Linkedinformed Podcast. The Linkedin Show

Show notes News LinkedIn imposes a limit of the number of group messages that can be sent. Confirmation that the commercial use limit on search is not just the amount of searches but also the number of profile views. Groups lose stats feature but gain a new 'about' page which includes the members section. 27,000 US intelligence staff on LinkedIn revealed in a recent report. LinkedIn introduce 'who's viewed your posts' feature. LinkedIn celebrate their 12th anniversary by featuring members stories, I especially enjoyed this one. India surpasses 30 million LinkedIn members LinkedIn's share priced dropped below $200 last week and still remains weak. Commentary This new web product claims to assess someone's personality from their LinkedIn profile. It sounds crazy but my experience is that it is amazingly accurate! Here are the results for me; If you haven't done so already, check out my new Winbusinessin podcast, this week I interview 'The Headshot Guy' John Cassidy about profile pictures. Question Why do so

News The LinkedIn advertising hack that gained a company $100,000 funding for a penny! LinkedIn Announce their Q1 results. Financial analysts are OK with the results but hate the revised prediction for Q2 and shares plummet! Sponsored update advertising grows by 40% and the number page views grows at impressive rate again. LinkedIn hints that the Lynda.com acquisition will result in 'cross selling models and integration'. What exactly will this mean? So this is why LinkedIn bought all those copies of Reid Hoffman's new book Commentary LinkedIn published posts desperately need a 'read it later' feature. We all lead busy lives so the chances of having the time to read a long form post when we see it are limited. Perhaps a feature similar to Twitter's 'favorite' link would be the easiest option. At the moment I suspect we are kidding ourselves if we believe the 'read' numbers as people who have actually read the post. What do you think? Drop me a line at mark@linkedinformed.com. Question. This week's questi

Show notes News  LinkedIn applies for a patent to check the accuracy of facts and statements in profiles.  LinkedIn spends $500,000 on buying Reid Hoffman's new book.  $115,000 are donated to a local teen centre  America's three most hated companies;  Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn!  This Chinese article about fake accounts is a timely reminder to us all. Are you frustrated with the commercial use limit on search?The following searches are all "free" and do not count against your monthly allowance Alumni search Fieldof study search Connections network search Tagging  Are InMail responserates dropping? Questions How do I post a job on LinkedIn for free? ANS = There are four ways in which this can be done;  A job discussion in a relevant group  A personal status update  A published post  Company page update (pinned to the top)

News Yahoo Mail Contact cards Key senior executive leaves LinkedIn Update on the Lynda.com deal LinkedIn launch their new corporate Elevate product LinkedIn are top payers! Commentary Check out my new podcast Winbusinessin Tip - This is what to do if you can't save a 2nd tier to contacts Keywords in name fields. It works from an optimisation perspective but it is still against the rules. What are your thoughts? Drop me a line at mark@linkedinformed.com Question How many different type of emails do LinkedIn send you and how can you stop them? ANS = There are 20 different types of emails (excluding group emails) which can all be controlled from within your settings. Go to Communications> Set the frequency of emails.  

News Character from Ex-Machina film has a LinkedIn profile - even though she is a robot! Update since recording - it looks as though this profile has been taken down. If you have a really good post that you believe should be featured in a channel on Pulse then you can try tweeting @linkedinpulse to ask if they can help to get it promoted.  Lynda.com is acquired by LinkedIn for $1.5billion! The Mashable article about LinkedIn's acquisition of Lynda.com Jeff Weiners post about the deal Lynda Weinmans post Viveka Von Rosen's profile Commentary Sponsored updates appear to be an attractive option as opposed to normal adverts on LinkedIn but there is a downside!

Show notes News I had a reply from the person whose published post achieved over 3 million views and she doesn't know why it was so successful! LinkedIn acquire Refresh LinkedIn's April fool joke University offer premium accounts to 1000 students The latest big thing in social media? Periscope is a live video streaming app from Twitter and it is amazing! Commentary Interesting article that lists 10 LinkedIn invitation templates. Some are pretty cheesy and I would always suggest writing your own but these may help get you started. Tip: Consider contacting some people who have viewed your profile. I saw a potential prospect had viewed my profile and as a result of contacting him I have generated some new business. Questions I keep seeing this nonsense on my LI feed. This and various other mathematical questions  trying to get a million 'likes'. I generally only see them because one of my contacts comments. To me they have no place on LI. But why do people do it and is there a way to stop it? ANS = I thi

Show notes News LinkedIn finally bring their Jobs app to Android A member increases their profile views by 425%! LinkedIn settles battle over email invites A LinkedIn post gets 3.3 million views...and they are not an Influencer! Interesting new 'search relevance' feature added to LinkedIn Recruiter Commentary The mystery of the 'Certified LinkedIn Publisher'. Brain De Haaf's profile and the Google search (below) that proves he did have the phrase in his profile Kathy Caprino's profile The Publishers group where my question has so far been conveniently ignored! Questions I no longer receive an email from LinkedIn when someone accepts my invitation to connect. Has this feature gone or are my settings wrong? ANS = Firstly the feature does still exist, I received an email just this morning. Your settings may need re-adjusting and it might not be your fault as it appears that this settings has had a recent facelift! Go to Settings>Communications>Push notifications and make sure that the relevant box is

Show notes News LinkedIn Expands Efforts to Help Colleges Keep in Touch With Students and Alumni JP Morgan episode 3! Another financial firm acts like a communist state! LinkedIn acquires employee referral software firm Champion puzzle maker creates a LinkedIn crossword. 53% of the top 250 LinkedIn posts are not from Influencers. Excellent analysis of the characteristics of a successful LinkedIn published post Commentary Featured article: How do you find time for LinkedIn?  Questions The new home page seems to be feeding information that I do not wish to see (connections, group posts etc). How do I switch this off? ANS = Unfortunately you can't, whilst there is a section in your settings to select what updates you see, it is clearly not working! The help center are saying it is a known issue. I suspect they completely forgot about this setting when they re-vamped the homepage. It is very frustrating because from I can see (which is harder with the new design) the number of views has plummete

Show notes News LinkedIn improve their sponsored InMail service The JP Morgan saga continues A new study analyses how 'happy' politicians are from their LinkedIn profile pictures Commentary Florist posts an image update that goes viral Two ways of searching that are outside of the commercial use limit; Alumni search Field of study search LinkedIn appear to be testing a new way of customizing invites Read this article about social selling and let me know what you think. I think this sort of attitude will lead to sales people getting left behind, the changing nature of sales needs to be embraced. Questions How do you convert a personal profile which has been created with a company name into a genuine personal profile without losing the connections. This is a situation that I have experienced previously and you have to be very careful in how this conversion is handled. Here is my recommended process; Download the connections of the company account. Change the name of the company account to the same nam

News An insight into LinkedIn's mobile strategy JP Morgan's global Head of Technology has sent out a memo advising staff to make their profiles sparse of information to prevent Recruiters from finding them on LinkedIn. Commentary WHo has the keys to your profile? Add multiple email addresses to your LinkedIn account to prevent your employer from hijacking your account when you leave. Two ways to post updates with links and images; Post from a company page where status updates have not changed and like or comment on it from your own account. Paste the link into the normal update box but make sure that there is no gap between it and the previous word, then attach your image. Subscribe to my FREE email updates service to be kept up to speed with changes like this. Questions I am in the top 5% of profile views in my network. Is this important? ANS = Yes, profile views are a form of engagement and engagement will help to get your updates seen by more people.

Show notes   News   LinkedIn pay a measly $1 compensation to users who had their password stolen. Company pages get a new feature - notifications. A bank is accused of asking it's employees to limit the information in their profiles so that they won't get headhunted. Company sue former sales employee for taking LinkedIn contacts with them and lose because the contact list was “easily discoverable through public sources” and did not involve a lot of effort to compile, it would therefore not be considered a trade secret. Quite right to! This article can be found here but warning - its a subscription site (with a free trial). Sex offender nearly gets into trouble for using LinkedIn. Commentary   Follow up to my piece about LinkedIn ads last week. Carl sent in this funny screenshot which shows how the algorithm picks up words and feeds 'relevant' ad's to you! Could LinkedIn be considering 'retiring' groups - My prediction is that groups could be gone by the end of this year. The new homepage design hints that sta

Show notes   News   LinkedIn deliver impressive results for Q4 2014 as detailed here in their official announcement. They have grown membership to 347 million users and revenue for Q4 was $643m, a 44% increase on the same period last year and a total turnover exceeding $2.2b for 2014. Some of the more detailed commentary about these figures can be read here. LinkedIn launches the volunteer marketplace in the UK. LinkedIn further restrict their api making it almost impossible for anyone to develop apps that allow us to use LinkedIn in new and innovative ways. Commentary   I finally got the new home page today and I totally hate it! The major issues seem to be; You can't post a link into the text with an image status update (the workaround is to use the comments section) You no longer see the performance of your previous updates, only the most recent. There is no easy way to see how many connections you have. On the plus side.............oh, nothing!  Have you considered using a showcase page for search optimis

Show notes News The LinkedIn Connected app comes to Android LinkedIn have started suggesting downgrades to premium account holders - very odd! Princes Trust uses a fake homeless person profile to highlight homeless teenagers to potential employers. What are LinkedIn going to do about fake profiles? Creddle is a new CV / Resume maker from your LinkedIn profile View Art Flater's profile - go on, I dare you! Strong Q4 results expected from LinkedIn which are likely to boost other social media stocks. As mentioned I recorded this episode earlier in the week than normal. Since this the Q4 results have been published so I will cover those in more depth in the next episode. Commentary Blogging for the masses - the effect of LinkedIn publisher. With 1 million posts and more and more users starting to publish posts could LinkedIn publishing be the tool that makes blogging mainstream? In my opinion there are approaches to publishing depending on your objectives; Objective is to build your personal brand within your

Show notes News NY Times offer 16 weeks free online access to LinkedIn premium members. Is this is sign of things to come? Condoms designer gets a breakthrough via LinkedIn LinkedIn's job search app comes to the UK. Another new rival to LinkedIn, this one is French and called Amplement. Belgium TV network 'stalks' people on LinkedIn to publicise its new TV series. Top San Francisco venture capitalist backs LinkedIn saying "Its not a human resources company, it's a data company". Quite right too! New YouWorth app uses LinkedIn skills to estimate your worth in the job market  Commentary What new LinkedIn app would you like to see? We have a listener who could make it happen. Leave a voicemail (link on the right of this page) or email me at mark@linkedinformed.com Recruitment company does tracks clients new connections and triggers a sales lead alert. LinkedIn may be introducing new Temp/contract features to profiles. New website launched for LinkedIn users who want to grow their business. Question When is

show notes   News LinkedIn for blue collar? I think this is great news and fits with my idea of 'LinkedIn Local'. Shapr. A new rival to LinkedIn? I don't think so but it does look interesting and solves the issue of keeping in touch with your closest contacts. 6 lessons we can take from the best company pages of 2014. Its that time of year and when the dreaded 'Top profile buzzwords' article comes out. Journalist's love it...I think its tosh! Commentary Anonymous viewers. Universally unpopular but does it really matter? Why I advise against reciprocal recommendations. Questions Showcase pages vs affiliate company pages: what are best practices? Is it worth investing time and effort or will they end up going away like product pages? ANS = An affiliated page is a company page that can be affiliated to a parent page. This can work for subsidiaries or acquired company's and might be useful when a division/subsidiary wants to have its own unique set of Showcase pages. Showcase pages are designed to c

News Facebook is still the top social network. This survey reported that only 13% of LinkedIn users visit the site daily in comparison to 70% of Facebook users. Scammers are using LinkedIn as a way of bypassing corporate spam filters. LinkedIn will be launching new intra-company communication tools. Is this a move to counter Facebook at work? Beware of phishing emails purporting to be from LinkedIn that are designed to steal your username and password. Always use unique passwords, I use 1Password to help me manage this. Update The new LinkedIn search restrictions and how to get around them. This is mainly an issue for recruiters because the commercial use restriction appears to be 40-60 searches a month. Two viable alternatives to upgrading your account could be; 1 premium account per office (that everyone uses when needed) Google X-ray searching Premium accounts seem to have reverted to the previous options for some (including me!) How do you listen to the podcast? If you haven't already why not subscr

Show notes News LinkedIn announce that publishing rights will be extended to 230 million users Taliban leader lists 'Jihad' as a skill on his profile Dutch footballer Demy de Zeeuw promotes himself on LinkedIn as available for a new club. Football agent posts that he is looking for the next Xavi or Kroos, on his LinkedIn page! Main Story - LinkedIn change search result visibility again. Commentary My LinkedIn wish list for 2015 Scheduling of status updates and posts Instant messaging via a Skype integration or LinkedIn own proprietary system LinkedIn message/InMail 'read' notifications Common meaning for simple words like 'views' for instance a post view being the same as an update view. The ability to share image based updates with individuals (see question below) Question What is the best way to ask others to share my status update? ANS = Rather than  putting something in the update or comments I would advise sending the update directly to those you know are most likely to help you. The video below expl

show notes News The top 25 skills that got people hired in 2014. Bryan Mills (aka Liam Neeson) will endorse your skills if you win a contest! Interesting to see a major film studio using LinkedIn to promote its latest movie release (Taken 3) and even more interesting to that LinkedIn are completely fine with this! Could Viadeo be a viable acquisition target for LinkedIn? Tax inspectors in Turkey use LinkedIn to catch tax evaders Commentary Do you want to find your 'future self' on LinkedIn? When you think about it you could and LinkedIn could make it even easier if they released tools to make it easier to predict your future based on real data from other profiles. Where is Jeff Weiner taking LinkedIn? I love this article and agree with the three areas that they believe LinkedIn is focussing its future on. Thanks to my two wonderful kids James & Anna for 'volunteering' to be interviewed for this show! Finally may I wish you a very merry and happy Christmas. 2015 is going to be a great year for LinkedIn

show notes News LinkedIn have issued the following email to all premium members regarding the new InMail policy. This was originally announced to Recruiter and Sales Navigator users but as I suspected it is going to affect everyone (InMail is after all InMail!)   LinkedIn Introduces a brand new design for their home page. My thoughts are that it looks very sparse (minimalistic) and has a 'mobile feel' to it - one of the main people involved with the design was Joff Redfern who is the VP of Mobile so perhaps that explains it. I don't like the intrusion of the very prominent 'Jobs you may be interested in' (see below) especially as this account (Colin) has opted out of this in their settings!   In addition the difference between a status update with an image attached and one that simply brings an image across from a website link has increased making the attached image option much larger and therefore more effective. Below you can see the same update done twice, the top one