What do you want LinkedIn to change?

"Members first" says LinkedIn in order to achieve their mission statement " to "connect the world's professionals to make them more productive and successful." But continuous changes and the lack of proper communication about these choices are making it difficult for their members to keep up. Therefore let's make a list of all the things we want to be fixed.  I will start giving my input for a better LinkedIn.

The last few years LinkedIn has become more and more important for the majority of their members. Many people and organizations rely on LinkedIn for their online sales, recruitment, marketing and jobhunting activities. I am a heavy LinkedIn user and fan myself, multiple hours online every day, subscription on Sales Navigator as well as Recruiter Lite and exploring new features every day. Of course it is logical that LinkedIn is developing and evaluating a lot of new features. However, I recently see a lot of updates mentioning the dissatisfaction and disbelief in the way LinkedIn is evolving at the moment. So here's the plan!

Let's make a list with all the things LinkedIn should have a look at. With the first 100 ideas (you can give your input in Dutch or English  by commenting on this article) I will draw up an infographic and send this in an open letter to LinkedIn.

Connecting

Why is connecting with new people still challenging? Why do I get a lot of spam invitations from people without a personal message? Why does the LinkedIn app still contributes to poor invitations?

1. 
   You haven't changed the invitation bullets since 2010? Could you have a look at the options please and reconsider some of them?
2. Based on your mission, why can't I simply invite people I do not know yet? Only inviting people I already know, just doesn't make any sense to me!
3. Why is the personal note optional? Make it obligatory and the spam invitations will decline drastically.

Timeline

Sharing knowledge is an essential part of the strategy of LinkedIn and 'engaging with insights' is important for your Social Selling Index (SSI) score. But the current "timeline" on my homepage is not helping at all in noticing valuable content. This is what I would like you to consider:

1. 
   Every day LinkedIn shows me by default the Top Updates, would it be possible to have an option to select Recent Updates by default?
2. It's great that people share content, but with the overload of irrelevant puzzles, riddles, Facebook photo's and annoying sponsored content, it has become impossible to find valuable content. So please bring back the possibility to filter these updates by using "keywords". Yes, bring back LinkedIn Signal (removed on July 29, 2013) because it had tremendous value for certain users.

Inbox and messages

What has happened to my Inbox? My archive has been messed up completely. When clicking on "Unread" I have tons of messages that don't belong there! Searching for a specific message has almost become a full time job.

Saved Contacts & Editing Information

First I thought that this was an early April Fools' Day joke. Unfortunately it wasn't! Not only did you disabled the possibility to save a contact (without already be obliged to invite them as a connection), but also you removed the ability to edit, add, or remove contact information from other members' Contact Info section!

Ofcourse I know the reason for this! As you can read in this article from my colleague Jan Willem Alphenaar, the ability to find someone you don't know through LinkedIn, and save them as a lead, is something that LinkedIn wants to provide to salespeople and recruiters using products that are built specifically for them - such as our Sales Navigator and Recruiter tools.

But that is not the way you have communicated with your members, is it? We all can see this is an excellent feature with great (sales and recruitment) potential, and that's exactly why you have made it exclusive for paying members. Fair enough, but please don't beat around the bush!

Communication

Which brings me to my last point, the incomprehensive way changes are communicated by LinkedIn. Of course I do follow your blog and read your e-mails, but why do I sometimes have the feeling decisions are not in my advantage?

Now it's your turn

So now please leave a comment (dutch or english) with your ideas, thoughts or input for an even better LinkedIn. I will collect and categorize your input and present it to LinkedIn in an infographic as soon as I have about 100 comments.

Do you want to connect with me? Please send me an invitation with a short motivation and I will be happy to accept.

Previous longposts in English:

Most important lessons in Social Selling from #SalesConnect

About the author: Richard van der Blom is a Social Selling and LinkedIn expert, member of the "European LinkedIn Thinktank" and organizer of the annual LinkedIn Benelux Congres. By giving training and advice he supports the transformation of sales teams to "Social Selling teams". Keynote speaker on the topics "Social Selling", "Social Business" and "Firm of the Future".