Welcome to episode 238. I really struggled to think of a title for this episode because unlike most weeks, no one subject dominates!

That said, I have a lot to talk about in this episode.

Firstly, due to a family bereavement, I will not be producing an episode next week but will be back the week after.

Feedback From Last Weeks Show

Last week I talked about the new ‘Interest targeting’ feature for LinkedIn ads and I hope that the LinkedIn ad guru AJ Wilcox would get in touch, well he did and this is what he had to say;

Interest targeting is a bit of a black box since we don’t know how they decide what makes you interested in a given topic. Generally we accomplish the same thing by targeting skills or groups, but this can be helpful for those who may need a bit fuzzier targeting (larger budgets or those who are clamoring for larger audiences than are available with the other targeting facets)

So it would seem that LinkedIn are being somewhat secretive about it……how unusual!! I still think followed hashtags, Topics and Influencers are the most likely culprits.

AJ also had this to say about Mark Lee’s observation regarding the ‘Trending in London’ content he saw (that couldn’t be read outside the US!)

Also the article trending in London that want actually available in London is definitely not an ad. Probably just poor machine learning

Also, listener, Gary Moran sent me this message;

Hi Mark. Your podcast got me thinking about Hashtags/Communities today when you talked about ad targeting. Not sure what you have been seeing but I have really seen a big change in my feed due to hashtags. As well as continued efforts by LinkedIn to make it better. It took a while but it seems to be slowly catching on. This has helped our company reach followers we would have never reached before. It has become a real tool to use now instead of just something to use as a matter of habit.

That is really interesting feedback. I think hashtags are a big improvement for company page updates and may increase followers…the issue is that companies still find it hard to get their followers to engage with them and I’m not sure hashtags help in that respect. There isn’t a whole lot of point in gaining followers for the sake of it!

I also had this message from Karin

Every circumstance is likely to be different and I would encourage to read the show notes from the last episode to see the difference between a Business Account and Sales Navigator. A Business account is not designed specifically for jobseekers but it can be useful to them. It’s best described as a ‘general’ upgrade, useful for a variety of purposes.

Sales Navigator is more suited to business development but not marketing and content, it’s only marginally more expensive than Business so I would normally say go for that one.

It is important to reiterate though that you don’t need to upgrade at all. Content, engagement and activity are the most powerful actions on LinkedIn and they are not helped by any upgrade.

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week

Thanks to Richard Benson for sending this one in. Following on from my episode about empathy, this is a classic example of someone who clearly struggles to predict a recipients reaction to their highly inappropriate invitation to connect;

Don’t Share, it’s pointless.

I was fascinated by the reaction to this video post I did this week. Most people agreed but it fascinates me why so many people are glued to the idea that they ‘should’ be able to Share on LinkedIn. If something doesn’t work….don’t do it!

It’s worth having a browse through the comments but the response from LinkedIn was interesting in itself;

Linda is basically stating that a Share is valued more than a Like by the algorithm (although not more than a comment). This, whilst interesting, is not the point I was making. My observation is about how we, the members, react to Shares (we ignore them). I see Shares in my feed all the time, so for once it’s not the algorithm that is the problem!

Why are LinkedIn so obsessed with recruitment and jobseekers?

I know that is how they make money but surely their Blog should reflect the majority of their active members and they are not likely to be jobseekers!

Rant Over!

Could this be a new job role for many organisations?

I was very interested to see this job posting this week. It makes sense to have someone dedicated to sales via LinkedIn and their LinkedIn skills are a key quality required to get the job. I wonder if this will start to happen more?

Unconscious Bias When Recruiting.

I’m a bit unsure about what to make of this. Is this something LinkedIn have done or is it some sort of extension that these guys have added for the purposes of an internal experiment. Interesting video anyway.

LinkedIn Has hit 610 million members

New member stats have been released by LinkedIn on their About us page

Comments from Company Pages

I’m not sure how I feel about this but I’m starting to see it more and more. A few people have asked how it’s done and Teddy Burris made this excellent video which partly explains it;

The other way this can happen is when a company page admin checks the new Insights section and looks for posts from employees (provided they have min 300). As I don’t have any employees, I haven’t been able to test this but my understanding is that the comment should be from the company (brand)

Personally, I would MUCH rather have a conversation with a real person, not an anonymous ‘representative of’.

What do you think?

This weeks post was suggested by Paul Copcutt….I love it!

As we are not having an episode next week, I thought I would also include this very successful and fascinating video;

We have a question this week from Jennifer Holloway.

Jennifer was to know if it was a problem to post the same/similar content multiple times. She produces a weekly blog and wants to encourage her LinkedIn followers to read it but knows that simply posting it as a link won’t work. She has tried posting it as an Article but Articles tend not to attract engagement and that limits reach.

The best solution is to repost the blog as an Article because it will sit in your profile and that will help to give your profile credibility. Then the strategy is to deliver a post (Video, Text, Document or Image) with the intention of starting a conversation about the subject covered (in more depth) in the article.

Jennifer followed this advice but the reported back the following;

Following our chat the other day, I did what we discussed: took my blog post and turned it into an article on LinkedIn, so that I could include the link in a post with a video of me talking about the subject of the article, which was integrity. (With me so far?) The idea was, as you recommended, to have a single post about integrity, with a video of me talking about it plus a link to the article in the text above. But I hit a snag: in order to publish the article to get the link to put in the post, I had to turn it into a post. So I’ve ended up with two posts on the same subject: one saying I’ve posted an article on integrity, the other with my video talking about integrity (with a link to the article in it). So…if you’re following all that…is there a way to publish an article without having to turn it into a post, so I can remove the duplication? Or should I publish/post about the article on day one say, then post the video about it on day two, so there’s a gap between them?

This can be a bit annoying but in truth, the ‘Article post’ is a bit irrelevant and won’t affect the distribution of the main post designed to start a conversation. Just put a one-liner in the Article post and forget it. The main thing is to gain a wide distribution through the conversational post. This will result is an increase in profiles views (when the article may be spotted), more invitations to connect and more followers. It may also be a good idea to refer to the Article or even external blog post in the comments of the post.

I hope that makes sense. If anyone else has any questions please feel free to write to me (it’s free to DM on LinkedIn) or send me a voicemail by clicking on the orange ‘ask me a question’ link on the right edge of this page.

Thats all for now. Have a great week and I will be back soon.