Welcome to episode 203, after a weeks break for the Easter holidays we are back and this week I want to talk about engagement……quite possibly the single most important thing you should consider when using LinkedIn!

Not much news since the last episode, apart from the following

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week

LinkedIn Goes All-In on B2B Video

I have mixed feelings about this, as you know I love video and the ability to post videos from a company page is a positive thing but then again, the people that manage company pages tend to be stuck in a mindset of promotion……so we can expect to see a lot of boring corporate, ‘look at how amazing we are’ videos….joy!

In addition, the main reason LinkedIn have implemented this is to encourage companies to sponsor their video posts, which will also lead to more boring, non-engaging promotional videos.

I still think that video from a personal page is by far the best way to encourage engagement.

Extension Warning!

It looks like LinkedIn have figured a way to work out what Chrome extension you are using!

I have no idea how they do this but perhaps this marks the end of automation tools?

New Feature

LinkedIn is now rolling out the ‘find nearby’ I have mentioned previously to mobile apps (roll-out is ‘account specific’ not ‘device specific’).

Thanks to Jo Saunders for the screenshot

This could be a great feature for events and conferences but having it switched off by default is a disastrous move! If you have to explain to people how to switch it on, it kind of loses the point!

Engagement

Promotion simply doesn’t work on LinkedIn…or at least, it very rarely works so that poses the following question;

“If we are using LinkedIn to win new business and promotion doesn’t work…why bother with LinkedIn?”

The answer is simple: LinkedIn allows you to achieve two key things that will help you win more business;

1. Increased visibility.
2. Warmer relationships with prospective customers

Both of these factors are achieved by one thing…….Engagement

Engagement – the development of conversations on LinkedIn. This is the key to success in my opinion.

How to engage

• Find relevant content and join in the conversation
• Post about relevant, interesting topics and ask questions

The first point about finding the right content is dependant on searching for content (keywords and Hashtags) as well as ensuring your homepage feed is full of comment-worthy posts. This is achieved by;

• Cleaning out your feed by unfollowing people who post bad content
• Following people that post interesting stuff
• Influencing the algorithm by showing interest in the above people and their content

This came up in a recent post from Kate Hills

The algorithm has to make decisions as to what to show you in your feed because if it showed you every post from every connection you wouldn’t be able to make any sense of it! The fact is you have to throttle posts, to make your feed useful.

The algorithm can only act on the information it is given and this information actually comes from you.

• Topics you have followed or previously commented or Liked
• Topics you have posted or written articles about
• Groups you have joined, especially if you are active
• Profiles you have viewed
• Messages you have sent
• Skills in your profile
• Your industry in your profile

There are probably more factors, LinkedIn doesn’t tell us how this is done but we know it’s an algorithm and that can only work from data/activity based instructions. You need to think of yourself as being a ‘programmer’ through your actions.

This is important to consider in terms of what you see but even more important to consider when you are posting! Who will see your post and can you influence this in your activities?

@mentioning can also help but don’t rely on notifications as they are throttled by LinkedIn for highly active users.

Using # in your posts is also helpful

Some people have suggested that LinkedIn should allow us to control our own feed…this is unrealistic as very few would use it and the algorithm would still need to throttle posts (depending on how many you select and how active they are). It’s a nice idea but in practice, unrealistic.

Ahh, another great feature abused by spammers!

The weird thing is that this guy is creating a new post for each person rather than @mentioning multiple people in one post!

I wonder how well this is working for him?

I’m also getting increasingly frustrated by the increasing amount of connections, often brand new ones, who feel the need to send me their latest article or blog post and request that I Comment or Like it.

This technique completely ignores the opinion of the person it is sent to…..

Why should I stop what I am doing and read your Article?

What makes you think I’m interested in that content? (it’s often irrelevant)

This technique feels desperate to me from people who are stuck with writing long, rambling articles that people don’t want to read! They think they are compensating for the lack of notifications not realizing that the notification doesn’t occur because the algorithm knows most people don’t want to see it!

This is just another form of spam in my view. What do you think?

That’s it for this week, until next time.

Have a great week everyone.

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