Storify Your Profile

It’s great to be back from almost two weeks of crystal clear sea, white sand and clear blue skies…honestly!!

I had a feeling that things would happen whilst I was away and I wasn’t wrong…so we have some catching up to do in this edition of LinkedInformed! I’ve also been thinking about profiles and what we could do to make our profiles more interesting and personalised so I’ve come up with some ideas. More of that later but first…

This article has also been recorded as a podcast;

Linkedinformed on Google podcasts?/?Linkedinformed on Apple podcasts

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week

CEO Ryan Roslansky did an interview with WSJ this week where he talked about some new features;

• New ‘No political content’ setting. On the face of it, this seems like a good idea. At the moment it’s only being tested by a small cohort in the US and I do wonder if this is one of those features that will not be seen outside of the US (because US politics are the only ones that matter - right?!) but only time will tell on that one. He was a bit vague about how they would define what ‘political’ means other than stating that the editorial team would be involved as well as community feedback plus ‘semantic classifiers’ which is a fancy way of saying keyword searching! I did some further research on this and found this article which explains that “political parties and candidates, election outcomes, and ballot initiatives” would be targeted. This got me thinking about a wider point - is this really a feature or just something they add to make us feel better? in other words, is this setting actually connected to anything under the bonnet, or is it a dummy switch? I suspect it is real but it’s an interesting thought…Would LinkedIn do something like that just to give us the impression that we have some control over what we see?
• Live Audio and Video events. Nothing new to us here although we still haven’t seen these new live video events, different from Livestreams which are seen as a broadcast rather than a multiple-person live event.
• Creator mode. What I found interesting is that, when asked about compensating creators, Ryan focussed on the Creator Accelerator Program and referred to "compensation for their knowledge". I’m increasingly getting the sense that CAP is as much about LinkedIn learning from creators who are successful on other platforms as it is about these people learning how to publish successfully on LinkedIn.
• Profile Video. WSJ referred to this as cover story but whilst I have been away this feature has changed for some into the newer ‘profile video’. More on that below.
• Other points of interest for me were the way Ryan referred to Gen Z on a couple of occasions, it’s clear that this new audience is one LinkedIn are paying a lot of attention to. Also when asked about the prevalence of spammy messages Ryan referred to InMail only which suggests that LinkedIn take no responsibility for spam we receive from connections…that’s on us for connecting in the first place (fair comment in my view) and stated that they were “working on new UI and relevance models that will create a cleaner inbox”. I’m curious to know what that will look like, surely if someone sends an InMail, it has to be delivered, irrespective of relevance? Perhaps the UI part is telling in that we may see a secondary inbox for less ‘relevant’ InMails.

Cover story becomes ‘Profile Video’ but you would be wise to hold off using this new feature for now.

LinkedIn have improved the cover story feature by adding analytics, well that’s a slight exaggeration, they give you a view number! but your profile pic also appears throughout LinkedIn with a blue/purple ring which indicates that you have a profile video that can be seen by clicking on the photo. This goes grey once the video has been viewed. You can also send a DM to connections directly from their profile video but not to anyone else (although you can view their video)

This feature appears to have been designed for gen x who are used to discovering features by playing with functionality, however for the vast majority of users this will never be noticed unless LinkedIn do something to make it more obvious - perhaps a pop-up box next to the pic or even better, the 3-sec preview plays in the small thumbnail in the same way it does in the profile.

Even worse, by accepting the new feature your cover story video will no longer be viewable by the vast majority of viewers, only those that also have the feature will see you new profile video. Kevin Turner explains it well here;

This looks like a decent feature although I’m not overly excited about it, it’s an improvement on the cover story, not least because it has a more appropriate name! That said, I would avoid using it until the feature is rolled out to the majority of people on LinkedIn. Premature installation may mean you lose your cover story video for most profile views for months (depending on the speed of the rollout).

Microsoft will be adding a LinkedIn profile link into MS Teams chat. I can imagine that this could be fairly useful in large corporates, It’s not clear if it will be available for all Teams meetings or just internal ones.

I’m pretty impressed with the way MS openly shows their product rollout roadmap in this way, perhaps LinkedIn could do the same thing?

Improved search UI in Sales Navigator.

and Account search filters

The design is definitely an improvement and there appears to be a few new filters plus the list of technologies used in Account searches has been extended and it seems like the ‘posted in the last 30 days’ and keyword in posts filters reliably work now, which is great news.

The ‘Past not present’ company filter has gone but you can select and company to exclude in current employer, which is effectively the same thing.

I also like the icon that indicates the filters that are unique to Sales Navigator.

You can also see someones recent posts directly from the shortlist as seen below which makes it quick and easy to find engagement opportunities.

Storify Your Profile.

LinkedIn recently invited feedback on the design of profiles in this post, it’s great that they are involving members more in this way. At first, I wondered if we really needed to change profiles again but reading the comments on this post (which I advise you do) really got me thinking.

Click above to read the comments thread

Following on from last weeks LinkedInformed where I covered personalising content, I feel there is more we can do to make our profiles more interesting, revealing and authentic…why don’t we bring our experience section to life by adding videos to tell the story of our career to date.

I’m not suggesting we repeat on camera what we have or would type into the experience section but we can add some extra ‘spice’, some interesting insight by recounting anecdotes and stories relating to each role in our profile.

I have recorded a short video for each position in my career and uploaded it to YouTube, it’s unlisted so only people via the link can view it. I then add the relevant link to the media section for each position. This is by no means a new feature (it would be much better to be able to add native video) but it’s a great way to give the viewer more than just boring facts about your career and work experience, it brings your story to life and gives people a much greater insight to who you really are (in addition to what you’ve done).

By giving the video thumbnail a consistent theme (easily done in Canva), it’s easy to realise that they are all of a similar nature.

The downside is that these thumbnails are pretty small and in a section that is far down my profile so maybe few people will see it but on the chance they do, it’s worth making the effort to add something extra and unique to your profile.

What do you think, would you do this?

Peter Gold got in touch with the following question;

I made up the term ‘social swarming’ but it's what some organisations do. Basically, one person posts on LinkedIn then loads of other employees comment on the post with "wow, what a great post" or "hey, you're so right, this is such an important topic" etc. but also then tag in people e.g. What do you think Name Name Name Name

Most of their posts are just a swarm of internal people adding comments with loads of people tagged in the comments but they "think" it's a great idea and gets them loads of views and extends their network. Not sure if you've seen this before but would be interested in your thoughts and maybe it's something for you to talk about?

Answer: It's often a pretty naff game to play and it doesn't look great either...that said I guess the counter-argument is that if it achieves the objective of reaching more of the right audience, then it's justified.

If this results in several comments and engagement from people outside of the business, then it's worked. In my experience though, organisations that do this tend to do it, use poor content and the result is that the only engagement comes from their own staff, because they are told to - that looks really bad!

If the content is good and the comments from staff are considered and meaningful, I think there's no harm in it and it should be encouraged...provided the staff are also commenting on other posts from people outside of the company.

Engagement pods work in the same way but 99% of the time, the comments are 'great post' etc which the algorithm is less interested in. Comments that take time to write will always have a greater impact on distribution due to the dwell time factor.

People amuse me the way they get excited about 'gaming the system' - the truth is that by being an active engager on LinkedIn, you will get better results than any so-called hack!

Post Of The Week

Another difficult week where I had to choose between 3 very strong contenders. All were image posts with thousands of reactions and comments but this one achieved the highest comments total which edged it ahead for me…it’s honestly nothing to do with the fact that I’m in my fifties!

Nicola only has 673 followers and the post could have been structured better but it just goes to show that the quality of the message is always the most important thing with content.

It’s relevant and highly relatable for many LinkedIn users - well done Nicola!

That’s all for this week, take care and I will be back very soon.

This article has also been recorded as a podcast;

Linkedinformed on Google podcasts?/?Linkedinformed on Apple podcasts