What Should LinkedIn Be?

Should LinkedIn primarily be a source of information or a networking platform?

This article has also been recorded as a podcast;

Linkedinformed on Google podcasts / Linkedinformed on Apple podcasts

Inspired by an interesting post I saw about the problems associated with posts that contain links, it got me thinking about what LinkedIn is and how that varies across the user base. More on that later but first…

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week

New ‘Repost’ action on posts. This looks like an attempt to improve the effectiveness of re-shares. I was contacted this week by Dawid Hanak who sent me this screenshot of the two actions he sees when clicking on ‘Share’

At first sight, I was somewhat confused in that it just appeared to be a faster way to share but on closer examination, it appears to be very different from a re-share (the second option above). The problem with re-shares appears to be that we don’t want to see second-hand content and so they usually perform really poorly. This new feature just puts the post directly in the feed of your followers, see the example below

This is no different from a reaction as far as I can see. I’m informed who has reposted at the top of the post in my feed, just as with reactions. It is possible that this repost option might be more effective than a reaction…only time will tell on that one but it’s guaranteed to be much better than a traditional re-share.

Audio Events are now being rolled out to all Creators! Whilst the rollout hasn’t reached me yet I’m still delighted as I’m hoping more people will run events at a more favorable time than 8-10 pm in the evening!

Here's the article for more detail;

Calling Creators: Time to Host Your First Audio Event On LinkedIn

What Type of InMail Get The Best Results? LinkedIn have released some data about which type of InMails work best as reported here.

In summary, less than 400 characters and don’t send them on Fridays or Saturdays!

A recent report claims that Document posts generate 3x more clicks than any other type of content on LinkedIn!

No Sh** Sherlock! You have to click on them to move to the next page!

Document posts are one of my favourites and a much under-utilised resource but clicks don’t necessarily lead to views and engagement. The only way to navigate through the pages is to click on them so it’s no surprise they get 3x the CTR but a CTR measurement is designed to assess clicks through to the destination you want your traffic to take (ie your website!), not how many times they click on a post and stay on LinkedIn! Don’t get me wrong, clicks are a strong message to the algorithm and they should increase impressions and engagement but my experience of document posts is that they perform well…but not 3x better than other types of posts.

Note: this study was taken on company page posts, hence they could measure the CTR

Profile improvements. You can now add 5 skills to each position in your profile. I’m no fan of Skills (other than for job seekers) because I don’t believe many people are influenced by them and the endorsements are a joke but I do think that displaying them higher up your profile and in connection with a specific role does make them potentially more visible and possibly important. In addition, LinkedIn are talking about introducing the ability to add products to the experience section of your profile. These ‘products' are the ones found on your company page…oh wait, your company can not add products to its page!

Whilst this looks like a good feature, in reality very few companies have products so, for now, it’s only applicable to those who work for large organisations in certain sectors.

Nima Owji has shared more information on the new ‘Slideshow’ post LinkedIn are working on.

This is an odd one as I can’t really see how this is different from adding a .ppt as a document post, it appears to work the same way but I guess more post options is broadly a good thing. When/if the feature is rolled out we might get to see what differentiates it from a doc post.

Good news for Articles! LinkedIn have announced that they are introducing the ability to add hashtags and @mention tags to articles…about time too! Articles seem to have been ignored by the developers for some time so I’m pleased they are being improved again.

Note to the LinkedIn engineers working on Articles… Can you now add;

• The ability to embed LinkedIn posts
• A podcast player (after all you do now have a podcast network!)
• Ability to add native video

Thanks ??

Sales Navigator users. Did you know that you can refer connections to Sales Navigator which gives them 2 months free rather than the one month people get every year by default? It’s really easy to do, see below;

Is LinkedIn Primarily A Source of Information Or A Networking Platform?

This subject was inspired by this excellent and thought-provoking post, the comments thread is also very interesting.

I found this a very interesting observation on the diverse opinions members represent in what they want LinkedIn to be.

Philipp is basically saying the algorithm limits the reach of posts with urls and this keeps him and others away from using the platform.

Firstly let’s dispel a commonly held myth…The algorithm doesn’t look at a post with a link and immediately restrict the distribution…that simply doesn’t happen.

What happens is that the followers who see the post do what the author has effectively asked them to do…they click on the link!

• They don’t Like the post
• They don’t comment on the post

These are both critical factors in the distribution of your post!

Now the algorithm looks at the apparent lack of interest in the post, decides it’s not great content, and limits further distribution.

I’m not suggesting Philipp doesn’t understand that, I think he does, he just thinks the algorithm shouldn’t work in that way.

The debate here is that he and many other commenters believe that LinkedIn would be a better resource if the algorithm allowed much better reach for link posts, the idea is that they would find their LinkedIn experience enhanced by visiting these sites with excellent content.

But here’s the problem…

Most links don’t take us to great content! On the contrary, most people who drop links in their feed post them liberally, often having not even read the article. If links were given great reach, our feed would become a mass of links to crappy, unthoughtful content and spammy sites.

The net result would be that conversations and engagement would soon die on LinkedIn…look what happened to groups!

I see LinkedIn as a networking platform where I can engage and build relationships with like-minded professionals as well as joining interesting and stimulating debates with others who see things differently. Information (via links or otherwise) is a secondary purpose/benefit.

Is the agenda of those with an opposing view that they really want to use LinkedIn as a funnel to push people to their websites?

Maybe or maybe not, I can’t really make that assumption.

Ironically Philipps' post actually backs up my point...

I have enjoyed and learned something from the post & reading the different perspectives that people have in the thread.

That wouldn't have been possible if Philipp had posted this on a different website and linked to that on a LinkedIn post, the person I follow would have clicked the link and not made the comment that put this post on my feed!

Post Of The Week

Yet another agonisingly difficult choice this week. I had five strong contenders which I whittled down to two. In the end I opted for the below post but all credit to Jodi Odell for this amazing runner-up (which actually has better numbers).

What I love about Marias post is that is finds the sweet spot between personal and business.

She is incredibly open and vulnerable in telling her story but that story has a business purpose and a clear message for people to ‘use their voice’. Congratulations Maria!

That’s all for this edition of LinkedInformed. I will be taking a break next week but make sure you subscribe to get all future episodes of LinkedInformed.

This article has also been recorded as a podcast;

Linkedinformed on Google podcasts / Linkedinformed on Apple podcasts