This week I respond to a post by Richard Moore about the apparent lack of 'Content Creators' on LinkedIn in the UK.

What exactly is he referring to and how do we define great content?

That plus a few interesting things I saw this week about LinkedIn.

More info at LinkedInformed.com

Welcome to episode 224, this week I want to mainly focus on company pages. A feature of LinkedIn that I have often been very critical of.

LinkedIn have announced their Top Company Pages of 2018 list so I thought I would take a closer look at some of those companies to try to understand what benefit they are gaining from LinkedIn.

I also want to return to the new groups experience as I now have the new features and thought I would add some further thoughts and things I have experienced.

For the full notes go to http://linkedinformed.com/episode224

Thanks for all your feedback from last weeks episode about a wishlist for the new design of groups, well we didn't have to wait long did we? Well, to be more precise some of us do need to wait longer (myself included) to be able to play with the new design but on Tuesday this week, LinkedIn started rolling out their long-awaited new design that they are hoping can reinvigorate this much-maligned area of LinkedIn.

More about new groups later but first.

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week

Very little news about LinkedIn this week apart from the following article that I saw in multiple places

The US accuses China of 'super aggressive' spy campaign on LinkedIn 

New Groups Design

I told you it was going to happen this week, didn't I?!

New groups have started rolling out and several people have been in touch to share their thoughts. I'm really frustrated to not be included in the early stages of the roll-out. I know these things are supposed to be random but I also know that they can add people to the rollout if they wish and it seems more than rude to not include people who have given up their time to assist with the evaluation of groups. Many people travelled to locations across the world to participate in the research that LinkedIn has undertaken at their own cost. LinkedIn have ignored many of these people and not included them in the early roll-out...Ignorance or incompetence? Probably a bit of both in my opinion!

Fortunately, my good buddy and fellow LinkedIn trainer Greg Cooper has got the new design so I called him up for a chat to get his perspective.

Here's what's new (so far)

• The design is a replica of the homepage feed
• Access is still via the Work menu
• 'Todays highlights' page has gone, replaced with your list of groups. This list can only be scrolled through and not re-ordered
• Native video posts
• Editing posts - you can edit posts that you've published
• You can now manage your group from the main mobile app
• You can still search for members by name and message them but no introduction of keyword search.
• #communities are on the left, not sure how these fit with groups?
• Announcements have not returned
• Comments can be replied to in a thread
• Images can be added to comments

The overall sense I get is that they are moving much control away from group managers. It would appear that the roll-out will be fast in that one internal staffer has stated that it will be completely rolled out this month

Welcome to episode 222. I hope you find this episode enjoyable and informative.

LinkedIn have recently announced that their new re-designed groups section will be launched at the end of August It's taken them over 18 months including much user consultation to get to this point so we are entitled to expect something special.

As of the time of recording, nothing has transpired so I thought it would be timely to create a list of all the things that we, as users want to see and then we can compare it to what we actually get!

More of that at http://linkedinformed.com/?p=2531&preview=true