Linkedsummit 2023 Review

A special episode of the podcast this week as I talked through my recent experience of the LinkedIn conference in Odense, Denmark.

I can only give my feedback on the English language sessions from Ruben Hassid and Richard van der Blom for obvious reasons but they both provided plenty of gems in their presentations.

Here's the podcast.

But before all that...

New Features

LinkedIn have added a few new features since the last LinkedInformed (maybe more... let me know) and they are quietly testing others as discovered bt Nima Owji

This has been hinted at previously but now it seems it's soon to happen. As with all things AI, it could be great, or a complete disaster depending on how well it works but mainly how people use it. PLEASE don't let AI make you lazy...it's a tool that should improve your content but it will take time and effort to ensure that.

In addition to that, this one looks very exciting!

This could be amazing if they implement it correctly, especially as any templates should be set to the exact correct size...no more need for Canva?

The next one is much more unclear.

There are suggestions that this relates to composing InMails but if you look at the screenshots, it's clearly at the top of the feed so I wonder if this is a form of content search that provides an answer to your question by searching LinkedIn content for the answer, I guess we will have to wait and see.

Nima states that they are also working on the AI assistant being able to summarise articles or posts you see - that will be fascinating to see (and pretty awful I reckon).

LinkedIn & Microsoft are going crazy with AI aren't they?..so many new AI related features, I just hope it doesn't turn LinkedIn into a network of bots!

LinkedIn have also announced a few new things in their marketing blog. The one of interest being Pages Messaging. I've seen some people suggest this is a game changer...I'm not sure exactly how though. If page admins are as responsive to messages as they are @mention tagging then you could be waiting a long time to receive a reply!

Discontinued features.

LinkedIn have announced that they are not going to continue with Carousel posts (not Document posts, Carousel was a new format they had run a very limited beta on) and embedded links into video and image posts. I'm not bothered about those at all but they have (again) dropped a real clanger by getting rid of Profile Video as well!

Once again they are stating that this decision is based on feedback...Who are these people they are asking? Profile video is a great feature and definitely brings your professional story to life...more than most profile features. Either they are asking numpties or they are being economical with the truth!

As AI created content increases, encouraged by LinkedIn with all these new features, they decide to dump one feature that really helps us prove that we are real and not created by a bot!

Honestly, the decision making process adopted by LinkedIn baffles me!

Anyway, if you want to add or update your profile video, you've got until the 26th June, it remains on your profile it's just that you won't be able to add one after that date.

Linked Summit 2023

Firstly I want to start with the amazing and incredibly hard working organiser of the conference Mette Will . Seeing her in action, before, during and after the event showed me just how meticulous she is whilst always remaining calm and collected. Well done Mette, you should be very proud of yourself and your team.

I also got to meet some long term Danish listeners to the LinkedInformed podcast. It was great to finally meet Greete Eluri (who I can thank for suggesting me as a speaker), Leif Carlsen who has been a regular contributor for years and the man himself Tonny Mikkelsen . Danish people are so warm, friendly and very genuine.

I loved Odense (pronounced "ooh-den-sa"). it's a beautiful little town and well worth a visit.

Now to the two speakers I had the pleasure of seeing in action

Richard van der Blom

Richards talk was great, packed with useful tips and information and delivered by a clearly very accomplished speaker. I'd never met Richard before but we enjoyed a great time together with our partners the night before - I've always enjoyed reading his research and advice but I enjoyed his company even more!

I go into much more detail in the podcast but for now, here are my takeaways from his presentation;

• Be unique on LinkedIn, both in your profile and content
• The 3 A's of LinkedIn - Be Authentic, Active and Approachable
• Profile banners should not all look the same for employees of an organisation. Brand consistency is important but let employees choose which they use from a selection.
• Profiles should be customer centric (I'm a bit wary of this one which I discuss in the podcast)
• Only 34% of your feed will be from 1st tier and 12% from different connections. This is definitely not the case for my feed!
• 3rd party news is good content as part of a mix. I agree but don't use links for this.
• Use an ending paragraph on every post with your details an encouraging viewers to ring your bell. I don't do this but it's a decent idea, I doubt many actually read this...but it only takes one to make it worthwhile!
• Video content is poor for views but great for conversions
• Posting at the weekends can work well for some (this depends on your audience and whether you are prepared to engage at the weekend...I'm not!)
• Likes have very little influence on a posts distribution.
• New - You can now edit and comment on your post with no penalty from the algorithm.
• Senior exec content is underutilized but a growing trend as organisations realise their Page has very poor reach
• Consistency is really important for content but this is not the same as frequency. 1 post every wednesday morning for a month is better than 5 in a month but delivered inconsistently.
• Don't use a CTA in your profile, it's far to salesy for LinkedIn, instead focus on CTT (Call to think) and CTF (call to feel)

Ruben Hassid

This was Rubens first ever public speaking engagement...you would never have guessed though, he was fantastic and had a real stage presence. When we chatted beforehand we both realised that he was 11 years old when I delivered my first LinkedIn workshop! That made me feel very old!

Ruben Hassid is currently the #2 creator on LinkedIn...which is quite an accolade, although I don't really know what that actually means! Either way, his content is fantastic and he's well worth a follow if you are interested in understanding and keeping up to date with all things related to AI and ChatGPT...I'm finding the pace of new developments and apps is a minefield and hard to keep pace with, Rubin's content makes it all so much easier to cope with!

My summary of Rubens talk 'The Great AI Marketing Takeover. Embracing the Inevitable'

• ChatGPT sources it's information from Wikipedia, Reddit and over 3 million books.
• Chat Prompts are a real science! Ruben explained how you really need to master this skill to get the most from AI and it's important to spend a lot of time giving ChatGPT lots of relevant information and then fine tuning your prompts. He made it clear that AI is not about being lazy and cutting corners.
• The best way to prompt is to be as 'human' as possible
• The 'Tree of thoughts' is a technique he demonstrated for ChatGPT where you ask it to brainstorm 5 ideas, then pick one and ask it to provide 3 ways to do this. This gradually works through to a solution. You're the boss and the AI tools are doing what you want, you decide what you want by filtering and refining through the process.
• All the images used in his presentation were created by Mid-Journey.
• He also showed us a video of how AI can interpret brainwaves which may result in us being able to see our dreams on video...insane!
• He showed us how he created a brilliant Vogue cover from scratch by combining different AI tools (see below)

Summary

Why don't more countries run LinkedIn specific conferences? Richard travelled to Norway to present again at Linkedify, an equivalent event in Oslo but I'm not aware of other conferences elsewhere. In the UK we have generic social media conferences and events that will include LinkedIn but surely the LinkedIn community is big enough to justify an independently run (I wouldn't want LinkedIn involved at all!) LinkedIn specific conference. Denmark only has 3m+ LinkedIn users and Norway even less! Surely the UK (35m+), France, Italy, Canada and the US should be doing something similar!

Post of the week

I saw this in it's first hour and it had already attracted loads of engagement.

It's clever because it combines and entertaining video with a commercial message with a sprinkling of sarcastic humour...what's not to like?

Well done Andrew McIntosh a well deserved winner!

That's it for this week, take care and keep the suggestions and questions coming in.

Take care