Welcome to episode 174, I’m going to share an interesting chat I had with AJ Wilcox this week. AJ heard me talk in sceptical terms about the new website demographics feature that LinkedIn are currently rolling out and contacted me to say he was very enthusiastic about it and had an interesting hack to share. So I thought I would record our conversation and share it with you.

More of that later but first…

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week

• Judge rules against LinkedIn in legal fight over its members’ public data
• Another great article on the same subject is in the Washington post: Is LinkedIn trying to protect your data — or hoard it?

This ruling could have interesting ramifications for other current and potential 3rd party products. I’m not sure it ‘opens the floodgates’ for plug-ins and extensions but it will be interesting to see what develops.

Feedback

This a great point from Sandra. Sharing a post, with attribution does allow someone to add their own perspective that is suitable to their audience.

Fair comment, I was probably a bit harsh about sharing, it’s not stealing likes and comments although I do think that you should always comment on the originators post as well to assist their distribution of that post.

That of course is not the same as the copy & pasting, which is always wrong, even with attribution.

This is my post that achieved over 20,000 views in just one day.

This follows the principles I laid out in my cheatsheet that many of you downloaded last week.

A listener also sent me this message following last weeks episode.

And this is the post he is referring to, feel free to get involved!

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6302907266861408256

If you want a copy of the cheatsheet that outlines how to achieve high post views and engagement then fill in your details below, it’s completely free.

New LinkedIn Features

Native video on desktop is now being rolled out, it doesn’t allow you to record unfortunately but you can upload a video from your computer

The video feature has suffered some problems this week as a new tranche of members have been given access which has caused  uploads to  be very slow at processing.

On that point, if you are adding video from your computer, these are the dimensions it needs to fit;

We now have a new ‘Connection’ filter in search results (mobile and desktop). This is different to searching a connections connections which is done from their profile. This is designed to be more of a secondary filter to an existing search result. For example you may be searching for prospects and then want to know if one of your good business contacts is already connected to anyone in the result. Thus revealing the opportunity for an introduction.

LinkedIn active status in Messages. Many users seems to have got this useful new feature this week but the way LinkedIn explained it can lead to some confusion. Hopefully the below video clears that up

It’s a positive enhancement to the messages function but I think this feature could be improved with;

• Filtering by who is active in the Messages page
• Active status to show in a connections profile

What do you think? Any other ideas on how they could improve this?

Website Demographics

Let’s hear what the world’s nicest social media expert has to say about this new LinkedIn website demographics feature

You can hear my original interview with AJ in episode 128 below

LinkedIn Advertising Revisited

In our chat this week AJ explains how this tool can be used to get a much greater understanding of who visits your website. Not just your domain but each specific page so you should be able to get a much clearer idea of who is interested in certain aspects of your business or products.

It may even give you guidance of how those pages should be designed (to suit the audience).

Also, you can combine custom audience advertising with website demographics by targeting the demographic of the people that are typically going to your relevant website pages. This should make your custom audience ad’s much more effective.

You might already have this feature. Go to your ad’s account on LinkedIn

Then click on an account and you will see website demographics if you have it. I didn’t have it when I spoke with AJ but as you can see, I have it now!

Apparently, only 25% of members have it but it is currently rolling out to all.

The pixel plug-in that I use for WordPress is called Tracking Code Manager

Profile strength is a bit of a vanity metric for most people although it is important for job seekers to get to as high as possible. All-star is the highest level.

I haven’t seen any evidence that the criteria have changed but I did notice that you don’t have a summary. When the designed changed earlier this year LinkedIn brought the summary up to the top section so I wonder if adding a summary might make a difference.

Give it a try and let me know how you get on.

UPDATE: Mandana tried adding a summary and it worked! She is back to being All-Star!

That’s it for this week, don’t forget to leave a voicemail or email me with any questions or suggestions, till next time.

Have a great week everyone.

Thank you so much for listening. I value your support and interest.

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