AI assistants

Since the introduction of Chat GPT, we have begun to see a range of tools/extensions that broadly describe themselves as 'AI Assistants'.

They can be very dangerous!

That plus;

• Font changes on LinkedIn
• The job title search optimisation dilemma
• Could collaborative articles be more important than we thought?
• LinkedIn add Microsoft Designer for AI image posts
• New profile sections in Featured
• Sort feed added to the mobile app

LinkedInformed is a free podcast that you can find and subscribe to on all main podcast platforms and apps. What follows is a brief summary of all the topics covered on this weeks show. If you want to listen to this episode, please click below.

New Features

I've noticed new bold font appearing on LinkedIn in places it hasn't been seen before, either that or they have changed the font type altogether...something is definitely different!

Have you noticed this? I quite like it but it seems strange that not all bold font is like this.

Microsoft Designer added to posts. A limited number of users have been given access to a new AI feature that incorporates Microsoft designer into the post creation feature. This video from Hayley Hudson demonstrates it really well...thanks Hayley ??

I don't have this yet but on the face of it, it seems like a pretty positive step from LinkedIn. I've no idea how MS Designer compares to other tools such as Canva but having the facility baked into the post feature seems very handy to me.

New Featured options. Another new feature I don't yet have is the ability to add sections from your experience section of your profile into the prominent Featured section.

Sandra Clark sent me a video of the new feature in action, the above is a screenshot from it. You can add the following sections from your profile;

• A role from Experience (not sure why you would!)
• Recommendations. An excellent addition, making this valuable feature much more visible.
• Licenses & certifications – It makes sense to highlight them in your Featured if these are appropriate for your profile.
• LinkedIn Learning courses you have undertaken

This is for Premium users only but I'm a Sales Navigator subscriber (paying more than a Business premium subscriber) and I don't have this yet...hopefully that's just a roll-out thing but LinkedIn do have form for not giving their higher premium subscribers features that they should have!

Mobile feed. Another positive addition, spotted by Tonny Mikkelsen is that they have finally added the ability to change the 'sort by' on the mobile feed.

A welcome addition although not one I will be using!

Collaborative Articles.

Nicola Porter, PhD reached out to me this week with the following message;

Collaborative articles have started to appear in my Google alert for “career change” this week! For example, “How can you manage career changes with positivity and proactivity?” There’s no contributors to this one yet. I don’t see many, if any, LinkedIn articles in my alerts and it’s curious that there’s been at least two of this specific type this week for the first time. This might be a benefit for contributors if collaborative articles are being prioritised in this way.?

This could be a very positive development for those dedicated collaborators who thus far just seem to be collecting 'Top contributor' badges with no real benefit to them.

I'm mystified that the only ones Nicola saw actually had zero contributions, maybe LinkedIn have been working hard at optimisation but I can't imagine Google will be too impressed to see purely AI generated articles (that are usually terrible) being sent out in alerts.

I have tried to replicate this but as yet, I haven't found any in Google search results or alerts.

Job Titles

My attention was drawn to this interesting post from Paul Meredith

Does this mean that you need to alter your job title to one of the standard ones provided by LinkedIn?

Not really.

The search algorithm will cover both spellings on a keyword search. I suspect that Help were referring to searching via job title lists…most recruiters won’t do that instead they favour of a keyword/boolean search.

The Help desk are not, in my experience, LinkedIn experts, they merely respond from a manual and the explanation they gave here is typical. It's true (sort of) that you are penalised by typing a job title where someone is specifically searching from the list of titles and this might happen when a non recruiter uses Sales Navigator to find someone...they're normally searching for prospects anyway, in which case it's not a problem to you!

If you want potential customers to find you in a search, they will likely be keyword searching on a free account and will be using keywords rather than job titles...putting those words in your job title (not picked from a list) is actually good practice in those circumstances.

AI Assistant tools

There are lots of differing opinions about AI - some are jumping into it enthusiastically (including LinkedIn themselves!) whilst others are very wary!

I'm somewhere in the middle.

I'm teaching the use of chatGPT in my LinkedIn training sessions because I genuinely believe it can be a very useful and effective tool...when used correctly...

and thereby lies the problem with AI assistants!

I can't pretend to have tried all of them so there might be some exceptions but the idea behind these tools appears to be to make the process of using AI simpler and more seamless. Effectively eliminating the skill required with ChatGPT prompts and techniques.

This is a problem.

Artificial intelligence on LinkedIn should not do the whole task for you, it should assist you... reducing/removing some of the grunt work of commenting or post creation but essentially the post/comment is still authentically you.

The example I will use is a tool I came across recently called EvyAI

As previously stated, all the assistant tools I have seen suffer from the same issue as this one, so I'm not stating that are any worse than others. In many respects, I think these tools are well-meaning but in my opinion, should be avoided.

EvyAI works as a Chrome extension and once installed,will appear as a little purple circle in various sections of LinkedIn such as comments, post creation and messages.

The idea is that when you want to comment on a post, you can simply click on the purple dot and it will write one for you...it's a simple as that!

And as bad as you would (should) expect!

Here for example is a post from Gina Riley

The way EvyAI repeats points made in the post in such an 'icky' way is just horrible and it only gives me 2 questions to ask, neither of which seem great to me.

Contrast that with what I get from ChatGPT when I paste in the text and ask for 3 questions to ask

The questions are not especially better (at least there are 3) but the format forces you to think..

"Do I like any of these?"

Can I think of something better?"

And this is what AI should do...it's power is in getting you passed the hurdle of starting something, the point is not to create something that you simply insert.

I found it was even worse for writing posts but I have found one useful way of utilising this AI Assistant...DM replies to spam messages!

My command is to explain that I'm not interested, the goal to encourage debate in a sarcastic tone...brilliant! ??

On a serious note though, I would strongly advise against these type of plug and play tools which encourage laziness and lead to a lack of credibility and authenticity.

ChatGPT is great for helping you to start messages, posts and comments. You may end up with something very different from the AI version but the process helped you get there.

Post of the week

A light-hearted winner this week with this video post from David Citron ???? who is clearly living up to his headline!

I like it because it's using a video aimed at a different audience and adapting its relevance to his audience.

This type of content may seem simple and moderately effective but it's good practice to show (if in a subtle way) your audience that you understand them and are in effect, one of them.

That's it for this week

Take care