The LinkedIn Podcast Network

It’s been a shocking and concerning week for all of us but nothing in comparison to those in Ukraine or those with relatives and friends there. I have no idea whether LinkedInformed has listeners and subscribers in Ukraine but in case it does, I want to let you know that I’m humbled by your bravery and resolve and hope that you can continue to stand tall against the aggressor.

I also feel bad for many ordinary Russians who must feel hopeless and frustrated at the events of this week.

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In this weeks LinkedInformed;

• What to do if your post gets taken down
• LinkedIn launch a new marketing group
• New features to services page
• CAP expands to India
• Better post analytics coming soon
• Why video captions are important
• New Podcast network
• Does reducing connections improve post reach?
• Post of the week

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week

So what do you do if LinkedIn removes your post? I thought this comment from LinkedIn Help was interesting. Reading between the lines, the AI takes the post down but you can appeal that and only then will human eyes see it. If it ever happens to you, ask them to take a second (human) look!

LinkedIn have shown their support for groups by launching a new one of their own. The LinkedIn Marketing Partner Community group was launched earlier this year and has grown to nearly 800 members in that time. Unfortunately, the quality of content is no better than most groups and the engagement levels are appalling low. It seems that LinkedIn have no better idea on how to run a group effectively than the majority of group managers!

Services pages have improved with the addition of two new features. Firstly you can add a link to your company page, I don’t have this one yet but I can’t say I’m disappointed, it’s a ‘nice to have but meh’ feature in my book. More interesting though is the addition of media. The ability to add presentations and videos to your services page is fantastic, unfortunately, you can only add images for now but other formats will be added soon…I shall start working on my video then!

The?Creator Accelerator Program?has expanded to India. Interestingly they are taking on double the amount of creators in India than they did in the US although I suspect they will be increasing the US cohort soon. It’s logical that India would be next in line…next after that should be the UK!

I was interested to see Tomer Cohens’ recent newsletter ‘We listened to your feedback and here’s what we’re doing + Inspiring conversations about #Creativity, #Accessibility and #Inclusion’.

In this piece, he responds to feedback that members provided about how LinkedIn could be improved. In summary he covered;

1) A better feed. Tomer outlined various existing features that can help with this but offered little encouragement on whether they had plans to give members better control other than to state ‘relevance improvements to surfacing relevant topics, creators, groups, and events’. I’m pretty sure that LinkedIn are committed to keeping the feed AI controlled and allowing members very few tools to personalise their feed.

2) More ways to organize your inbox & connections. In this section, he mainly refers to existing and well-known features but does repeat that they are ‘working on intelligently personalizing your inbox experience so you can focus on what matters most to you. The more you’ll use it, the better it will get’. This has been mentioned before so it’s clearly something in the pipeline but reading between the lines it seems to me that they are planning something more algorithm controlled rather than giving us full control over prioritising our inbox…hopefully it turns out to be both.

3) Career tools. Nothing new mentioned here other than ongoing improvements of existing features

4) Better Post Analytics. This is where it got interesting! LinkedIn will so be releasing better post data. The information we currently get is fairly useless and it’s clear from the screenshot below that they are close to releasing new, improved analytics. It’s difficult to know how much better they are, Tomer doesn’t really elaborate and the screenshot doesn’t look too exciting. It’s certainly nothing to worry Shield but a nice update to see anyway!

I am enjoying the way LinkedIn are now asking for feedback and responding in this way, I would prefer more information about specifically what they are working on and the roadmap but this is at least a step in the right direction.

Video Captions Are Important

The information below has been updated since I recorded the podcast

I was humbled this week when I saw this honest and raw post from the brilliant Clare Carroll

Clare’s heart-wrenching story is bound to make many pause for thought about their responsibilities to be inclusive with their content. Some will change their behavior and others will add captions for a while but after a period of time, they will get busy and forget or feel they don’t have the time to add captions.

The simple truth is that it’s not that easy to add captions/subtitles, not for most ordinary creators anyway. If you only occasionally post videos then adding captions takes time and many solutions cost money. I have found myself not posting a video and favouring a text-only format for this very reason! So what is the solution?

The best solution would be for LinkedIn to automatically add captions to all native videos. TikTok do this and, whilst the accuracy isn’t great, it actually doesn’t matter because you still understand what the person is saying. We con ez a lee interpret incorrect woods, our brains are more than capable of doing that!

But we can’t and shouldn’t wait for LinkedIn to provide a solution. Here’s what you can do;

• Use free apps such as Capcut (iOS & Android) or Clips (iOS) and Voicella (Android). You can view a video Clare made on how to use Clips below.
• If you are time short, don’t worry about correcting any errors. These tools get it 95% right for most people and it’s more important that your video is inclusive than 100% correct and you will get more views if it has captions.
• If you are a desktop video producer then you can try free tools such as Kapwing or Clideo (video below from Gillian Whitney)
• If you really can’t add captions, at least summarise the content of your video in the text above. This is less likely to stop the scroll but will at least give the viewer an idea of what you are talking about (the vast majority of people will not have sound enabled on their phone or computer whilst on LinkedIn).

If you want to make a greater impact with your videos, achieve greater reach and help those who can’t hear you. Use captions!

More useful information can be found from Clare here; How to be an inclusive creator

The LinkedIn Podcast Network. This is great news, LinkedIn are finally getting into podcasts! Actually, they have been producing their own podcasts for some time so it makes sense to create a page where you can find them all in one place but I’m encouraged to see that they have expanded this to podcasts from other sources.

I predicted in January?that I thought LinkedIn would start a podcast directory this year although I was hoping for something built into the platform itself and indexed under a normal site search rather than a separate web page that just links to Apple podcasts, this, however, is a promising start.

My hope is that this is a first step towards embedding podcasts fully into the site as a form of LinkedIn content, eventually leading to the ability to post shows natively into LinkedIn (as we do with video) and providing tools to allow links to podcasts in profiles, posts and articles. Podcasting is huge and still growing and if LinkedIn want to be seen as a content vehicle, they need to fully embrace this medium.

They are also allowing LinkedIn members who have a podcast to submit their show for inclusion in the directory. I have of course filled in the application although I’m not expecting to be accepted. Linkedin have shown on many occasions before that they only support LinkedIn commentators who fully support them and anyone who has a more balanced perspective is ignored.

That said, LinkedIn are gradually becoming more open and mature in their approach…so you never know!

You can read more about this here;

LinkedIn Hopes to Outsmart Competition with Podcasts, Not Reels

I received this question via DM this week from a connection;

Mark, Does the number of contacts on LinkedIn limit the reach of content (thinking of deleting a bunch of old contacts, they will likely remain followers)

Firstly it’s important to note that disconnecting from someone will most likely result in them not following you, unless they chose to follow you before connecting.

This is a complex question but in summary, the answer is yes it can. It really depends on how active you are, if you are engaging with your target audience then the algorithm knows who is most relevant to you. If you are inactive, it has to guess and the more followers you have, the less accurate the guess will be.

Having followers is generally a good thing but the less active you are, the less likely the right followers will see your content. If you genuinely have no time to be active and you have clarity over your niche audience, then it would make sense to only remain connected to those people. That, however, would not be my recommended approach. I would advise growing an extensive following and increasing your activity by engaging regularly with your target audience.

Post Of The Week

Yet another image post wins this week, this gem from James clearly struck a chord with many LinkedIn users. Interviews are very challenging for many people and the work James is doing here is invaluable.

That’s it for this week.

Let me know if you have any questions, comments or suggestions for future editions of LinkedInformed.

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