Welcome to episode 188, this week I had some very sad news, one of the clipper race crew was swept overboard and tragically lost his life - devastating for his family and also extremely unnerving for all the other crews. I can’t begin to imagine how they carry on from this.

It highlights just how dangerous this race is and impressed on me even more just what Brendan Hall had to go through when he won the race previously.

Brendan incidentally released his new speaker showreel this week;

I had an interesting chat with Stoke School student Tim Collins who has been using LinkedIn along with some of his friends recently and has been impressed with the authenticity and kindness shown to him by LinkedIn members……(give it time Tim!). You can hear that interview later in the episode but firstly.

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week

Trends in marketing investments: LinkedIn starts to establish status?
Women Are Reminding People That LinkedIn Is Not A Dating Website Following "Creepy" Messages
LinkedIn pledges $10 million for affordable housing. A charitable act or protecting their own interests?

New Features

Some people have reported seeing a new design to the search page. This is clearly of on LinkedIn annoying A/B tests but doesn’t it look awful?

You can now embed posts into your website, just as I have done several times in this post, including the video below. This can be done on anyone’s posts including your own but isn’t available to everyone yet (roll out).
Simply click on the 3 dots as seen below and then copy the HTML code

LinkedIn are now officially launching their new ‘Career Advice’ feature which is closely allied to the mentoring feature. More in this video;

What You Saw On LinkedIn This Week

This could become an interesting new feature if you get involved!
The best way to improve the quality and reach of our content is to observe other successful posts. So why not use LinkedInformed as a place to share any great posts you saw last week.

I really liked this one sent in my listener Carl this week.

I can’t wait to see how that develops!

So from now, when you spot something interesting, take a note of the url and send it to me.
That way we can all learn from each others feeds

My LinkedIn Survey

I announced this last week and I was terrified that my target of 1000 respondents was going to be too hard to reach…..I might have been right!

Over the last week I have managed to gather 300 respondents but that leaves me woefully short so….
I NEED YOUR HELP!

Please take a few mins out of your day to complete the survey and then share it with your network.

A Millennial’s view - LinkedIn is Authentic, collaborative and refreshingly ‘real’

Listener Anna McAfee pointed out to me a video posted by 3 school kids made while they are waiting for parent evening to start.
The person that posted it was Tim Collins, so I thought it would be interesting to get him on the show!

I really enjoyed hearing what an 18 year old makes of LinkedIn, especially in comparison to Facebook (old and dated) and Instagram (lacks authenticity)

This is Tim’s Video post

I love the way he was brave enough to know that is was far from ‘perfect’ or ‘professional’ and post it anyway…….if an 18 year old can then why can’t you? (assuming you have video)

And this is the post he referred to when talking about ‘it’s about who you know’

No questions for this week. Please feel to drop me a line or leave a voicemail of you want your question featured on the show.

Welcome to episode 187, this week we are back to the normal format after a few weeks of interviews. I would really appreciate your help with compiling a survey of how LinkedIn users have changed their behaviour over the last 12 months or so.
More of that later but firstly……

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week

60% users from Russia remain on LinkedIn after year of blocking
Creating Your Resume Just Got a Whole Lot Easier with Microsoft and LinkedIn

New Feature

Active status is coming to your home page feed. We are used to seeing the green dots in messaging but they will soon be seen elsewhere on LinkedIn, which is a great move.

There does seem to be some confusion as to what each one means so just for clarity;
A green dot means that person is active on LinkedIn (desktop or mobile)
A green circle (Jo below) means they have push notifications enabled on their mobile app.

This will also show in profiles, here you can see that Kate (featured in episode 185) is not active but does have push notifications enabled on mobile.

You can adjust your settings for active status if you wish under ‘privacy’ in your settings

I had this for about 2 weeks but it has disappeared again now, it’s a great feature though and I’m looking forward to it becoming permanent once they have completed their testing.

How many profile views do you get? I’m amazed to see how many Gretta gets!

Posting External Links - New Method

I saw this Article from Andy Foster and decided to make a video post about it.

The bigger question is whether posting links at all makes any sense.
Maybe the content marketing / bring people to your web site method is no longer the best way to generate new business?
What do you think?

LinkedIn Search Results

When searching LinkedIn you will get results from anyone that meets your criteria but they won’t all be visible to you, however there are some people beyond your 3rd tier that are still visible.

Welcome to episode 186, this week I really enjoyed chatting with Leif Carlsen, A social selling expert and podcaster from Denmark.

Leif and I chat about a range of things in the episode;

ROI - Return on Investment

It's difficult to measure
Statistics are often merely a vanity measure
Social selling will always be a ‘long game’
Some ways you can measure RIO;
Post comments, likes and views in the feed
InMail / message replies
Profile views
Invitations received
True followers (followers minus connections)
SSI (social selling index)
Successful referrals
The influence formula as discussed in episode 167
LinkedIn should be added as a lead source in your CRM

The future of social selling

Less about content marketing and more about engagement
Sales people will need to grow their own following and influence
Think of yourself as being a DJ Broadcasting to a wide audience of listeners
The attributes of sales people will change;
Less selfish, more motivated to help others
Driven to help people even when there is no chance of doing business with them
Better at written communication
Are LinkedIn moving in this direction? The design of Sales Navigator might suggest not!
InMail is, in many respects, a form of cold calling via LinkedIn!
Does cold calling really work any more?

Company Pages

I believe that company pages have very limited use, primarily because people do business with people.
Most company page posts get the very little, if any engagement
Leif Took a more positive stance but believes that Company pages can only work if you deliver high quality educational and interesting updates.
Check out Leif’s Company page below

Articles

Leif has found that Google will find articles but only if the content is of the highest quality.
A good technique is to write with a specific person in mind
Articles give you credibility, they don't need to be written very regularly but it's important that your prospects and followers can see that there is more to you then just the "Gift of the gab”
Writing good articles will make you think more about your market and inevitably make you a better salesperson.

Welcome to episode 185, this week I’m doing my annual ‘escape from the wet and cold of Britain’ week in Spain so I thought I would treat you to one of the most popular podcast episodes I have ever produced.

I’m sure many of heard you have heard me talk about the florist from Grimsby who is killing it on LinkedIn….well this is the interview I did with her in May 2015 on a since retired podcast called Winbusinessin…..enjoy!