LinkedIn?? Questions Answered

After returning from a week on a cruise ship taking in views like this...

I came back to find that not a lot had been happening on LinkedIn??. No interesting new features and not many interesting talking points so I thought I would share some answers to questions I had been asked recently on a LinkedIn?? Live I did with Tony Restell

Also in this episode;

• Collaborative articles
• The problem and prevalence of misinformation
• What is the right amount of characters in a text only post?
• 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

Collaborative articles

I've talked about my dislike of collaborative articles before in episode 424 and I noticed this brilliant take on the subject this week from Karen Tisdell

I loved the dog analogy! Needless to say I completely agree with Karen, although I can assure you that a blue Top Voice badge has nothing to do with Collaborative articles. The criteria for blue top voice badges is a bit of a mystery but I never contribute to CA's and I have a blue badge. The Top Community Voice badges, which are orange are the ones you get (temporarily) if you contribute to CA's

Since episode 424, I have had various people tell me that my view is incorrect and that LinkedIn?? have confirmed that they do not feed their AI with the answers given and others have stated that it's no worse than posting educational content in articles or posts, they are all used in AI.

I have several issues with this;

• LinkedIn?? employees are often misinformed in my experience
• The above individuals never like to admit their wrong because it looks bad... they 'should' know but in truth, very few people at LinkedIn?? will know the true motivation behind collaborative articles.
• CA's do not extend session times so why are they so keen for us to contribute?
• If AI answers are sourced from the internet generally and not in the granular way that CA's work then the platform will be much more exposed to misinformation. Providing incorrect answers will put people off using the AI features embedded into LinkedIn??.
• CA questions are very granular and subject matter experts are incentivised to answer them. In addition, other subject matter experts are asked to grade the answers provided by upvoting them. The most popular answer is likely to be nearer the truth and this makes the data significantly better than can be accessed from posts, articles and other information sourced from the internet.
• There is no doubt that CA's do have a beneficial SEO impact but I find it hard to believe that this is their primary purpose...it's 2024, not 2014 and AI is the key focus for LinkedIn??, not SEO.

At the end of the day we can only have opinions, facts are very thin on the ground where LinkedIn?? are concerned so we have to use a mixture of common sense, experience and gut feel when assessing features like this.

For what it's worth, my opinion is that Karen is spot on!

How many characters should you use in a text post?

I loved this informative, data backed post from Ivana Todorovic this week and thought it was worth sharing here.

LinkedIn?? Q&A with Tony Restell

I really enjoyed appearing on Tony's Livestream recently, here are three of the questions I was asked to tackle

This is also a topic I will discussing on Gillian Whitney 's Livestream this week!

Post Of The Week

A big thanks to MARK LEE FCA for this nomination.

A well structured 'selfie' image post from Zoe Whitman that provides valuable and useful information for people who are early into their of time being self-employed.

I particularly like points 12 and 13. Which resonate most with you?

That's it for this week.

Please keep sending in those nominations for post of the week.

Until next time...