The Collaboration Con!

Are you sure you want to be providing LinkedIn?? with your hard earned knowledge for a badge?

Do the benefits of collaborative articles add up?

That plus;

• An update on the revamped Services section
• A voice message tip
• Sales Navigator improvements
• New profile photo feature
• Another new 'Pay to spam' feature update
• B2B Deep sales playbook. Useful or a Sales Navigator ad?
• Are LinkedIn Corp' Sales professionals using LinkedIn???
• 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 LinkedInformed on your podcast app of choice.

Services.

Sandra Clark got in touch last week to add some further information about the update to the services section which has moved down our profiles to beneath the About section. I explained last week that we can at least add native video to this section but apparently that is only for Premium users, for free users the services looks exactly as it did, with a simple list of your services but now hidden much lower in your profile. If you are a free user who previously uploaded a video link, this will appear on your full services page but not in your profile.

Voice Messages.

I really like this feature and almost always get a reply when I use a voice or video message but it can be a bit frustrating to not know what the message is about, without listening to it (which might not be possible the moment you see it).

MARK LEE FCA sent me a few voice messages this week and I was really impressed by the way he added a line after each one to tell me what they are about.

This is a good technique to adopt but it strikes me that this could be a feature of voice and video messages - We are asked to add a headline topic before or after recording our message. What do you think?

Sales Navigator.

I continue to be impressed with the improvements they are making to Sales Nav'. This week I had a play with Account maps which have improved with a new 'drag and drop' interface.

Plus a new feature that allows you to attribute roles to 'roles' to Leads in your Accounts maps.

I really like this feature and it's looking more and more like a full blown CRM with the added bonus of the Leads and Accounts being 'live' rather than static records that you have to update manually.

Well done to all concerned in continually improving Sales Navigator. It really is getting quite sophisticated these days!

Profile Photo.

It's not exactly a game changer this one but you can now take a profile pic on your desktop, previously it was only possible on the mobile app. Not that you should! A good profile pic should either be taken by a professional or use an AI app such as Fotorama or on desktop Profile Pic maker to create something much better than you could do via your webcam. My hope is that this marks a change in attitude from LinkedIn?? regarding desktop use of LinkedIn?? and might lead to the ability to produce video and audio messages from the desktop...here's hoping!

Group Messages.

I saw a post from Melanie Goodman this week about the fact that group messages have been restricted to 10/month. Previously we have been able to send unlimited message requests (slightly different from an actual DM) to fellow group members, from within a group but this is now restricted...a good move as this feature has been mainly used for spamming in my experience. 10 messages each month should be more than adequate for any genuine users.

My issue with it is that this is not the case for Premium users which is another example of LinkedIn?? adopting a 'pay to spam' policy!

Deep Sales Playbook

The sales solutions team have recently released a new playbook;

Deep Sales: the B2B sales playbook to boost revenue in 2024

LinkedIn?? are making a big fuss about this but I'm not too impressed. These playbooks are released by the marketing department and, despite the appearance of being 'independent research' are nothing more than a thinly disguised sales pitch for Sales Navigator!

Deep sales is simply the process of understanding your target clients...nothing new, or especially clever about that but such intelligence can be easily gathered by using guess what...Sales Navigator!

This got me thinking about how Deep sales can be practiced on free LinkedIn??, which is more than possible, especially if you spend time engaging with the right people - either through great content or via commenting on relevant posts. So how do LinkedIn?? own sales team rank amongst other LinkedIn?? users?

1. Do they post?
2. Does their content attract engagement?
3. Do they engage with other content (other than colleagues and their own page posts)?

So I did a bit of basic research and looked at their UK based sales teams (sales solutions and Talent solutions).

• Out of 174 people, only 36 were posting on LinkedIn??, 2 of which seemed to produce some decent content.
• Most content was simple reposting (with and without thoughts), often content originally generated by marketing.
• A high % of their content was self-serving promotional crap!
• I could find just one post that generated more than 50 comments and that was mainly from colleagues
• Very few demonstrated that they had a commenting strategy in place. Most comments were very basic such as 'congrats' and 'amazing, well done'

Don't get me wrong, this is not exactly unusual for a large enterprise but this is their tool!

Which brings me to the main issue I have with Sales Navigator. It encourages a direct approach, not one aimed at visibility - it's great at what it does but those that use it soon become pretty invisible on LinkedIn?? which does not help generate inbound leads. This seems to be the case for LinkedIn corp' sales professionals.

Collaborative Articles

Some love them, some think they are ridiculous and others are just baffled by them. LinkedIn?? seem to be doubling down on them and I think I know why!

Let me ask you this question...

What tangible benefit are you getting for contributing your knowledge and experience to collaborative articles?

I've heard several answers to that before but I'm still struggling to find one that compels me to spend valuable time adding my thoughts and knowledge to this AI generated articles.

Who actually sees your contributions? The reality is that other potential and actual contributors do but not your prospects and those you wish to be more visible to. I haven't see CA's appearing in

Granted, the badge looks good but it's only going to last 60 days unless you keep up the same momentum and as more people fall into the same trap, the harder it will be to get a badge!

Here's a different question:

What benefit are LinkedIn?? getting from this?

That's much easier to answer! Your knowledge, hard earned experience and considered opinions are being used to feed their AI machine, you and thousands of others like you that will soon build a library of fantastic knowledge.

It's classic gamification. They just know that we can't resist a chance to show off our knowledge and the lure of a gold shiny profile badge is just too tempting!

A new feature recently introduced is an 'unhelpful' downvote on your contribution.

As yet we don't know what impact this will have on you but the opportunity for misuse is significant especially as the people most likely to see it are competitors! They can already report your contribution via the more menu which, according to someone who contacted me this week, results in it being deleted and there is nothing you can do about it!

I also came across another 'hack' this week - if you search for questions with only 2 contributions (with one that has no likes) you can add yours, refresh your screen and then 'like' it to bring your contributions into the top two! That's also really bad design!

This week, I contributed to a question about podcasting and explaining how the medium is a uniquely 'intimate' one in that allows you to get to be in the ears of your listeners and that contribution was immediately taken down presumably because 'intimate' is a red flagged word...problem was that I couldn't amend it and take that word out...I was done on that question, no second chance! Another example of bad design!

These issues may improve in time but the fundamental fact remains that this feature is designed for LinkedIn Corporations benefit and they get far more out of then we do!

Post of the Week

Before I get to the winner, I just wanted to bring this heart wrenching and very sad post to your attention as I believe more people should see it.

I didn't know Daniella but she was so young to die and her words are beautifully written and very moving.

If you’re reading this then it means I have died

Rest in peace Daniella

Now to the winner from Andrew Tindall

Here's what I like about this post.

• It's a great hook line and clever use of white space allowing for just those words above the image.
• He explains why he thinks it's a great ad with 3 clear points.
• He doesn't ask a question to entice engagement, that happens because he is making an opinionated statement - some agree, some don't but it makes for an interesting comment thread

Well done to Andrew and a big thank you to Caroline Palmer for the nomination.

That's all for this week.

I hope to see some of you soon at UpLift Live and if you haven't booked your ticket yet...why on earth not?!

https://uplift-live.com/