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.

News

• An insight into LinkedIn's mobile strategy
• JP Morgan's global Head of Technology has sent out a memo advising staff to make their profiles sparse of information to prevent Recruiters from finding them on LinkedIn.

Commentary

• WHo has the keys to your profile? Add multiple email addresses to your LinkedIn account to prevent your employer from hijacking your account when you leave.
• Two ways to post updates with links and images;
  • Post from a company page where status updates have not changed and like or comment on it from your own account.
  • Paste the link into the normal update box but make sure that there is no gap between it and the previous word, then attach your image.
  • Subscribe to my FREE email updates service to be kept up to speed with changes like this.

Questions

I am in the top 5% of profile views in my network. Is this important?

ANS = Yes, profile views are a form of engagement and engagement will help to get your updates seen by more people.

Show notes

 

News

 

LinkedIn pay a measly $1 compensation to users who had their password stolen.

Company pages get a new feature - notifications.

A bank is accused of asking it's employees to limit the information in their profiles so that they won't get headhunted.

Company sue former sales employee for taking LinkedIn contacts with them and lose because the contact list was “easily discoverable through public sources” and did not involve a lot of effort to compile, it would therefore not be considered a trade secret. Quite right to! This article can be found here but warning - its a subscription site (with a free trial).

Sex offender nearly gets into trouble for using LinkedIn.

Commentary

 

Follow up to my piece about LinkedIn ads last week. Carl sent in this funny screenshot which shows how the algorithm picks up words and feeds 'relevant' ad's to you!

Could LinkedIn be considering 'retiring' groups - My prediction is that groups could be gone by the end of this year.

The new homepage design hints that status updates (with links) are something that LinkedIn also wants to get rid of. The pattern LinkedIn normally demonstrates is to make a popular feature less useful/easy to use before 'retiring' it.

Questions

 

Where can I see how many views my updates have been getting?

 

ANS = You can't! The new homepage design has removed this feature. Sometimes you can see the stats for your last update. This is in the top section of your homepage but only occasionally shows and can't be manually found - you just have to wait for it to appear!

Show notes

 

News

 

LinkedIn deliver impressive results for Q4 2014 as detailed here in their official announcement. They have grown membership to 347 million users and revenue for Q4 was $643m, a 44% increase on the same period last year and a total turnover exceeding $2.2b for 2014. Some of the more detailed commentary about these figures can be read here.

LinkedIn launches the volunteer marketplace in the UK.

LinkedIn further restrict their api making it almost impossible for anyone to develop apps that allow us to use LinkedIn in new and innovative ways.

Commentary

 

I finally got the new home page today and I totally hate it! The major issues seem to be;

You can't post a link into the text with an image status update (the workaround is to use the comments section)

You no longer see the performance of your previous updates, only the most recent.

There is no easy way to see how many connections you have.

On the plus side.............oh, nothing! 

Have you considered using a showcase page for search optimisation purposes? When the basic search is used the algorithm sorts results into categories including one for showcase pages.

How long should a podcast be? Is 30 mins about right or do you think you would prefer a shorter one (15 minutes). Let me know at mark@linkedinformed.com

Questions

 

Should I put the letter MBA after my name in my LinkedIn profile?

ANS = Yes, if that is what feels right for you. It is not against the rules and it may ensure you feature in recruiters search results. It is against the rules to put any other keywords in your name field although many people do it and the search algorithm does seem to like finding words in the name field.

Thank you so much for listening, I really value your support and interest.

 

As always I would welcome your feedback and questions. If you want to be on the show you can leave a comment by voicemail (right hand side of this page) or email me at mark@linkedinformed.com.

 

Help me to promote the podcast

 

It can be difficult to get noticed in iTunes and one thing that can really make a difference is reviews. If you enjoy the show please take a minute to write an honest review in iTunes, it would be most appreciated.

 

Until next time.... 

Show notes

News

• The LinkedIn Connected app comes to Android
• LinkedIn have started suggesting downgrades to premium account holders - very odd!
• Princes Trust uses a fake homeless person profile to highlight homeless teenagers to potential employers. What are LinkedIn going to do about fake profiles?
• Creddle is a new CV / Resume maker from your LinkedIn profile
• View Art Flater's profile - go on, I dare you!
• Strong Q4 results expected from LinkedIn which are likely to boost other social media stocks. As mentioned I recorded this episode earlier in the week than normal. Since this the Q4 results have been published so I will cover those in more depth in the next episode.

Commentary

• Blogging for the masses - the effect of LinkedIn publisher. With 1 million posts and more and more users starting to publish posts could LinkedIn publishing be the tool that makes blogging mainstream? In my opinion there are approaches to publishing depending on your objectives;
  1. Objective is to build your personal brand within your market / community. LinkedIn publishing is ideally suited to this.
  2. Objective is to guide people towards your website in order to build and monetize your following (online business). In this case the best tactic is to use a published post as a teaser with an incomplete post that includes a link to the complete article on your site. A good example is this post from Will Broome (the CEO of London launch who I am featuring in my new Winbusinessin serial podcast)

Questions

With linkedin asking us to post more, two questions:
a) Where do we get cheap/free non copyright photos, or does everyone turn a blind eye? I think not!
b) What is the etiquette on quoting sources? I have seen so many posts ( not yours) just quote/cut and paste chunks of others work with it looking like their own.
A guide to posting without getting sued for plagiarism or copyright infringements! 

• ANS = Using images is critical if you want your updates or posts to get noticed but using sites like Google images does not ensure that you are not breaking a copyright. The image depositories that I use are as follows;
  • 99c - Low cost, royalty free images (such as the one used in this post)
  • Canva - A design creation site that also includes a good selection of images. Images cost $1 with many of the designs free.
  • Photodune. A much bigger selection of images but more expensive ($3-5 on average).
  • Depositphotos. Similar to above but can be cheaper if you are prepared to buy a bundle of credits.
• The etiquette on using sources is that if you quote directly from an article you should include a link to that article, if your piece has been inspired by reading another I think it is less important but still an option. Blatant plagiarism is obviously wrong but it does happen. I personally don't waste any time worrying about it though.

Please feel free to let us have your views on this subject.

Show notes

News

• NY Times offer 16 weeks free online access to LinkedIn premium members. Is this is sign of things to come?
• Condoms designer gets a breakthrough via LinkedIn
• LinkedIn's job search app comes to the UK.
• Another new rival to LinkedIn, this one is French and called Amplement.
• Belgium TV network 'stalks' people on LinkedIn to publicise its new TV series.
• Top San Francisco venture capitalist backs LinkedIn saying "Its not a human resources company, it's a data company". Quite right too!
• New YouWorth app uses LinkedIn skills to estimate your worth in the job market 

Commentary

• What new LinkedIn app would you like to see? We have a listener who could make it happen. Leave a voicemail (link on the right of this page) or email me at mark@linkedinformed.com
• Recruitment company does tracks clients new connections and triggers a sales lead alert.
• LinkedIn may be introducing new Temp/contract features to profiles.
• New website launched for LinkedIn users who want to grow their business.

Question

• When is it appropriate to hide your connections?
• ANS = Rarely in my opinion! Just because you are connected to someone doesn't indicate that you are doing business with them, most sales people would aim to connect with prospects not just customers. So why hide them? The one exception to this is Recruitment companies because of the confidential nature of their role.

 

Thank you so much for listening, I really value your support and interest.

As always I would welcome your feedback and questions. If you want to be on the show you can leave a comment by voicemail (right hand side of this page) or email me at mark@linkedinformed.com.

Help me to promote the podcast

It can be difficult to get noticed in iTunes and one thing that can really make a difference is reviews. If you enjoy the show please take a minute to write an honest review in iTunes, it would be most appreciated.

Until next time.... 

show notes

 

News

• LinkedIn for blue collar? I think this is great news and fits with my idea of 'LinkedIn Local'.

• Shapr. A new rival to LinkedIn? I don't think so but it does look interesting and solves the issue of keeping in touch with your closest contacts.

• 6 lessons we can take from the best company pages of 2014.

• Its that time of year and when the dreaded 'Top profile buzzwords' article comes out. Journalist's love it...I think its tosh!

Commentary

• Anonymous viewers. Universally unpopular but does it really matter?
• Why I advise against reciprocal recommendations.

Questions

• Showcase pages vs affiliate company pages: what are best practices? Is it worth investing time and effort or will they end up going away like product pages?
  • ANS = An affiliated page is a company page that can be affiliated to a parent page. This can work for subsidiaries or acquired company's and might be useful when a division/subsidiary wants to have its own unique set of Showcase pages. Showcase pages are designed to create follower communities that are separate from the overall company followers, this works well when you wish to build a community around a brand or product type. 

 

Thank you so much for listening, I really value your support and interest.

As always I would welcome your feedback and questions. If you want to be on the show you can leave a comment by voicemail (right hand side of this page) or email me at mark@linkedinformed.com.

Help me to promote the podcast

It can be difficult to get noticed in iTunes and one thing that can really make a difference is reviews. If you enjoy the show please take a minute to write an honest review in iTunes, it would be most appreciated.

Until next time.... 

News

• Facebook is still the top social network. This survey reported that only 13% of LinkedIn users visit the site daily in comparison to 70% of Facebook users.
• Scammers are using LinkedIn as a way of bypassing corporate spam filters.
• LinkedIn will be launching new intra-company communication tools. Is this a move to counter Facebook at work?
• Beware of phishing emails purporting to be from LinkedIn that are designed to steal your username and password. Always use unique passwords, I use 1Password to help me manage this.

Update

• The new LinkedIn search restrictions and how to get around them. This is mainly an issue for recruiters because the commercial use restriction appears to be 40-60 searches a month. Two viable alternatives to upgrading your account could be;
  • 1 premium account per office (that everyone uses when needed)
  • Google X-ray searching
• Premium accounts seem to have reverted to the previous options for some (including me!)
• How do you listen to the podcast? If you haven't already why not subscribe on iTunes? That way you will get each episode downloaded onto your phone/device automatically each week.

Commentary

• LinkedIn Recommendations - don't be such a cynic!

Questions

• Help, I'm stuck in profile edit mode!
  • ANS = No you're not! This listener is referring to the new 'permanent edit' mode that LinkedIn recently introduced. You can view your profile as others would see it by clicking on the blue box at the top as seen below;

Show notes

News

• LinkedIn announce that publishing rights will be extended to 230 million users
• Taliban leader lists 'Jihad' as a skill on his profile
• Dutch footballer Demy de Zeeuw promotes himself on LinkedIn as available for a new club.
• Football agent posts that he is looking for the next Xavi or Kroos, on his LinkedIn page!
• Main Story - LinkedIn change search result visibility again.

Commentary

My LinkedIn wish list for 2015

• Scheduling of status updates and posts
• Instant messaging via a Skype integration or LinkedIn own proprietary system
• LinkedIn message/InMail 'read' notifications
• Common meaning for simple words like 'views' for instance a post view being the same as an update view.
• The ability to share image based updates with individuals (see question below)

Question

What is the best way to ask others to share my status update?

ANS = Rather than  putting something in the update or comments I would advise sending the update directly to those you know are most likely to help you. The video below explains how this is done.

http://youtu.be/itS21HbXAfs

Thank you so much for listening, I really value your support and interest.

As always I would welcome your feedback and questions. If you want to be on the show you can leave a comment by voicemail (right hand side of this page) or email me at mark@linkedinformed.com.

Help me to promote the podcast

It can be difficult to get noticed in iTunes and one thing that can really make a difference is reviews. If you enjoy the show please take a minute to write an honest review in iTunes, it would be most appreciated.

Until next time.... 

show notes

News

• The top 25 skills that got people hired in 2014.
• Bryan Mills (aka Liam Neeson) will endorse your skills if you win a contest! Interesting to see a major film studio using LinkedIn to promote its latest movie release (Taken 3) and even more interesting to that LinkedIn are completely fine with this!
• Could Viadeo be a viable acquisition target for LinkedIn?
• Tax inspectors in Turkey use LinkedIn to catch tax evaders

Commentary

• Do you want to find your 'future self' on LinkedIn? When you think about it you could and LinkedIn could make it even easier if they released tools to make it easier to predict your future based on real data from other profiles.
• Where is Jeff Weiner taking LinkedIn? I love this article and agree with the three areas that they believe LinkedIn is focussing its future on.

Thanks to my two wonderful kids James & Anna for 'volunteering' to be interviewed for this show!

Finally may I wish you a very merry and happy Christmas.

2015 is going to be a great year for LinkedIn and I look forward to sharing every moment of it with you.

Thank you so much for listening, I really value your support and interest.

As always I would welcome your feedback and questions. If you want to be on the show you can leave a comment by voicemail (right hand side of this page) or email me at mark@linkedinformed.com.

Help me to promote the podcast

It can be difficult to get noticed in iTunes and one thing that can really make a difference is reviews. If you enjoy the show please take a minute to write an honest review in iTunes, it would be most appreciated.

 

Show notes

News

• LinkedIn have changed how we edit our profiles. I have produced a very short video (30 secs) to demonstrate the changes
• It would appear that LinkedIn are testing a new way to invite from someone's profile (desktop app), this means that clicking 'connect' will just send a standard message. In order to customise the message you now have to hover over the disclosure triangle and select 'personalise invitation' as below

This has only been seen by a few users so far so is obviously in the early stages of testing.

• Nominate your best LinkedIn company Page of 2014
• 40% of LinkedIn users earn over $100k per year according to Comscore. This fact and many other come from this fantastic and well researched article on DigiDay.com. The article is about Dan Roth the Executive Editor of LinkedIn. I would recommend you read it.

Commentary

• A trip down memory lane. In the Digiday article they include an amazing link to a short piece about the start of LinkedIn posted on 7th May 2003 (2 days after LinkedIn's launch). The comments are fascinating and well worth a read.

• The ingredients of a Great LinkedIn Sales Message. Inspired by the research and analysis I covered in last week's show I thought I would have another crack at publishing a post on LinkedIn. My aim is to get into the Sales channel in pulse. In this piece I cover the 9 ingredients required in great sales messages on LinkedIn.

Question

• Thanks to Carl Whalley for this one; What value do group members see in these "read my blog" posts in groups? Since we don't always have the time to go into each and every one, generally a quick glance to see if it's on topic means it's likely to get approved. But do group members see them differently? ANS= I think if the 'discussion merely says "read my blog" then it isn't a great contribution but if someone makes a point and starts an interesting discussion about their (linked) blog piece then it is just as good as any other discussion. What do you think?

show notes

 

News

 

Apparently Microsoft attempted to buy LinkedIn for $500m prior to their IPO in 2011 but decided the price was too high. LinkedIn would cost them closer to $35 billion today!

Sony have collaborated with LinkedIn to produce a business card reading app that synchronises with LinkedIn in the way that CardMunch used to. Does anyone know of any other apps that do the same?

LinkedIn have announced their 3rd quarter results.

332 millions users

90 million unique visitors

28 billion page views

45% growth in revenue

Analysts impressed with the results but not the outlook!

Commentary

 

LinkedIn have really been pushing skills again with this article being just one of many over the last few weeks.

I have been very impressed with Conspire, a new FREE service that allows you to manage your contacts by analysing your email activity.

You can now add attachments to LinkedIn messages. If you want to be notified of such changes by email you can subscribe here

Publishing on LinkedIn. Is it really worth it? As more people obtain publishing rights on LinkedIn, the number of views per post seems to be dropping for everyone and this makes me question whether they are still worth doing?

 screenshot2014-10-31_11-07-39_pm.png

Chris Gaborit is just a normal, regular LinkedIn user who started publishing in May and achieved an amazing result with over 300,000 views of the above post (click on it to read the full post) but over the last couple of months he has seen his posts viewed less and less...this seems to be a consistent story for most people.

 

His average number of views per post has been the following since starting in May;

 

May 2014 - 54,911

June 2014 - 28,260

July 2014 - 6115

September - 418

October - 2696

Maybe we are better off blogging on our own websites and promoting these articles via status updates?

 

Your views are welcome.

 

Question

 

Why are LinkedIn persisting with Skills & endorsements when everyone knows they are a joke?

 

This question really got me thinking and my conclusion is that the big data that skills give them is something they intend to monetise. Endorsements are merely a red herring designed to encourage us to add more skills to our profiles!

 

 

show notes

 

You can view Darrel's LinkedIn profile here

 

Darrel's Story

 

25 years in sales, mainly in the UK. Wine trade, screen printing and signage.

Moved to Perth, Western Australia in July 2012 - knew no-one!

Business Development Manager role for a signage contractor

Threw himself into LinkedIn

Annual target exceeded within 4 months!

50% of sales came via LinkedIn

Decided to aim to become Perth's social selling 'go to' guy

Launched Social4Sales - already fully booked until mid December!

Other links

 

Gary Vaynerchuck

Gary Vaynerchuck's books (my favourite is Crush it)

Gary's blog

Darrel's next door neighbour...as featured in the podcast!

 

Thank you so much for listening, I really value your support and interest.

 

As always I would welcome your feedback and questions. If you want to be on the show you can leave a comment by voicemail (right hand side of this page) or email me at mark@linkedinformed.com.

 

Help me to promote the podcast

 

It can be difficult to get noticed in iTunes and one thing that can really make a difference is reviews. If you enjoy the show please take a minute to write an honest review in iTunes, it would be most appreciated.

 

Until next time.....

show notes

 

No interviews this week but plenty to catch up with following my vacation, I even managed to connect with Santa Claus this week...a very proud moment!

 

News

 

Another lawsuit is filed against LinkedIn and this one is just plain ridiculous! Apparently the ability to read someone's background and perform a few checks on LinkedIn when considering recruiting them violates a US law. Read the full story here. Has the world gone mad?!

LinkedIn plans to expand its publishing team. Its becoming increasing clear that publishing is a core focus for LinkedIn as demonstrated by their plans to open a major new office in San Francisco in 2016.

Jeff Weiner interview with Bloomberg

LinkedIn hits back and asks judge to dismiss the lawsuit regarding the email reminders sent to those who do not respond when an invitation to join LinkedIn message is sent to them. As opposed to the other lawsuit, I can't see how LinkedIn can defend this.

It looks like premium accounts may be about to re-vamped, effectively making them more expensive. The Spotlight premium account had a very short life - below is a reply from the help center on this matter.

Lets hope the 'test' fails then!

Lets hope the 'test' fails then!

 

Tips & Features

 

You can now see personalised invitation messages in the quick menu by clicking on 'see all' (see below)

 

 

'Groups' has now disappeared in the reasons for inviting menu (see below). LinkedIn help center are claiming that this is a fault but I'm not convinced, lets hope so. In the meantime there are a few workarounds. Firstly there is the method using LinkedIn Contacts (2nd tier only) which is my favoured method - see here for a detailed guide on how to do this.  Or you can now customise invitations using a mobile app (not tablet) - scroll down to check out the show notes for episode 32 for instructions on how to do that.

Apparently a fault.....lets see!

Apparently a fault.....lets see!

 

New 'Actions' feature in the 'Who's viewed your profile' section. I have only just got this feature so have not really been able to understand its benefits but it seems like a good idea. Jo Saunders has published a more detailed post about it.

 

And finally the best article I read this week about LinkedIn was Data and the Power it Bestows by Raven Jiang. I'm not one of those people that worries about big data and security / privacy but I must admit that Raven puts a very interesting argument that the information we are providing to LinkedIn could be abused and they clearly 'hold the key' to its future access.

Thank you so much for listening, I really value your support and interest.

 

As always I would welcome your feedback and questions. If you want to be on the show you can leave a comment by voicemail (right hand side of this page) or email me at mark@linkedinformed.com.

 

Help me to promote the podcast

 

It can be difficult to get noticed in iTunes and one thing that can really make a difference is reviews. If you enjoy the show please take a minute to write an honest review in iTunes, it would be most appreciated.

 

Until next time.....

 

 

 

 

 

show notes

 

News

 

BeLinked. The new dating app that allows its users to find suitable dates via LinkedIn profiles. This makes perfect sense for BeLinked but is this a good idea for LinkedIn?

LinkedIn Partners With Kaplan On 'Career Journey' Programme

Irish judge allows papers to be served via LinkedIn account.

Tips

 

Status updates gets 3x more views and comments when you post a picture as opposed to allowing a picture to show from a weblink. (see below)

The top update with an attached picture was posted at 8.45am on a Tuesday morning. The 2nd one with a link (containing the same picture) was posted at 8.45am the day before.

The top update with an attached picture was posted at 8.45am on a Tuesday morning. The 2nd one with a link (containing the same picture) was posted at 8.45am the day before.

 

Here are the view numbers for the Monday update (the one with a link, the bottom of the above two);

 

And here are the stat's for the one posted on the Tuesday with a picture attached;

 

As you can see there is a significant difference when an update has a picture attached, this must be down to the increased size and therefore it is more likely to get peoples attention.

 

You can now change a group name by as much as 20 times. You just need to ask LinkedIn customer services.

SWAM or MAG (Moderation across all groups) is currently running at 7 days so if you find yourself moderated you won't have to wait long for it to be lifted.

Questions

 

I have a quiz for you this week. How many different ways can you find advertised jobs on LinkedIn? Write to me at mark@linkedinformed.com or leave a voicemail with your answer

Listener question. Why won't LinkedIn allow me to invite my (3rd tier) ex colleagues to connect? Answer = If you search for them by name you will be able to connect. LinkedIn is trying to prevent you from connecting with people you don't know and have found by keyword or company employee searching.

Thank you so much for listening, I really value your support and interest.

 

As always I would welcome your feedback and questions. If you want to be on the show you can leave a comment by voicemail (right hand side of this page) or email me at mark@linkedinformed.com.

 

Help me to promote the podcast

 

It can be difficult to get noticed in iTunes and one thing that can really make a difference is reviews. If you enjoy the show please take a minute to write an honest review in iTunes, it would be most appreciated.

 

Until next time.....