Welcome to episode 171, well I’m back from my holiday and fully refreshed albeit missing the sun, crystal clear sea, wonderful beaches and amazing sunsets……oh well!

As always seems to happen, as soon as I go away LinkedIn decide to unexpectedly launch a new feature….well I guess that happens all the time but this one happened to be a very big one……native video has finally arrived!

More of that later but there has been other news whilst I’ve been away

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week

• CRM Zoho announces integration with LinkedIn Sales Navigator
• LinkedIn is testing a new feature that matches you with a mentor
• Woman gets thousands of messages on LinkedIn after getting rejected from dream job. This isn’t much of a story but her update at the end of her post reflects a growing trend of plagiarism on LinkedIn
• William, Kate & Harry advertise for a Communications Officer (terrible title!) on LinkedIn
• Veterans get a free ‘Career Premium’ account for a year….a nice gesture but why is it only for US veterans?
• Microsoft quarterly results show LinkedIn are making a $361m loss

LinkedIn Updates

There have been some other changes as well as native video whilst I have been away.

Hover over name feature returns and it’s better than ever!

You get the option to send a message to 1st tier connections, invite 2nd tier to connect and InMail anyone else. Don’t use the connect though as it doesn’t not allow for personalisation.

Website Demographics - coming soon.

An interesting looking tool that will give you information about your website visitors, we will have to wait and see exactly how useful it is.

Multiple image posts. This could be very handy for visual storytelling, I also suspect the algorithm my favour them. Only available in the app and iOS only for now.

Reshares of your posts now show in your post analytics.

This is definitely a step in the right direction but one of the =main reasons you want to see who shared is so you can thank them and the ‘hover over’ feature does not work in pop-ups so you have to click and open the profile to see more about the person a send a message. Bizarrely you can actually see the ‘hover’ pop-up opening in the background!

Native Video is Finally Here!

I noticed this feature whilst sipping my Mojito by the pool in Greece! Fortunately I had only just started my drink so was able to immediately give it a try;

This feature is currently only available on the mobile app

Very few users currently have it although it is being slowly rolled out to all.

You can record your video directly into the app or upload a video that is saved on your phone, simply tap the video icon to start the process

As you can see a ‘view’ is only counted when the video has appeared on someone’s screen for 3 secs without scrolling, this is therefore not comparable to other posts which are simply ‘views in the feed’. Therefore a view count of over 10,000 is pretty good and suggests that the algorithm is favouring video posts.

I have tried various formats, if you are recording directly into the app I would suggest holding your phone in landscape mode, this will look better when seen on desktop. It is worth noting that you cannot edit your video in the app.

Native video will autoplay in the feed on both desktop and mobile.

The problem with video is that few people will have sound (or sound switched on) on their computers and many mobile viewers won’t bother with sound so it may be wise to use subtitles.

In my tests the best results were when I used the free Clips iOS app, it records in square format so it doesn’t matter which way you hold the phone, you can edit before posting and it has a very effective subtitles feature that can be edited but often gets it right first time.

My first video above was made using Clips

I have been looking in the Google Play store for a suitable equivalent and I found Videoshow, I’m not sure how good it is but it maybe worth a look for Android users. If you know of a better app that allows editing and subtitles then please let me know.

So how can we use native video effectively?

It’s early days and we will have to wait and see what works but here are my initial ideas;

• Talking head (as above) expressing an opinion and asking for feedback or just asking a question. Use subtitles.
• Show an event you are attending or something worth noting at work. If you would think of taking a picture and posting that then now you should think video as well or instead.
• News. If you want to announce or share some important news, do it by video - this gives a much greater sense of urgency and makes it more of an event for the viewer.
• A brief interview with someone
• Teach others how to do something
• Make a video from a powerpoint as a ‘moving words’ video to grab attention
• A weekly tips or Q&A feature
• Recruiters - why not experiment with posting your new hot vacancy via video
• Storytelling - produce a series of short videos to allow others to experience something with you
• I would advise keeping videos less than 3 mins length
• Remember the view only counts if they pause for 3 secs so your opening (without sound) needs to grab immediate attention to make them stop scrolling.

I’m sure other ideas will develop in time.

How will you use video on LinkedIn? Please share your ideas by sending me a voicemail or email.

No time for any questions this week but I will make sure I catch up an any unanswered ones next week.

Welcome to episode 170, I’m still away this week but rather than go two weeks without an episode I thought I would pre-record an interview with the amazing LinkedIn Trainer from London called Alex Galviz.

We cover a lot of ground in the interview and I hope you will agree that Alex’s approach to LinkedIn is both refreshing and inspiring.

But first I thought you might find these interesting…

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week

The British Prime Ministers ex PR guru makes her feelings known in her LinkedIn headline…but doesn’t know how to update her profile properly!

Migrating Groups is not as easy as some people suggest!
This is a really interesting post about the difficulties in persuading people to migrate away from LinkedIn. This re-enforces my view that the answer to online communities still exists within LinkedIn but that LinkedIn need to work hard to re-invent groups.

Interview with Alex Galviz

I really enjoyed chatting with Alex, a millennial LinkedIn trainer and coach for millennials from London.

We covered a lot of ground in our chat;

Challenging your definition of success
Finding your ‘Why’
LinkedInLocal events
Millennials on LinkedIn
LinkedIn’s editorial calendar
Crowdsourcing your headline
5 tips for a great headline
1. Don't tell show
2. Think about how you want people to feel when they enter your virtual home
3. Do you give them enough teasers that they want to get to know you more?
4. Is your WHY clearly explained?
5. Why are you different to someone else doing the same job?
Personal branding and authenticity

This is the post Alex referred to that kickstarted her career as a career coach and LinkedIn specialist.

Welcome to episode 169, lets get personal this week……or maybe not! Is is right to chat about non-business matters on LinkedIn?
That is the main focus this week but first….

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week

When is public information not public? When LinkedIn says so
What LinkedIn Will Look Like In The Future
Posting Job Opportunity On LinkedIn Profile For New Employer Did Not Violate Non-Compete

Should we get personal on LinkedIn?

This subject was instigated when I saw the following post. It’s a very interesting thread and really got me thinking about this subject which many people seem to feel very strongly about.

Rather than just share my views I thought I would gather some views from LinkedIn and boy did you respond! This post is currently averaging 1000 views per hour!

I’m actually quite happy to share topics that are not strictly business with my network. There is almost always a tenuous link to business in everything I do but I believe people are more interesting in you than what you do. They can easily see from your profile what you do but the key difference in deciding if they want to work with you (or employ you) is who you really are.

In contrast I utterly detest using my Facebook profile for business. I’m not saying it’s a detestable thing to do…everyone to their own but I personally find it excruciatingly uncomfortable to either talk about work and business on my Facebook or alternatively ‘friend’ work related contacts and have them looking at things that are entirely personal.

I can control what I reveal about myself personally on LinkedIn, whereas using Facebook for business feels like I am opening my front door to people who are not appropriate share such things with.

I wondered if that was a contradiction…..

On balance I don’t think it is but maybe you disagree. I would love to know what you think about this subject.

There will not be an episode next week as I will be here;

The podcast will return the week after (22nd July) with a pre-recorded interview with Millennial LinkedIn Trainer Alex Galviz

Welcome to episode 168, last week’s show seemed to go down a storm……it seems everyone is checking their influence score and comparing them which can only be a good thing in my opinion.

As a followup to that and on a similar track I wanted to focus on article clicks this week, or rather the lack of article clicks many people seem to be battling with!

I’m getting a lot of comments like;

“I think I will move to posting rather than articles as they get better views”
Or
“Why doesn’t LinkedIn alert my followers when I post a new article”?

So in this episode I’m going to try to fix that…but first

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week

LinkedIn China president resigns

New LinkedIn Features

Here is the new ‘What people are talking about’ feature. This seems to be based on trending stories but when you click on it LinkedIn encourages you create a new post with a pre-written hashtag on that subject. Could this be LinkedIn trying to get # moving?

Images are fixed! At last LinkedIn have fixed the issue regarding posting images. No longer do we need to worry about turning our phones horizontal to take a picture for LinkedIn we can now add images in portrait!

What To Do If Nobody Is Reading Your Articles

Years ago published posts (now renamed articles) would get thousands and at times tens of thousands of views. It seemed like LinkedIn was the perfect place to produce content…a ready made audience that would be alerted to your content.
Many people got in early and started to get amazing results, this attracted more and more new authors and in no time at all over 1 million people had written an article on LinkedIn.
This number massively increased the amount of notifications LinkedIn was sending out to people and this became a big problem….countless people objected to ‘spam’ from LinkedIn - too may notifications and too many emails.
So LinkedIn changed things and rapidly reduced the amount of notifications.
The net result was that article view number plummeted. What would have been 10,000 views 2 years ago became for like 200 views and this is where most people are with articles.

So let’s be clear…….publishing articles on LinkedIn is not what it used to be. The article feature is no longer a distribution network for your content, it is merely a library for your content….just as other blogging platforms are such as Wordpress and Blogger.

That however, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be writing articles. It simply means that you need to use posts to distribute your articles to your audience…and hopefully beyond.

First let me make something clear;

We do need to be careful when comparing posts to articles. They are completely different and the stats are measured in different ways (clicks vs views in the feed).

A posts ‘view in the feed’ is simply a page impression ie it appeared on someones feed - it doesn’t mean they saw it. An Article click does mean they saw it - completely different things

The best way to view them is that they work together. An article is long form content but just that - static content. If it gets into a pulse channel it might get clicks outside of your followers but the best way to achieve clicks is via posts which are short form, viral content - see posts as the 'vehicle' to distribute your articles. Your ability to gain high view numbers on your posts is down to a variety of factors but most important of all is to show the algorithm that you are 'interesting' through regular comments & likes.

So here are the 3 key areas to focus on;

Aim to get it published in a Pulse channel

Make sure it is over 500 words
Ensure you have the right keywords in your headline
When you publish send a tweet to @LinkedInEditors

2) The Headline is Critical.

Create intrigue that makes some want to click on to see more
Test 5-7 headlines with friend or co-workers
Try to make it personalised
Lighter subjects work best - avoid serious/boring headlines
If one headline is clearly not working…change it!

There is a free course on Lynda from LinkedIn editor in chief that includes many great tips from someone that should know more than most!
https://www.lynda.com/LinkedIn-tutorials/Paying-attention-headline/433721/443465-4.html

3) Generate your own traffic

• Create engaging posts, ask questions and encourage responses
• Post at the right time of day (commuting and lunch time)
• Extend the shelf life of your post by replying, commenting and liking over several weeks
• @mention relevant individuals asking for their feedback
• Use appropriate hashtags in your posts (and articles)
• Don’t just use LinkedIn to promote your article. Try all relevant channels
• Send a direct message with a link to the post to influential connections asking frothier input
• Consider emailing the article to your email list
• Ensure your post reaches the widest possible audience by improving your ‘Influence score’
  • Engage with others frequently
  • Avoid too many external links on other posts
  • Text only posts work really well, images are good but mix it up.
  • Focus most of your posts on interesting and ‘human’ stories and anecdotes

If you want to tag and download profiles, the best tool out there is LinkedInBack. It is only for notes and tags but the download feature is the killer for me.

I also discovered a new video tool this week. Loom is very similar to Viewedit that I mentioned in episode 162

This weeks question came from Avi and it’s all about that ago old problem of multiple or dual objectives and whether you should create 2 profiles or not.
Listen to the episode to hear my thoughts on that.