Informed Podcast by Mark Williams. The podcast for LinkedIn™️ users

News Australian politician suffers extortion attempt via LinkedIn from a fake anti child trafficking advocate The best LinkedIn profile pictures are "slightly happy" This subject was also covered in my other podcast WinbussinesIn I was sexually harassed on LinkedIn and it made me question the site's credibility...not me, that's the title of the article I referred to! I also mentioned the website socialcreeps.com Commentary Positivity works!  I am a great believer in the power of engagement on LinkedIn. Too many people post updates that receive no comments or further interaction but it has been an observation of mine that when you do engage on other people's posts you often attract negative comments and people even start to attack you! People become very brave online and are often unnecessarily rude, something they would be highly unlikely to do to your face! I see this on a regular basis and find it quite depressing because all this does is discourage people from engagement. When commenting on LinkedIn keep your comments positive, encouraging as well as challenging if necessary but never stray into an argument or points scoring. This reflects very badly on you. Don't feed the trolls! People that regularly post negative comments do so because they enjoy winding people up. Don't give them the airtime and just ignore their comments.  Here are my tips to get more views of your status updates; Always post image updates with a link rather than text updates with a link. Pick a suitable image that has bright colours. Make sure the image file has a suitable name (this will be seen!) Always ask a question to encourage engagement Reply to comments including quoting the person by name to encourage the conversation to continue. Keep asking questions! Make sure your settings allow anyone (public) to see it. Timing is critical. Find out (by trial and error) when your audience are most likely to respond and stick to that time. Topical subjects work - think about how a recent news headline could be applied to your business ie Zayn leaving One Direction = How to cope when a key member of your team leaves. Comparison questions are most powerful in terms of engagement but they need to be relevant so you can't do it all the time

News    Two new LinkedIn apps are rumoured to be in the works. A new Groups app and one called 'LookUp'.    Instant messaging may finally be coming to LinkedIn!    LinkedIn's new marketing podcast    Check out the LinkedIn profiles of your website visitors with this hack. Disclaimer - Do this at your own risk, I'm giving it a try on a dummy account and will report back next week.    Over 1 million users are now publishing on LinkedIn    How being a 'hot girl' on LinkedIn attracts attention.    The Prophet Chrome extension has been working really well.    You can now add any skills you want, including made up silly ones!    This podcast has been running for 18 months now and over that time we have built a strong community of loyal listeners and followers. I really enjoy collating all the weekly news, thinking of interesting topics, interviewing guests and getting your feedback (typing up the show notes is less thrilling but I console myself that the alternative would be writing a longer blog post every week!).    I really hope you enjoy the podcast and get real value from it every week.    The show has now been nominated for an award at this years New Media Europe conference held in Manchester on the 12/13th September and I would massively appreciate it if you would vote and nominate LinkedInformed for a prize.Question    Why do people who don't really know me endorse my skills?        ANS = Some people do it because they believe they are helping you although I suspect most people simply endorse because they are asked to and they figure it isn't going to do any harm. In truth skill endorsements add little value to a profile because they have been so misused by most people.

Plenty to talk about in this week's show from Web clippers and extensions to LinkedIn admitting they too hate quiz updates!   News   Lynda.com shareholders cash in on LinkedIn takeover and cause LinkedIn's share price to fall. Evernote updates its web clipper allowing very useful integration with LinkedIn profiles. LinkedIn are now ranked as the 2nd largest job board in the world....even though they are not a job board! LinkedIn wins case against Irish domain registrant. Searching a connections connections is now back! You now can also search the shared connections of a 2nd tier. 3rd tier connections can now be saved to contacts. You can now follow anyone from the front page of their profile (see below) Interesting interview with LinkedIn's VP of Engineering. In this piece he reveals that LinkedIn do not look kindly on quizzes and other Facebook type posts (as discussed last week). See clip below and you can read the whole article here. Questions   1.      Sanity check: I got really excited about the tag system at the bottom of the LinkedIn blogs – thinking I could choose what channels I might get into … but I noticed that the tag options don’t match the channels! Am I correct in thinking that the tags don’t feed directly into channels, but are, in fact, just subsections/buckets from which some posts might be chosen to go into a channel (based on the LI algorithm and editors)?   2.      Question: I would love to post a blog on LinkedIn re ‘How to blog on LinkedIn’ summarising everything I’ve found – but there don’t seem to be any posts like that on LI. Do you think the LI editors would frown on/penalise a blog that actually gave people info into best LI blogging practices – not just headlines & writing – but info into the algorithm/best ways to post etc?   ANS= Sanity check - You are correct. The tags merely help the algorithm pick up the relevance of a post but by no means guarantee that it will appear in a channel, keywords also help but I also believe there is some human involvement in deciding channel content (I suspect it is approval rather than selection). Question - LinkedIn have no problem with this sort of content and there is even a relevant 'LinkedIn tips' channel for it!    https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/channel/linkedintips

News    LinkedIn have a private 'invite only' bug bounty program.    LinkedIn's 'Member first' focus apparently boosts satisfaction and engagement - really?    LinkedIn appoint a new Chief Marketing Officer.    Economic graph projects are appearing all over the world    LinkedIn IT department in top 10 places to work    There is a better way to search a connections connects, it's not a complete workaround as you can't search keywords but you can filter. All is explained in the video below.CommentaryWhere is the Line? I asked subscribers to my LinkedIn updates service the following question;Where's the line?LinkedIn status updates and posts have definitely changed over the last couple of years. What was once a place where we only saw serious topics we now see puppies, quizzes, cars for sale and even naked women (I'm not kidding!)I'm in favour of LinkedIn being inclusive, I really don't buy into the idea of it only being for a certain 'type' of professional.Why is it OK for a recruiter to post a vacancy but not OK for a car salesman to post a picture of the latest used Range Rover they have on their forecourt?Surely both have the right to 'do business' on LinkedIn?Is it OK to post a funny picture? Maybe not, I guess everyone has their own idea on where the line is and that's what I want to hear from you about.

News    Measuring Gender Diversity with LinkedIn Data    LinkedIn's weird names for software. An explanation.    Have you taken up the offer of a free trial of Lynda.com?    Viveka Von Rosen's excellent article on LinkedIn mobile    LinkedIn's economic graph comes to Manchester in an attempt to bridge the skills gap. This is also an interesting Q&A from the Greater Manchester Combined Authority perspective.Commentary    This week I take a look at LinkedIn's new revamped Pulse mobile app. Are LinkedIn at last starting to get the hang of mobile apps? You can view my video review belowQuestionsThis week I have a question for you! Although the above post/comments are funny there is a more serious point that I believe is worth discussing in next weeks episode.    Should LinkedIn just be about 'serious business topics?    Is it becoming more like Facebook and is that a bad thing?    Where do you draw the line on 'appropriateness' or does anything go? 

News LinkedIn accused of making little progress on diversity Have you claimed your one dollar compensation yet? This published post claims that group messages are restricted to 15 a month! I can prove otherwise. LinkedIn skill endorsements 'chain mail' (below) comes to LinkedIn LinkedIn shared some interesting stats about their publishing platform this week. Commentary Have you registered your LinkedIn profile url yet? Running an event? You might find this article about promoting it through a LinkedIn published post useful. LinkedIn 'Dark patterns' - How to unlink your LinkedIn address book Questions The administrator for our company page has left the company and I wish to take over administration of the company page myself. How do I do this? ANS =  Firstly make sure that your primary email address is your work email and that your LinkedIn profile has you currently employed at the company that you wish to administer the company page for. Go to the company page and scroll down until you see the "want to help manage this page?" On the right-hand side. Provided you are connected to one of the  administrators (the owner is an admin) you can request to become an administrator. This is supposed to be how it works however I have experienced a couple of situations where the option to request to be an administrator did not appear. In this circumstance you will need to contact the help center.

In this show I talk about how we can all benefit by being more 'sociable' on LinkedIn but first, lets cover this weeks newsNews    LinkedIn group ownership protected in US legal case    Strange LinkedIn profile phrases spoken by actors in this video    LinkedIn invitations 'reason' can be seen after all, it's in the archive folder!    LinkedIn Stock rallies this week.    LinkedIn's weird New York office    Does this new LinkedIn group indicate that groups are safe for now?    Glitch alert! Viewer numbers are not showing in LinkedIn posts    Are LinkedIn disconnecting us? Let me know if this has happened to you.    Customized invitations are now seen on the mobile app, but still not on the desktop shortcut.screenshot2015-06-03_07-36-07_am.pngCommentary    Are you being 'sociable' on LinkedIn?    A recent survey conducted by Pew Research Center found that only 13 percent of LinkedIn users engage with the site on a daily basis.    What holds us back from engaging with people? I believe everyone will get more out of LinkedIn when we can all 'ease up' and start chatting to each other more.Questions    Will purchasing premium accounts for our staff allow us to retain ownership of their accounts if they leave?        ANS = No! This is not possible with any level of LinkedIn premium or corporate account. LinkedIn Recruiter does allow the retention of messages but never connections. My advice is to ask departing employees to download their connections for retention by the company, that way both parties get to keep the data.

News Senior LinkedIn Executive hints at why superusers are being ignored by stating they are "making products universally usable regardless of ability" Report claims that Twitter is now the number one social media tool for sales people - I really doubt it! LinkedIn engineer states "We have to constantly re-iterate the recommendation process and make sure that our members always get relevant results by analysis of various user statistics" in this interview. I wonder what those statistics are? Commentary The Ingredients of a great post; Topical subject Eye catching headline Striking header image Ask a question Alternative answers work well Tagged for a channel Keyword rich (channel keywords) Quote others (link to their profiles) Link to your website Send it to individual connections and ask them to comment Reply to all comments and try to keep the conversation going. Share on other channels Re-share later (if still relevant) And finally....luck! Here is a link to Greg Coopers article on LinkedIn published posts Questions I used to see when my connections made new connections in my home page stream. Where has this gone and how do I switch it back on? ANS = I don't know where they have gone, I am still seeing them from my connections (not all as this is related to their settings) but the setting to adjust what you see in your stream has annoying disappeared so you can't do anything about it!

News CEO's prefer LinkedIn & Twitter. In fact LinkedIn is the outright winner really! Why Asia matters for LinkedIn Unfortunate names on LinkedIn! LinkedIn are now restricting group messages to 50 a day. Hilary Clinton signs up to LinkedIn but hasn't put skills in her profile - sensible lady! Indian woman 'outs' LinkedIn sexual harasser Commentary This week I interviewed a florist from Grimsby about how she has had success with LinkedIn for my other podcast Winbusinessin and she revealed several real golden nuggets. I recently put some LinkedIn profile autoview services through their paces and my conclusion is that they have a part to play in how we use LinkedIn. Services mentioned were; Autopilot Dux-soup Question Has anyone got any experience of LinkedIn in Germany? If sop please get in touch at mark@linkedinformed.com

Show notes   News Published post sharing via 3rd party apps appears to be broken, links go to main Pulse page. LinkedIn announce Economic graph challenge winners. LinkedIn stock drops to $193 Keen computer gamers are getting information about future game titles from LinkedIn profiles. This article and this one are two separate examples. Jeff Weiner admits "We are sending some members too many emails"! Commentary Posting articles and links in LinkedIn groups is not effective unless you are actually creating a discussion. People are treating groups as poster boards for 'interesting' articles but all that does is lower the amount of interaction and provides no benefit to the person that shared the link. I was shocked to see these stats recently; Article 1 - 348 views - 41 LinkedIn shares Article 2 - 162 views - 302 LinkedIn shares When I explored this in more detail it turned out the the vast majority of the shares of article 2 were people sending the post to multiple groups (each one counting as a separate share). Clearly these group shares were simply being ignored! Question How can I get notifications about a specific person? I want to know when specific connections of mine post updates, articles and share/comment on others? ANS= Unfortunately you no longer can, 3rd party sites such as Zapier and IFTTT used to do this but LinkedIn no longer allow access to this information.