Of Algorithms and Disappearing Acts
I will keep this post short and sweet!
These days LinkedIn seems to more than ever driven by an algorithm and disappearing acts. Both Free and Paying customers are impacted... There are lots of questions and few answers...
1. Algorithm(s)
After 4 months of new LinkedIn user interface, it seems several challenges are surfacing for many of free users (and even paying users).
- The LinkedIn algortihm is King and we are becoming its slaves. No more choice between Recent Updates and Top Updates is makes following your network much harder not to say impossible. This being said I have seen that LinkedIn might be experimenting on bringing this feature back.
- The new algorithm de-values posts in Groups and Company Page updates. They get NO to very limited exposure (except if you pay). With this devaluation and less visibility being the case it is becoming impossible to convince clients that posting to pages makes sense and is worthwhile (unless they are willing to fork over money).
- Finally, the algorithm can be blamed to hide all alerts that your connections expanding their network with new connections. Valuable for all those social sellers amongst you.
The effect of the algorithm is devastating for the free users (85% of all LinkedIn users) but even paying users are affected. LinkedIn keeps on being very secretive about the existance of this algorithm as is the case of the Social Selling Index. It is clear LinkedIn just like Facebook want companies and people to pay to get visibility. The time of the free lunches seems to be over.
2. Is there a Houdini in the house
Escaping from the strait-jacket!
About 10 years ago LinkedIn had under 80 million users and whenever a connection expanded his/her network you were informed. That was great!
With the success of LinkedIn crossing ove the 250 million members, this types of messages/alerts were starting to dominating your timeline. LinkedIn's answer was to move these alerts to Recent Updates. Whenever you wanted to view who has new connections you could change the view and et voila!
Now with the new interface the functionality has completely gone! Or not... here is my Houdini trick.
- Get an account on Hootsuite
- Add you LinkedIn personal account to it
- Create a stream of your home timeline
- Et voila, it is back! No filtering here
One thing one can say about LinkedIn is that they keep you on your toes and keep you being creative to get access to functionality once deemed normal. So what other Houdini tricks are you using since the new LinkedIn interface?
Corporate Communications Manager at N-SIDE
7 年Regarding posts published via a company page: wouldn't targeted posts now gain more exposure to their audience instead of posts systematically published to all followers?