Welcome to episode 202, this week I don’t really have one main subject to cover but I guess the most eye grabbing headline is that LinkedIn have decided to re-design profiles….again!
More of that later but to start with as usual….

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week

The Bible of LinkedIn Bollocks
LinkedIn Top Companies To Work For - UK
LinkedIn Top Companies To Work For - US
LinkedIn Top Companies To Work For - Canada
LinkedIn Top Companies To Work For - Australia
How we created the 2018 LinkedIn Top Companies list

LinkedIn Updates

New Profile Design

About a year ago, most people were seeing the new design for the first time, The basic (free) version of LinkedIn had a complete makeover including a new design for profiles…..and now they have decided the re-design profiles again!!

Firstly let me make it clear that these new profiles are in the early stage of roll-out so very few of you will see this. I also don’t have this new design, the above screenshot was sent to me by my good friend and fellow LinkedIn Trainer Angus Grady.

Please Note: Roll out of new features is per account, not per profile. You might think this is the same but it isn’t. Angus’ LinkedIn account is part of the early roll-out, not his profile. When I view his profile, it has the picture in the centre but when he views it (or any other) he sees the new design with the picture on the left.

Also please note: Another misconception about new features is that there rollout is based on geography…it is not! The amount of times someone states “we don’t have it yet here in X” drives me crazy!
Roll-out isn’t random but your account was allocated into a cohort when you signed up, this group is still continually added to as new members sign up. I’m not sure how many cohorts there are but they are not based on location, premium or when you signed up. They allow LinkedIn to test new features in a random way.

Because I don’t have this yet, I haven’t been able to test if the links and features are different or whether it’s purely a cosmetic change.

One thing is for sure, there are plenty of people out there who are going to have to change their background image!

So what do you think of the change of design?
I must admit it does look better, that said I think Linkedin have far more urgent priorities than making profiles look prettier!

Multiple Image Posts on Desktop

An image post made of up to 9 images has been a feature of the LinkedIn mobile app for sometime but recently LinkedIn quietly made it possible on Desktop, this is great news for company page admins who are not able to mange their page via mobile.

To add images via a PC simply use the ctrl+click or cmd+click on Mac to select multiple images (or the click+shift feature for a complete line of files).

Video Filters

LinkedIn Video: Stand Out with Filters and Text

Ok, maybe it’s just me but those filters just look ridiculous! They remind me of the equally ugly emojis in Messages that no-one uses!
That said, the ability to add text is useful and actually works pretty well.
I won’t be using this feature but mainly because I recommend recording your video on the Clips or Clipomatic apps. They both provide much better filters, text and editing options.

Is LinkedIn Deliberately ‘throttling’ post distribution?

Er…no!
I have heard and seen a fair bit of chatter about this, instigated mainly by Josh Fechter announcing that LinkedIn had reduced his post views by 90%.

He followed that up with this article
LinkedIn Wants to Put an End to Broetry in Favor of This

The thing is, I don’t believe ‘Broetry’ was ever a reason why he got high numbers in the first place.

All that matters in a post is that it’s more than 3 lines long, this will ensure it triggers the ‘See more’ and if people click on that, the algorithm will automatically push the post out to more people.

It doesn’t matter if it’s easy to read or a big, ugly block of text. If the first 3 lines are enough to tempt me to click or tap on ‘see more’ it will get more views.

As far as Josh is concerned, his numbers are still amazing so I don’t really know what his is complaining about.
I very much doubt this is a conspiracy to ‘throttle’ posts but merely a consequence of more people posting interesting and engaging content.

The algorithm has to limit the amount of content in our feed or it would be unmanageable so a reduction in views is inevitable....the same thing happened with Articles.

This is simply a consequence of success, if you get high views and engagement, other will copy and as they get higher views, your will go down. That’s all there is to it….no conspiracy!

Posting Statistics

A listener Mark Lee decided to conduct his own experiment on the success of his posts on LinkedIn and he has been generous enough to share the numbers and conclusions with me.

Mark’s target audience is Accountants and small Accountancy firms

The analysis goes back to the start of December, initially he was posting links to his or other Blogs via IFTTT, this was soon halted in favour of long, text only posts.

His conclusions are as follows;
Posts with genuine questions attract more views and Likes
Comments are the most important thing to aim for
There appears to be no relation between early success (first 2 hours) and eventual numbers
There is some evidence of a cumulative effect, the average numbers increased over time.

My observations
Controversy creates engagement
True stories work
Questions are critical
Very few of Mark posts were images so it would be wrong to conclude that image posts don’t deliver results

Welcome to episode 201, this week I return to our normal format and the main subject is something that has been playing on my mind for a while, in some respects I think it can be the ‘elephant in the room’ for a social media or LinkedIn Trainer / Coach …..What do you do if your prospects are not socially active on LinkedIn or any social media platform?

More of that later, but to start with….

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week

• LinkedIn updates its Terms of Service in line with GDPR
• Microsoft Pix can scan business cards to your contacts, find people on LinkedIn
• A Tale of Two Cases: LinkedIn Postings as Solicitations
• LinkedIn Search Doesn’t Implicate FCRA, California Court Rules
• Introducing the LinkedIn Content Insights Annual

Post of the week

Actually this was from the previous week when the ‘beast from the East’ hit the UK.
1277 likes, 120 comments and a staggering 51,000 views for a native video is exceptional, especially from someone with just 679 followers!

I also posted a video this week of a feature that has been bugging me for a while…..why can’t you ‘Ignore’ an invite from a profile?
Bad design or something more sinister?

#LinkedInLocal Manchester

I would estimate we had about 70-85 people at the inaugural #LinkedInLocal event in Manchester.
It was a great night and plenty of new friends and connections were made.
A big thanks to Alex Galviz (co-founder of LinkedInLocal) for coming up from London to share her story of how LinkedInLocal started and a massive thank-you to my fellow organisers;
Kirsty James
Amanda Newman
Alex McCann

How Do You Win Business on LinkedIn with a disengaged audience?

This topic has been on my mind for sometime and I decided to cover it in this episode when I received this excellent video question from Paolo Lanciani

I asked Paolo to share his ideas on this subject and here is what he had to say;
I guess my success depends on a combination of factors:
1. I have a very clear focus: not only the community of business lawyers in Italy is relatively small,
2. but I further narrowed it down, knowing exactly for whom (mindset, values, approach, style) and when (circumstances, needs, specific challenges) I am a valuable resource
3. I brand myself within the community building a presence on their niche media (a journal about the law industry) where I interview successful lawyers explaining from a psychological stand point why they are successful.
4. On Linkedin I share daly videos, posts and articles that are consistent and spread on other platforms too: it is not about being read every time, but about being there the day they are searching that type of support/solution/input
5. I use the messenger to reach out to those who might be most interested to a specific content and tell them about it (might be a podcast for young lawyers, a video about how to assess potential in recruiting associates or about on line presence or even business development strategy; always from a psychological point of view and well aware of the specific way of thinking of my target audience)
6. I share the same kind of challenges and opportunities: we are looking for and relying on small numbers, high tickets and long term strategies.

That is great feedback and fits with many of my thoughts on the subject.

I also asked for more thoughts and ideas in this post;

You can read all the comments but the main ones I would highlight are;

John Espirian wrote;
I think it's important to create content that can be found by search engines. While many of my clients aren't active on LinkedIn, most of them do use Google.
John is a copywriter it must be said so I would expect him to think highly of the power of written content and I think he is right to a point but the sort of people Paolo is referring to are busy Lawyers and I very much doubt they are searching Google to find long articles to read in their spare time!

Michael Spencer added;
LinkedIn has no mechanism for targeting your niche audience. LinkedIn ads have too high a cost-per-click given the lack of monthly active users. LinkedIn is therefore not a very helpful marketing channel but rather a PR branding and and B2B sales Channel

As you would imagine LinkedIn Ads expert AJ Wilcox had something to say about that!

For me, Michaels approach is about laser sharp focus for content. This is ultimately possible (you can send a link to a post or article to anyone on LinkedIn with a premium account or your connections on a free account but he is referring to hitting high numbers….and we are back to a numbers game again!
For me, content should be available for people to find on LinkedIn, either by visiting your profile or via the algorithm and virality and not ‘shoved in their face’ because you want them to see it.

My view is that the key to this is having an intimate and deep knowledge of your target audience. This will allow you to post relevant, interest content in a format that is easy to consume. Paolo posts short ‘on the move’ videos which reflect the nature of the way his audience behave.

Post on a consistent, regular basis. Don’t expect your audience to always see it but at some point someone will and they may refer you or a target might view your profile and see your content there. People do not have to be active to notice you, just an occasional visit to LinkedIn may allow them to see your content.

Welcome to this momentous occasion and our 200th episode, this week I wanted to do something special to celebrate this landmark so rather than the normal format I am going to be covering the top five episodes (as defined by the number of times they were downloaded) out of the 199 recorded and published so far.

I really love this show, it’s become my main form of content these days and the best way to keep people in touch and up to date with LinkedIn.

It all started in November 2013 when I decided to finally give it a go and promised smells that I would give it 20 episodes and see whether it was worth continuing after that!
To be honest….the number of listeners really didn’t justify the amount of time and effort it took me to put together an episode each week but I made the decision to carry on….mainly because I was having so much fun!

So here we are, over 4 years later and with over 85,000 downloads we have finally reached our 200th episode.

This podcast is really all about you, the listener so I thought it would be a good idea to include contributions from regular listeners.
Many thanks to the following for sending in voicemail messages for this show;
Kate Lister (you can listen to Kates interview in episode 185)
Giles Davies
Steve Philip (Steve is featured in episode 140)
Sandra Clark
Marcus Boswell
Violeta Balhas
Jennifer Holloway (I chatted with Jennifer in episode 196)
Greg Cooper
Carl Whalley
Darrel Griffin (I interviewed Darrel together with his neighbours dog in episodes 38 and 40)
Teddy Burris
Paul Copcutt
Gary Stockton (I met Gary at SMMW17 featured in episode 155)
Lila Smith (Lila was featured in the class of 2017 - episode 184)

The Top Five Episodes

Number 5

Number 4 
Number 3 
Number 2 
Number 1

Thanks for all your support, questions and feedback over the last four years, I really appreciate it and I wouldn’t be able to do this show without your continued input.
Here’s to the next 200!