LinkedIn and ChatGPT

Welcome to the 382nd edition of LinkedInformed.

This week I continue my journey with ChatGPT, I discover why it's called a 'chat' and learn how to utilise it better in LinkedIn posts, articles and profiles.

Also, Microsoft results show modest sales growth for Linkedin but they have now reached the 900m member milestone.

Plus a couple of new features and a joyous post of the week!

LinkedInformed is a weekly podcast that you can listen to on Apple or Google podcasts, Amazon music or Spotify (below). If you subscribe on your podcast player app, the next episode will automatically download to your phone.

New on LinkedIn

Just a couple of new features to report, firstly LinkedIn are making newsletters more visible by highlighting them in the profiles of those who have subscribed.

Whilst it's not entirely clear where we will see this information, the inference is that they will either show in the 'Interests' section in 'Highlights' when you view a profile - or probably both.

The most interesting thing about this new feature, which in itself is no big deal, is the reaction that others have had to it. For some reason, people are feeling angry that LinkedIn will tell people which newsletters they have subscribed to! Is this any different from telling others which INfluencers or companies you follow or which groups you are a member of? I'm baffled by the negative reaction.

The second change is that all those pointless birthday, anniversary and job change (less pointless) notifications have all been moved to a separate page under the 'My Network' section as reported here by Matt;

Not a bad move this one, at least I think so but I don't have this feature yet so I will reserve judgment.

Microsoft Results. It's always interesting to keep an eye on LinkedIn's sales growth and this quarter they have achieved a 10% growth, driven by their talent solutions business. This time last year they were achieving 37% growth so quite a drop. I'm wondering if the ads business has been hardest hit as organisations tighten their belts.

The LinkedIn membership number has reached the 900 million milestone, I wonder if they will reach a billion this year? I doubt it as they added 90 million in 2022 but you never know. The total number of members is a pretty irrelevant figure though as only c310m are active monthly also don't forget the 54m in China aren't actually proper LinkedIn members because they only use the job site InCareer. Here is the membership data for the whole world;

ChatGPT

In the last episode I said I had started experimenting with ChatGPT and tried to produce this article from a transcript of the podcast (1 hours worth). It was a complete disaster! So I picked myself up and started to research the topic more and many podcast listeners got in touch to offer their thoughts and share their experience.

One of those was Michael Frackowiak who has even managed to produce an online course on the topic! I haven't been able to talk with Mike in more detail about it yet but watch this space for that.

Another listener and possibly the most helpful and generous person on this planet is Rachel Kanarowski who went to the trouble of spending a considerable amount of time on Zoom, patiently walking me through her recent experience of using ChatGPT.

I go into much more detail in the podcast but in summary, this is where I'm at;

• ChatGPT is definitely a tool we should be using on LinkedIn
• The main areas to consider using it are; Profile 'About' section - Posts - Articles - DM's
• It's named 'chat' for a reason. The idea is to develop a conversation thread with the tool, providing instructions and feedback until you get to a result you are happy with.
• Due to the above point, authenticity is less of a concern because part of the redirection is to instruct the tool to produce words and a style that are authentic to you. The danger here is that we can be guilty of seeing something and thinking 'I like that'! but you must always ask yourself...'It might be good, but is it me?'
• The tool works best when you are clear with your instructions but don't be afraid to keep pushing it and even pivoting your approach...it's a robot so it won't be offended or get tired if you keep changing your mind!
• Even if you don't end up using the content, the process described above becomes a bit like a brainstorming session where ChatGPT acts as a sounding board and helps you to clarify your thinking!
• It can be really helpful in giving your headline and 'hook' ideas for a post or article.
• It can understand how to make a sentence/paragraph 'more sales orientated' or 'more factual' 'more divisive' etc etc which is really useful.
• It wasn't very good at converting a post text to make it 'more comment-worthy' but I think I need to work on this as my instructions may not be clear enough.
• In theory the tool should learn from you and start delivering better content over time, this is apparently better if you use less chat threads rather than a new one for each piece of content.

Here are some examples of the sort of things I have been experimenting with;

The following is a question I often get asked and I'm never 100% happy that I have explained it well, so I thought I would see if ChatGPT could help me...

Whilst much of this is how I have been answering, I found the succinct version (not my strength!) very helpful. Interestingly I hadn't considered the 'load on servers' factor at all!

Here's another example relating to a post I did this week. I find it useful to consider all the counter-points when you are about to ask a question, especially if you want to develop a good conversational thread on your LinkedIn post. So I asked the question before posting and I found it really helpful in preparation for the post's engagement.

Note how good it is at delivering bullet point lists, it can also do this for a longer article or post and I found it was frighteningly quick at doing so!

It's early days for the tool and I found it often crashed on me, especially in the afternoon/evening (UK time) when I assume more people around the world were using it but I'm sure this will improve.

I suspect it won't remain free for long but you never know, they might find other ways to monetize.

There are also other tools you might want to consider experimenting with. Ian Brodie got in touch to let me know about a tool that is really good at writing headlines, amongst other things. It's called Bearly and my first impressions were pretty positive, although I haven't really used it much yet.

Daniel K. Berman, PhD also got in touch to let me know that there is a new tool called GPTZero that is designed to help us spot content produced by ChatGPT! I can see this being especially useful in the education sector.

It's very early days for this tool and when I asked it to check a few things I had done on Bearly and ChatGPT, it concluded that both were likely written by humans! I can see this being a useful tool to check before posting anything to make sure it passes as human!

Conclusion

I believe that, in the right hands, ChatGPT and AI generally can be fantastic tools that can help to improve the quality of what you write on LinkedIn. It's really important though to see them as assistants that can help you become a better writer and a better version of you...the key word being YOU!

This is an ongoing investigation and experiment so please get in touch with your thoughts and please share your own experience with me.

Post Of The Week

I didn't receive any nominations this week but this one was from the end of last week and there is a lot to like about it.

It might not have gone viral but with 332 reactions and more importantly 302 comments, it's a pretty good result for a 'quote post'.

What I like about this post;

• A strong opening line and hook ensure that more people click on 'see more'
• She approaches the topic from a personal perspective. Her experience and her thoughts are prominent.
• There is personality in the post, reading it I can get a better sense of who Jo is - the use of humour helps in this regard.
• The use of bullet points makes it easier to read
• The conversion from a personal angle to a business one 'That got me thinking about how we treat our teams...'
• She finishes with a question to encourage engagement.

So well done to Jo Richings Business and Executive Coach - you may have been poorly advised on what you put in your name field but you certainly know how to write a great post!

That's it for this week, have a fantastic week ahead and I look forward to seeing your feedback.