Settings & Stuff

These are the notes that accompany the latest LinkedInformed podcast episode, for a more detailed narrative you can listen to the show by clicking the image above

Welcome to episode 262, I hope you had a great week.

I thought I would cover a more educational topic this week by going through a very important but often ignored part of LinkedIn – your settings!

Once I started recording I realised this was far too big a subject to cover in one episode so I will break it down across 3 or 4 episodes. This week I’m covering the Account settings.

But before all that….

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week

• The Linked Inn, our pop-up pub, finds a new home in Grimsby
• Has LinkedIn dumped one of Sales Navigators best features? This week many people have reported that the popular ‘posted in the last 30 days’ filter has mysteriously disappeared! Is this a glitch or are they phasing it out (many still have it) or perhaps they are making it a Team edition feature only, as usual, we have to guess because LinkedIn like to keep secrets! If so, this is a really bad move by LinkedIn.

UPDATE! 24th September - This feature has now returned. Nobody knows what happened, presumably a glitch but fortunately it's back and all is well!

Find Nearby. I have attempted to use this feature at two events this week and it is a complete mess! Since the update, it really doesn’t seem to appear for many people and even if it does the ‘on all the time’ feature seems to have been dumped…that didn’t last long! As per usual, LinkedIn are saying nothing

New features

LinkedIn have now started to roll out Skills assessments. This seems a better measurement of a skill than the comical endorsements feature although it would be pretty easy to cheat. Only time will tell if it proves to be something valued by employers and recruiters. You can read the full announcement here

Find an Expert.

Tap Your LinkedIn Network to Fill Your Project Needs

This is a strange one and I haven’t quite figured it out yet!

It seems to work in two ways, firstly on mobile-only, you can post a request for services via the ‘find an expert’ link at the base of a new post screen (see below). I have done this to test it out and had zero views or engagement! it doesn’t seem to be an ordinary post and possibly has a limited distribution, either that or it actually isn’t working properly yet (good work LinkedIn!!). You can see the post here

The second way is via search. They have added an extra filter called ‘Service providers’ on desktop and mobile. This currently has a very short list of categories but that will expand no doubt. Some people are seeing this now, other (like me) can only access it by clicking on this link (provided you are logged into LinkedIn)

The search results it throws up are very odd. In theory, it should be people with the new ‘open for business‘ feature enabled but in practice, I was getting a shortlist of relevant profiles on premium accounts but with no ‘services’ showing on their profiles!

Dare I say it but it looks to me like LinkedIn have released a new feature without properly testing it!

New Items In The Feed.

I have noticed recently that group posts (conversations) in groups I am not active in are appearing in my feed

Also, I noticed a Sales Navigator alert in my main LinkedIn feed

Something I’m Pondering

Are document posts favoured by the algorithm?

I’ve noticed that the view numbers on doc posts seem to be unusually high compared to the amount of Likes, Comments and Shares they attract.

6 out of my top 10 viewed posts of all time are document posts….and I’ve only posted 8!

John Espirian had 3 doc posts in his top ten and he has only posted 15 which is 4.5% of the total number of posts he has analysed.

Why is this?

One theory is that they attract clicks, just as with the ‘see more’ effect on posts, the algorithm sees a click as a sign that people are interested in the post and therefore sends it out to more people. A ‘see more’ is just one click but a document can have multiple pages to click through.

Another theory is that LinkedIn are falsely boosting distribution of doc posts until they are fully established. Doc posts have been around almost a year so I doubt it’s a time period factor, more that they reduce the boosting once the feature is widely adopted.

Either seems plausible to me. What do you think?

Either way, it’s reminded me to do more document posts!

Settings & Privacy

How often do you check your settings on LinkedIn?

This may seem like very dry subject but I think it’s very important to regularly check your settings. This is partly because they change from time to time and also because your circumstances may change.

To get to your settings;

Desk?top

> Click on the ‘Me’ menu

> Select Privacy & Settings

Mobile

> Tap on the small round profile pic top left

> Tap View profile

> Tap on the cog – top right

Now you will see there are four sections. Account, Privacy, Ads and Communications.

Account

• Make sure you add all your email addresses, not just your main work one.
• Phone number. You can add a number to add an extra layer of verification when you sign in
• Password. Make sure it’s unique from any other site you use (especially email) and change it every six months. I would strongly recommend using a password manager 
• Where you’re signed in (desktop only). Always worth an occasional check but don’t be too alarmed if you see something weird, I quite often do and have seen no problems occur as a result. If you don’t recognise the location and the IP address is not yours then simply log out in this page and then change your password
• Two-step verification (desktop). If you tend to log out of your account then this can be a worthwhile step for extra security
• Languages (desktop). You can set your preferred language which means you will see LinkedIn in that language and you can also set your translation langue which is for the feature that will translate posts for you.
• You can switch off auto-playing of videos.
• Profile photo visibility. You really should be showing this to everyone – many people have found that (unbeknown to them) they are only showing their photo to connections – Well worth a check!
• Feed preferences. This takes you to the page where you can follow INfluencers and other people you may find interesting, companies and hashtags. You can also see the list of who you are following and well as your followers
• Name, location, Industry. This actually takes you to the edit screen of the top section of your profile.
• Subscriptions and payments – this where you can see the details of your premium account as well a payment history section where you can download receipts
• Partners & Services – This is where you can see your connected Microsoft services, Twitter account and WeChat plus any other apps you have given permission to connect with your account. This ‘permitted services’ section is well worth a look as you may find several obsolete services/apps listed which you can remove.
• Account Management – Here you can merge a duplicate account. All you need to do is enter the email and password for the duplicate and LinkedIn will add any unique connections to your main account.

I’ve only recently noticed Scott’s posts and when you look at his back catalogue he is consistently generating great results with an average of 894 reactions and 141 comments per post! I wanted to feature this one because it’s a document post, a medium Scott utilises really well in many of his posts.

Is it worth using Hashtags on LinkedIn? I’ve been using them for a couple of months now and I’m seeing no difference in views, likes etc. Am I wasting my time?

Answer: Great question and I can relate to it because I’m not seeing a great impact from an engagement perspective either, but I am seeing a significant increase in views (over 400%). I’m pretty sure that LinkedIn’s advice on using 3 max is just hot air, there appears to be little evidence that this makes any difference, although I’m still testing that. That said, I think it’s wasting time and makes a post look messy to have too many.

I am still recommending people use them because I do believe in the ‘double impact’ theory ie if a follower also follows a hashtag you use, they have double the chance of seeing that post – it might not actually be double but I am seeing evidence of double impacts in my feed, admittedly it’s more about multiple engagements than hashtags but I can believe it would be impactful. The problem is that not many people are actually following hashtags, but that could change.

In the end, typing a few hashtags (2-5) doesn’t take much effort, especially as LinkedIn will suggest using your most commonly used ones. Always remember to include 2-3 relevant hot hashtags, you can find the hottest ones in this list from Andy Foote

That’s your lot this week!

Have an amazing, productive week and let’s hope I have reason to say more positive things about LinkedIn in the next episode!