lynda.com is acquired by LinkedIn for $1.5billion!
• The Mashable article about LinkedIn's acquisition of Lynda.com
• Jeff Weiners post about the deal
• Lynda Weinmans post
• Viveka Von Rosen's profile

Commentary

• Sponsored updates appear to be an attractive option as opposed to normal adverts on LinkedIn but there is a downside!

Show notes

News

• I had a reply from the person whose published post achieved over 3 million views and she doesn't know why it was so successful!
• LinkedIn acquire Refresh
• LinkedIn's April fool joke
• University offer premium accounts to 1000 students
• The latest big thing in social media? Periscope is a live video streaming app from Twitter and it is amazing!

Commentary

• Interesting article that lists 10 LinkedIn invitation templates. Some are pretty cheesy and I would always suggest writing your own but these may help get you started.
• Tip: Consider contacting some people who have viewed your profile. I saw a potential prospect had viewed my profile and as a result of contacting him I have generated some new business.

Questions

• I keep seeing this nonsense on my LI feed. This and various other mathematical questions  trying to get a million 'likes'. I generally only see them because one of my contacts comments. To me they have no place on LI. But why do people do it and is there a way to stop it?

  • ANS = I think they create them to gain a high number of views but to what end? More damaging though is the people who participate, not realising that they are annoying their connections who may well hide their future updates as a result. My advice - if you enjoy quizzes, do them but don't post your answer on LinkedIn, no-one will think you are clever - quite the opposite!

• I am an employee of a company which has changed  its name and email domain.  I was requested by a colleague to join LinkedIn over a year ago and so I did the email I registered was my old one.
  Anyhow I keep getting emails from prospective employees linked to my profile and when I click on it from my work email is says access denied. So we have been blocked off.  I now don't know how to get back in I don't know which email to use and when I try both domain & opal email is says invalid email.  I want to now log in my same profile by setting it up with my personal email can u help with this ?

  • ANS = A real complicated mess isn't it and LinkedIn are partly responsible for this. The simple way to avoid such problems is to list all your email addresses under one LinkedIn account.

Show notes

News

• LinkedIn improve their sponsored InMail service
• The JP Morgan saga continues
• A new study analyses how 'happy' politicians are from their LinkedIn profile pictures

Commentary

• Florist posts an image update that goes viral
• Two ways of searching that are outside of the commercial use limit;
  
  • Alumni search
  • Field of study search
• LinkedIn appear to be testing a new way of customizing invites
• Read this article about social selling and let me know what you think. I think this sort of attitude will lead to sales people getting left behind, the changing nature of sales needs to be embraced.

  Questions

• How do you convert a personal profile which has been created with a company name into a genuine personal profile without losing the connections.
  
  • This is a situation that I have experienced previously and you have to be very careful in how this conversion is handled. Here is my recommended process;
  1. Download the connections of the company account.
  2. Change the name of the company account to the same name of the personal account you wish to transfer the connections to.
  3. Approach LinkedIn (help center) and explain that you have two profiles and you wish to merge the connections into your main account.
• Andy Headworth asks if there are any examples of employees who are currently being forced to hand over their account or change their profile by their employers. If anyone is in this situation please get in touch - confidentiality assured.