Linkedinformed Podcast. The Linkedin Show

Welcome to episode 164, following on from last week’s theme of ‘cleaning up your homepage’ it struck me that you also need to make sure that you are not a victim of someone else cleaning up their homepage! So this week I want to focus on the best ways to ensure that you remain visible on your followers homepage. But first….. Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week LinkedIn snaps up Redwood City sales tech startup. Another sign that the key focus for LinkedIn these days is Sales Navigator. I suspect these features will only be added to their corporate ‘Team’ solution version of Sales Navigator which again reflects LinkedIn’s interest in enterprise clients. Heighten technology apparently provides three core areas of functionality: sales process tracking, hyper-efficient pipeline reporting and an intelligent notepad. Unfortunately they seemed to have deleted any trace of information about the product before announcing the news of the takeover. It is suggested that Microsoft ‘could redesign LinkedIn for desktop and m

Welcome to episode 163, it’s been a terrible week for me with the shocking news coming from Manchester and being personally touched by the tragic events, it’s made it really hard to focus at times. This week I want to focus on managing your home page feed on LinkedIn. It’s a critical aspect of using LinkedIn effectively and most people ignore it so it’s time for a good clean up! But first….. Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week LinkedIn have changed the wording from ‘Try premium for free’ to ‘Reactivate premium’ and whilst it was a good idea to change it, I think the wording is terrible! I listened to a very interesting and revealing interview with ex LinkedIn social selling guru Koka Sexton on the ‘Linking into Sales’ podcast this week. You can listen to the interview here, it’s definitely worth an hour of your time. The most interesting part for me was when Koka revealed that LinkedIn are driven by data and this is why they drop features that many ‘superusers’ love (Answers, Amazon Reading List, Signal etc)

Welcome to episode 162, well I’m still standing! I’m approaching the end of my second week standing and my legs and feet finally seem to be adjusting! I definitely feel a lot fitter and have more energy so I’m going to stick with it. So this week I want to return too the subject of LinkedIn Articles (formerly known as published posts) because I sense that many people are holding back and the main reason for that is that they don’t know what to write about. So this week I’m going to go through my 12 point plan to removing LinkedIn writers block! But first….. Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week LinkedIn are adding a ‘suggested summary’ to your profile and it sucks! This solicitor has one of the best LinkedIn profiles we’ve ever seen…Really?! Sham Uddin’s LinkedIn profile Is Facebook Replacing LinkedIn as the New Professional Network? Alerts Issue: A Listener sent me the thread of an issue they had with job alerts recently. I also think search alerts are playing up at the moment Referral Request Posts It seems

Welcome to episode 161, I’m recording very early this week so please excuse me if any news that broke this week isn't covered! I had a very interesting conversation this week with someone who was sharing their experience with being found by customers on Linkedin. Whilst this mostly happens via visibility through content and engagement, it can also happen via search…ie a potential customer searches for you via a LinkedIn search. We know this is most common in recruitment but it got me thinking about how often if happens outside of recruiters searching for candidates and that in turn made me realize that I hadn’t done any optimization testing for quite some time. So that is the main topic this week, I hope you find it useful. But before that….. Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week Weekly Roundup: Message and Share Comments, Calendar Sync, Personalized Job Insights I also heard a rumour this week that the infamous “I don't know” induced restricted account is no more! It's hard to know if this is true, on the one ha

Welcome to episode 160, the wether has improved in the UK this week and it looks as though spring has finally arrived so I thought that would be a good excuse to take a fresh look at our LinkedIn profiles and see if they are in need of a spring clean But first, I did see a couple of things this week you should know about….. Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week Oracle links to LinkedIn so its salesware can sniff you out What the EU’s new data protection laws mean for UK industry   Profile Spring Clean 1. Is your background image effective? Consider using Relay for this 2. Is your profile picture close up, current, professional and optimised for circular? 3. Are you using your 120 characters in your headline effectively? 4. Make sure your start your summary with contact information (for mobile views) 5. Ensure the first two lines of your summary act as a ‘teaser’ to incentivise the viewer to click on ‘see more’ 6. Make sure your most relevant and important media is shown under your current position. Tip of the Wee

Welcome to episode 159, following my trip to Social Media Marketing World something has been bugging me…..video! I saw so many people broadcasting live video and recording short snippets plus many talks on the subject, I realised that I really needed to ‘up my video game’ and more importantly I realised that LinkedIn users generally need to use video content more. So that is the subject of this weeks episode but before I get into that…… Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week LinkedIn hits 500 million members Interesting to see the average number of connections stats. They are lower than I thought but on reflection, with only 22% of members active on LinkedIn it’s probably about right. I would love to see the number for active users. Check Out the New Podcast Hosted by Reid Hoffman with the most annoying name ever! Check out AJ Wilcox’ article: LinkedIn’s new Matched Audiences feature just blew Facebook Custom Audiences out of the water for B2B Microsoft plans summer CRM war opener against Salesforce Video A big

Welcome to episode 158, it’s been a very ‘buggy’ week this week, firstly connections were in reverse order in the ‘My network’ list then the ability to recommend someone disappeared. Both are now fixed but it is clear that something is going on behind the scenes. I thought I would lighten things up a bit this week and relay a funny story I heard from a listener in the US this week.   Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week Google quietly takes on LinkedIn with its own job listings site New Feature I’m impressed with this new Sales Navigator Lead Builder filter; New Privacy Settings I was alerted to some changes in this article from LinkedIn this week; Updates To Our Terms of Service I was interested to see the ‘Using public data to improve your profile’ setting with the option to switch this off, this is a mobile only feature but when I tapped on it, I got this; Genius! Back to the drawing board LinkedIn! I also noticed a new setting that allows you to merge accounts, this has only previously been something the hel

Welcome to episode 157. It’s about time we talked about groups again, A long standing feature that used to be great but seems to have deteriorated in recent years resulting in very strong rumours that groups are about to be dumped by LinkedIn. But before we get into groups….. Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week More Features Coming to the New LinkedIn Experience ‘Conversations’ or ‘Smarter messaging’ is turning out to be a game changer! Here is the update I posted congratulating those that worked on this feature. Credit where credit is due. Introducing Lead Gen forms How to set up LinkedIn Lead Get forms and sync to your CRM Consumers predict only short term success for LinkedIn This is an interesting article and the survey results don’t look great for LinkedIn but we are assuming that the people surveyed are expert futurists! In addition the survey was commissioned by an email service provider who were obviously keen to show that email has a great future. My take is somewhat different, I’m starting to think

Welcome to episode 156, this week I finally get around to discussing how LinkedIn works across different languages and seeing as I know very little about the subject, I called upon my good friend Luca Bozzato to help out. But first a few updates for you….. LinkedIn have finally clarified the difference between article and post ‘views’ Article views have always been ‘real’ views (ie someone clicked on your post) whereas post ‘views’ are just page impressions, ie it has just appeared on someone’s homepage feed and there is no guarantee that anyone has actually read it. I wrote an article this week about the increasing amount of images posted to LinkedIn that are the wrong size and are therefore getting badly cropped in the feed. The key thing to remember is that your images should a 3x2 ratio, ie 3 width and 2 height. You can read the full article below; Get Your Image Right I also had all kinds of issues getting the thumbnail for the article to look right in my profile. Plenty of attempts and failures later, I

Welcome to episode 155, I’m sorry I wasn’t able to deliver an episode last week, the conference was so ‘full on’ I had no opportunity to put together the full episode although I did manage to record a few short snippets. Now that I’m back, albeit somewhat jet lagged, I thought I would share with you my experiences last week in San Diego But first…… Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week. LinkedIn revamps timeline with Trending Storylines: curated, algorithmic news clusters This seems like a good move on the face of it, note that the trends are personalised so not everyone will see the same posts. It’s currently only available in the US (desktop & mobile) so I haven’t had a play with it yet and I will reserve judgment until then. LinkedIn could be moving firm's IP to Ireland after Microsoft's €24bn takeover So, not happy with making more money from it’s members, LinkedIn want to pay less tax!! Social Media Marketing World (#SMMW17) So last week I made the trip to San Diego, a trip I had thought about making eve

Welcome to episode 154, it’s been a tricky week this week, I had planned an interview with an Italian LinkedIn trainer to tackle the important subject of multi-lingual profiles but due to a combination of illness and power cuts, I had to postpone that! Instead I decided to cover a subject I am very enthusiastic about - research, specifically researching people. But first….. Interesting Stuff I saw This Week LinkedIn’s founder Reid Hoffman has been wondering what to do with himself since he found the the company he had a major stake in had been sold for $26.2B…..tough life! Anyway new parent Microsoft have come to the rescue and offered him a role on their main board. Personally, if I had $2.8B coming my way soon, I think I could find something better to do with my time! The Mission Continues: Joining the Microsoft Board Mobile Update LinkedIn have updated their mobile app. As is the norm, the app store information on the new update was full of interesting facts (note the contrast to Facebook)! Instead we hav

Welcome to episode 153, this week I discuss my thoughts on @ mentions in LinkedIn posts. There seems to be a growing trend out there and I’m not sure it’s all good. But first…… Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week It looks like LinkedIn are making no headway with Russia; Russia says ‘nyet,’ continues LinkedIn block after it refuses to store data in Russia Perhaps Jeff Weiner needs to have a word with his new President…..I believe he has some good contacts in Russia!! Update Last week I featured a question from Jamie…..firstly I used the wrong name! It was actually from Robert Curley….apologies Robert. Giles got in touch with a solution to this issue. Apparently the URL; http://www.linkedin.com/people/invites still works and will take you back to the old sent invites page, this version allows you to see the message you sent (assuming you had personalised the message in the first place) Thanks to Giles Davis for that. New Desktop Design Update LinkedIn are now rolling out more ‘advanced’ filters in search, I don

Welcome to episode 152, this week I’m going to cover the new Neptune design quite a bit as there have been quite a few developments. Firstly a big thank-you to Kurt Shaver, Darrel Griffin and the mysterious ‘LoveWeb’ for giving the show 5 star reviews on iTunes - I massively appreciate your support. Darrel Griffin can also be found on Instagram and is my ‘go to’ contact on anything to do with graphics - especially those we use on LinkedIn. So I have a question - what size should we be making our LinkedIn profile background image? The official dimensions from LinkedIn are 1536 x 768px but this doesn’t seem to work as it zooms into the image. New Desktop Design Update It would seem that there is no way to see your sent invitation messages - this is crazy! When someone has a paid account and the ‘open profile’ feature enabled, it is free to send them a message, this used to be shown on their profile by changing ‘send InMail’ to ‘send message’ but now they have removed this. Video autoplay has been deprecated…whi

Welcome to episode 151 at the end of another traumatic week for LinkedIn and it’s new design! Following on from last weeks episode, I want to dig a bit deeper into what communication techniques work and what really don’t work on LinkedIn. But first….. Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week Workplace from Facebook is now live…..will it cause LinkedIn problems? Are LinkedIn understaffed and overworked?….or just low quality or ignorant? I suspect they are severely overworked and understaffed….ironic for a site that makes 60% of its revenue from recruitment! LinkedIn Salary - Did you know that premium users no longer have to add their salary to be able to use the salary feature. Salary can be found in the ‘More menu’ New Desktop Design Update Now that the majority of users have the new UI, the heat is really turning up on LinkedIn…members are really not happy! Someone has even created an online petition! New LinkedIn - Petition - Bring Back Tagging, Advanced Search and Rankings! Whilst I think it’s important to provi

Welcome to episode 150, that seems like a pretty good milestone to have reached but I think the main celebration will be at number 200! Something interesting I saw this week Well there hasn’t been much news at all this week, it seems everyone is so pre-occupied with the new desktop design (which I am trying to avoid covering in this episode). LinkedIn did announce that they had re-vamped their premium accounts, I’m not sure they have changed much to be honest and Business account holders are still getting a raw deal but there are a few changes worth noting, especially to the jobseeker account which is now called ‘Career’. Here is the article; What’s New With LinkedIn Premium? Coaching If you are interested in a one to one coaching session or just want to have ask for some quick advice, you can book a free 15-minute consultation with me at; https://mrlinkedin.youcanbook.me/ New Book - I need your help I’m starting to research the topic of online relationship building a communication for a book I will be writin

Welcome to episode 149, it seems that the roll-out has now reached about 75% if users so I thought it would make sense to get through some of the many questions I have been receiving. It’s funny for me, I feel like I have been talking about this for so long with very little feedback and then all of a sudden….everyone is talking about it and asking questions! Before I get into that tough, I have a couple of updates for you; Published Post Comments Firstly LinkedIn have officially announced a new feature within published posts - the ability to switch off comments and report inappropriate comments - woop-de-do! Not only is that tame but the blog article announcing it is very annoying! Giving You More Choice Over Your Content on LinkedIn Maybe it’s just me (probably) but I find it hard to read those ‘corporate’ type posts that say nothing at all for the first two paragraphs! Update to Mobile App LinkedIn have quietly added an interesting new section to a personal profile, it’s on on mobile currently but I suspec

Welcome to episode 148, this week I interview a young chap called Jack Parsons who is the CEO of an exciting start-up called YourFeed. Jack and he team are about to launch a brand new website and social network called YourFeed, here is how they describe themselves; Yourfeed is a disruptive online platform that helps ambitious professionals find employment, network with like-minded individuals & gather advice through experienced mentors. The platform connects hiring companies with ambitious professionals favouring skills & ambitions over experience when recruiting. I found this a fascinating conversation about the challenges that LinkedIn face with the younger generation. How can LinkedIn become more interesting to this demographic? How can LinkedIn structure their premium accounts to avoid alienating the younger generation? Is the solution within LinkedIn or is it too hard to cater for such a wide demographic? Do you think this is seen as an important issue to LinkedIn? I would love to hear your views

Welcome to episode 147, this week, I had planned an interview but that didn’t happen so I thought I would talk about something that I know is very important to many of you…..advanced search in the new desktop design. But first…. New Desktop UI Design Update LinkedIn have changed the way the data archive operates. Now you can download a smaller set of data more quickly, this is presumably meant to replace the connections download which has been deprecated in the new UI. Update On last weeks show  I explained that you can create a custom audience on Facebook from your downloaded LinkedIn connections. I still think this is a good idea but it is worth noting that this is against Facebooks rules. Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week Here are the articles I refer to in this weeks episode; LinkedIn Data Reveals the Most Promising Jobs of 2017 Human bot hybrid finds LinkedIn email, phone number-filching holes Microsoft Promotes LinkedIn's Kevin Scott to CTO Advanced Search With The New UI LinkedIn released anew video t

Click here to get your step by step guide on how to download your connections and upload them to Facebook. Welcome to episode 146, this week I have an idea to share with you about what you can do with your LinkedIn connections on Facebook. More of that later, but first….. New UI Desktop Design Update Saved searches are returning (end of Jan) Interests will show in your public profile Contact & personal information will return (end of Jan) Post searches are now available including hashtag searches. It seems as the though the roll-out has accelerated this week and the rumour is that everyone will have it by end of January! LinkedIn Announcement: LinkedIn Desktop Redesign Puts Conversations and Content at the Center Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner Shares How to Effectively Scale a Business in a New LinkedIn Learning Course LinkedIn may move its 10,000 employees off Google Apps – and not because of Microsoft LinkedIn Gives Access to B-to-B Insights Through DataSift Deal The announce

Welcome to episode 145, this week I want to revisit something that so many people ignore or underestimate the importance of….your LinkedIn profile picture! But first a few interesting things I saw this week; An open letter to Jeff Weiner by Oleg Vishnepolsky The main highlights from this were; Anonymous like and dislike buttons Managing your feed Better management of followers/connections Who is most active Who engages with you the most Bookmarking of updates and posts LinkedIn tell Windows app users it is no longer supported…and then say it was a mistake! Russia completes LinkedIn ban by demanding Google and Apple remove the app No Fake news from LinkedIn. Really? These comments are very misleading from Daniel Roth, Editors do not control all published posts and certainly not all updates. That said, fake news is pretty rare on LinkedIn. New Desktop UI Update: There are strong rumours that LinkedIn have had to put the roll-out on hold due to problems. One of the problems seems to be that users are getting the