Appropriate posting for a company?

I'm back from a wonderful two weeks in Greece...back to a windy and wet UK (summer lasted two days apparently!) So to warm myself up, I got stuck into the following topics in this weeks podcast;

• Should a company be posting this?
• Congratulations you are in the top ten experts list!
• Four new features
• LinkedSummit 2024
• Post of the week

Informed is a weekly podcast which you can listen to and subscribe to for free on any podcast app. These notes are merely brief overview of what I covered in the podcast so do listen to the full show on Spotify below or simply search for 'Informed by Mark Williams' on your podcast app of choice

Humble brag posting has been a thing on LinkedIn?? for many years, predominantly seen from individuals wanting us to know about some good deed they have done or some achievement they are particularly proud of.

We also know that the LinkedIn?? community love posts that feature personal stories, especially heartwarming tales.

It's also common for companies to brag about their achievements but less common to see personal stories and it feels wrong to see a company telling a tragic but also heart warming story about one of it's employees.

This post was nominated for post of the week and to be fair, it's done really well.

But is it appropriate?

This is undoubtedly a lovely gesture from the company and I really don't believe they are trying to use the post to promote their brand...but in reality, that is that is the outcome!

I wanted to highlight it here as a warning to company page admins...yes this sort of story will appeal on this platform but it's important to carefully consider the outcome. What exactly is the purpose of this post? Why do you need to post it?

If an employee or another individual who witnessed this produced a post like this, it would be entirely appropriate and the company would no doubt be seen in a positive light but publicising this from a branded company page is not OK in my opinion.

What do you think?

Beware of 'Best of' or 'Top experts' lists

I'm not going to name names but many of you will know which recent one in particular I'm referring to.

"You've made it into the top ten XYZ experts in the world list...congratulations"

These lists are invariable just a load of experts in a particular field with a decent following on LinkedIn?? and the idea is to flatter them in this way in the hope that they won't be able to resist publicising their 'achievement'. This list is usually sponsored by a company desperate for the publicity or an individual who 'strangely' appears in the list as well!

I often receive messages from innocent connections congratulating me on my achievement and I always feel guilty for not thanking the producers of the list...after all it's a win/win right? Well not exactly! Awards and lists like this rarely detail the criteria used so in my book they have no credibility.

In the past I have asked to be taken off such lists but it feels so ingenuous to do so! I guess that's the psychology at play here, they want to make you feel proud and grateful so that you will publicise the list to your followers and in turn gain they gain more visibility and credibility.

I'm sorry, I'm not playing that game!

What's new.

Not a lot actually when you ignore all the irrelevant cosmetic changes, perhaps the LinkedIn?? Engineers have been on vacation! The changes of note I have seen are as follows;

New left side panel on desktop. This is mostly cosmetic but they have removed the followed hashtags from here, further reinforcing my view that hashtags are pretty much dead! You can still find them but it's a bit convoluted!

• Search for any hashtag and click on it in one of the posts in the search result.
• That will take you to the page for that hashtag and you can then see your followed hashtags at the bottom of the left panel although clicking on the 'Followed hashtags' link there appears to be broken as it takes you to people you follow (this will probably be fixed soon).
• The best way is to click on the 3 dot menu top right of the hashtags page and you will see the option to 'Manage your hashtags'
• Given how convoluted this is, I would suggest you bookmark that page in your browser for easy access in the future.

Disappointingly (for me at least) is that saved posts are still not easily accessible here, I know some people are seeing a direct link but for my account it still comes as a secondary item under 'Saved Items'. This is in stark contrast to the mobile app where saved posts can be accessed easily with a right swipe and one tap.

Post search filters have changed for some, Kevin D. Turner reported recently that some people are seeing 3 extra date ranges under 'date posted' as seen below.

This might just be an A/B test at this stage but I think it's a promising development, typically posts beyond a year old have been very difficult to find. My guess is that it won't get past the testing stage because most normal users wouldn't have a need for this...unlike me!

Newsletter articles when seen in an email are being shortened to 600 characters plus the main image for some people (with a link to read the full article). This may only be a test but it's worth noting that we need to be mindful of making those first 600 characters count!

In a further desperate attempt to get us to populate their AI database with our expertise, LinkedIn?? have added a new 'contribute expertise' option to the start a post section...despite the fact that collaborative articles are in no way related to posting!

To add insult to injury the link is broken and does nothing when clicked! I expect that will be fixed soon but it really does show how desperate they are getting to try to get us to contribute!

If you want to be kept informed of all new features, I would suggest you follow Kevin D. Turner or Lynnaire Johnston . I will only comment on features that I think are of some significance.

LinkedSummit 2024

I was honoured to be asked to speak at this wonderful LinkedIn?? conference in Denmark again this year. It was brilliantly organised again by Mette Will and I thoroughly enjoyed meeting up with old friends and new acquaintances this year.

Many of the talks were in Danish and I wasn't able to attend Jasmin Ali? 's keynote as I had to leave early to catch a flight home but I did manage to see Richard Moore 's excellent keynote at the start of the conference and got to spend a bit of time with Richard in between sessions, I'd seen a lot of him on LinkedIn?? but never met him before - really nice guy and we had lots in common.

Richard van der Blom delivered an excellent session as he always does using a combination of research data, common sense and humour. This is the 3rd time I've spent time with Richard and he is great company.

You will be surprised though to learn that my favourite session was one about company pages superbly delivered by Michelle J Raymond !

Michelle has been on the podcast before and delivered a noble defence of company pages and I was excited to be able to meet her in person (even though I didn't get any TimTams Michelle - ahem!) and whilst company pages really aren't my favourite topic, I thought she delivered an extremely well paced, informative and enjoyable session.

I guess she does have the advantage of talking about one LinkedIn?? topic that is a bit of a blindspot for me and that automatically made it more interesting. I wrote more notes in her session than all of the others put together - that's not to say the others weren't good, just that they spoke about topics I know inside out.

A few of those notes for you;

• Repost employee posts because it shows that you (the company) care what they do and appreciate it.
• Her 3-2-1 strategy to content. 3 'Good to know' posts, 2 'Good to feel' and one 'Good to buy' - that seems like a really good ratio to me, most page admins tend to adopt more like a 0-0-3 ratio in my experience!
• Be memorable with your brand content and consider using a fictional character to represent the company on LinkedIn??.

Another non-LinkedIn?? tip I picked up was to place copies of her book on the front two rows, therefore encouraging the audience to move forward! Excellent speaker tip that one!

It was also great to catch up with Tonny Mikkelsen , Nanna Sondrup ?? Nathalie Bassanesi Line Dobronyi Johansen , Jacob Elton and Thorleif Gotved

I also had some great conversations with Ivana Todorovic and I was so impressed on how much AuthoredUp has developed since I last used it. It's such a brilliant product and really not that expensive so if you are regularly creating content, it's well worth checking out.

Post of the week

Thanks to MARK LEE FCA for this nomination, it's an excellent text only post, a format that many ignore but when structured correctly and a topic that is as polarising as this one, they can really work well.

Robert is sharing a personal story about a business situation that many will be able to relate to.

So many of us work so hard to find new customers and when we have the opportunity to pitch to them, it's very easy to ignore the red flags that are clearly evident in this story.

It's never easy to turn a new customer away, especially if you lean towards pleasing others but red flags should never be ignored because customers like this usually turn out to be a nightmare to work with and end up timing much more of your time and energy than most customers.

Robert Fenech was smart enough to spot the red flag and brave enough to act on it and his story is a great reminder to us all of the benefits of doing so.

That's it for this week, please get in touch if you have any suggestions for future topics or any post of the week nominations.

Until next time...