The F word on LinkedIn!

Fake, fake, fake!

Fake profiles are everywhere! And they are in danger of killing this valuable resource

What can LinkedIn do to stop them and what can we do to help?

This week, I talk about this important subject and Candyce Edelen shares a story that reveals how far some organisations go to 'game the system'.

Also;

• A retiring reaction
• Mobile scheduling
• New Emoji picker for posts...but do we know what they actually mean?
• More visibility for your Newsletter
• Follow or connect confusion
• The 10 most followed pages on LinkedIn
• Why don't LinkedIn want us to see a list of the most viral posts?
• Post of the week

Did you know this article is a summary of this weeks LinkedInformed podcast? You will get far more from my conversation with Candyce by listening to the full interview. You can listen below or just search for LinkedInformed on your podcast player of choice.

News

Nima Owji posted on Twitter this week that he had noticed that LinkedIn are potentially removing the 'Curious' reaction. This follows on from the recent introduction on the funny reaction, which is far more useful.

Not great loss there...I'm not sure I've ever used it and I doubt many others have either and when they did on my posts, I could never work out if it was a positive thing or not!

It looks like the introduction of post scheduling - which I have used this week and I'm very impressed with, is soon going to be seen on mobile. I don't have this yet, do you?

A new Emoji picker has been added to the create post box. I guess this can be useful, although as aMac user this doesn't really save me any time and it's missing the most useful feature - a frequently or recently used section! The funny thing about emojis is that each one has a specific meaning but most of us either get it wrong or interpret it differently. This creates all kinds of challenges especially across generations as covered here in this interesting article.

Newsletters are becoming more visible via two new features. The first one is a notification that is sent when someone elects to follow you.

The second one is that your newsletter shows underneath your name in search results. This is currently the case for your hashtags (pretty useless) and your Services but it's a welcome addition to have your Newsletter listed there too. I haven't seen this myself yet, have you?

LinkedIn seems to be encouraging others to connect with us, even when we have specified that we prefer followers! I have noticed that in my feed I often see posts from 2nd tier connections (as a result of engagement by someone I follow) and a very prominent, colourful option is to connect with them;

But when I go to their profile, their primary button is to follow!

So why are LinkedIn encouraging a connection invite when we specify we prefer followers? I appreciate that some people prefer connections but are forced into the follow first option by selecting Creator mode but many of us chose followers as a preference so this seems counter-productive!

The 10 most followed company pages (that post content) have been announced by LinkedIn in this article;

No great surprises really although it's nice to TED amongst them. I have to say though that the quality of company page content is so much better these days as these organisations now take LinkedIn more seriously. Those that are publishers (Economist, Harvard BR & Forbes) are falling well behind though and need to take a leaf out of the others books.

1. Amazon  Followers: 28.5M. This is a really good page with great content

2. Google Followers: 26.9M A decent page with a good people focus

3. TED Conferences Followers: 23.0M Great content as you would expect and not just talk videos

4. Microsoft Followers: 18.3M Surprisingly good with a mix of useful stuff and people focus

5. Unilever Followers: 18.1M Good people focus but very recruitment orientated

6. Forbes Followers: 17.9M Not great! Good if you like business news but you're going to have to subscribe to get the full article.

7. IBM Followers: 14.6M It's OK with a decent blend of content. A bit boring for me

8. Nestlé Followers: 14.0M Not great, mostly selling to you or advertising jobs

9. Harvard Business Review Followers: 13.7M. Poor. Mainly just posts a link to hbr.org where you are given some free content but pitched a subscription

10. The Economist Followers: 13.0M. Poor for the same reasons as above but slightly more information in their posts. Just used as a funnel to get you to subscribe.

TIP: Don't just follow company pages, set alerts by clicking their bell as you are not very likely to see their posts in your feed.

Viral Posts

This is an odd one. Josh Valles posted a carousel with this list he had produced and it was taken down by LinkedIn! Apparently someone reported it as copyright infringement even though he credited every one of the people who participated and all he was doing was sharing publicly available LinkedIn content

Anyway, Josh has a workaround if you want to see his report;

Fake Profiles

LinkedIn are trying hard to battle against bad actors who create fake profiles, many of us have been crying out for better controls for years, especially regarding the way that anyone can claim to work for any organisation they wish! Finally LinkedIn have responded by introducing profile verification by email - the tel number equivalent must be designed to stop bot farms as it's pretty useless for us.

There is a lot wrong with the way they are going about it but at least it's a step in the right direction. LinkedIn seem to have got themselves in a bit of a mess when deciding to implement verification via the 'My company' tab instead of just making it a straightforward email verification. As it stands there are glitches and an unnecessarily slow roll out but I'm sure we will get there eventually.

Candyce shared with me an interesting story that demonstrates the lengths that some organisations will go to and how profile verification, as it currently stands, will have little impact on such techniques.

This is a summary of what Candyce shared during our chat, you need to listen to the podcast to hear the full story.

• A Franchise consulting company that sold leads to those selling franchises created multiple fake company pages and fake employees
• 96+ companies were found and over 1600 fake profiles (probably more now)
• Many of the profiles had exactly the same name!
• Banned LinkedIn automation tools are used to send thousands of invitations out to potential prospects.
• Those caught unaware were then spammed a series of direct messages selling the benefits of being a franchisee.
• Those that took the bait and expressed an interest were then sold on as leads.
• LinkedIn automation providers are now recommending that their users create fake profiles to work around LinkedIn's invitation, DM and profile viewing restrictions. They simply wait till one is banned and then create another!
• The person that reported this scam found his account got temporarily banned for viewing too many profiles...how ironic!
• LinkedIn automation tools will always exist so long as there is a market for them. Many LinkedIn users are tempted by these products, without having bad intentions but they are the ones who are effectively facilitating the bad actors!
• We can play our part in protecting LinkedIn as a valuable network by reporting profiles, accepting that LinkedIn's bots (LinkedIn describe as 'one of our team') will probably reply with a message stating non-violation but we should persist and push for a real human to take a look.
• You can also use this form to report fake company pages or profiles.

I believe LinkedIn can and should be doing a lot more to protect us and it's annoying that their recent initiatives seem to put the responsibility on us to spot fakes but despite that we all need to do our bit and join the battle.

If you know someone who is using automation, take them to task and explain to them that they are being naive and short sighted, as I did in this interview with John Nemo some years ago.

Post of the Week

This is great from Mehdi Soodi, PhD. A topical person and a topical subject that is guaranteed to get a response from the LinkedIn network.

It's well crafted and structured and puts a different light of some of the negativity surrounding Elon Musks management techniques.

At the time of writing this post has over 65,000 reactions, nearly 10,000 reposts and an impressive 4325 comments and all in 11 hours!

Thats it for this week, I hope you found that useful and remember...please stop the automation idiots!!