We’re connected – now what?
LinkedIn Phishing Scams Most Clicked With a 47% Open Rate in Q3 2020
Stories Update
LinkedIn have confirmed that tapping on the right edge or swiping immediately on a story is not counted as a view.
In addition, it would appear that they are testing some new ‘engagement’ analytics as seen here in this tweet from Alessandro
#LinkedIn is working on stories engagement insights 👀 pic.twitter.com/5yPrmMfEIV
— Alessandro Paluzzi (@alex193a) November 17, 2020
LinkedIn Top (their favourite) Voices 2020.
The time has come again for LinkedIn to tell us who they believe are the top content producers.
I have always been quite critical of these lists because they seem to me to be highly subjective and too biased towards the ‘taste’ of LinkedIn editors. Very few of these ‘voices’ can match some of the engagement we see regularly from others on LinkedIn – surely the only democratic way to define ‘top’ is by how popular content is with the Linkedin community (removing obvious pod boosted stuff). As it stands we have no way effective of searching for ‘top posts’ so we have to rely on these lists to find new people to follow.
All that said, I must admit that this year I feel they have improved their selections. I can’t say I have been through every list but here are my observations of a few of the lists.
As always I measure engagement as the key criteria (checking for and discounting pod cheats) as an average over 10 posts
Entrepreneurship & Small Business List
Worthy winner – Laura Taylor Averages of 270 reactions and 39 comments from 22,447 followers
How did they make the list? – Elizabeth Gulliver Averages of 21 reactions and 2 comments from 2206 followers!
Worthy winner – Baroness Michelle Mone OBE Averages of 2767 reactions and 248 comments from 105,559 followers
How did they make the list? – Lucy P Marcus Averages of 22 reactions and 1 comment from a staggering 1,116,285 followers!
Worthy winner – Shereen Daniels Averages of 405 reactions and 83 comments from 18654 followers.
How did they make the list? – David M Brear Averages of 32 reactions and 5 comments from 28649 followers!
I’ve only covered three lists here but you will find similar issues across most of them. You can check all the list here;
LinkedIn Top Voices 2020: Meet the professionals driving today’s business conversation
Post Connection Process
What do you do after you have connected with someone?
There will be a percentage of our connections that we want to build a relationship with. Add to those connections who we want to influence through our activity and content.
These are the connections you need to follow up with.
The Process
Send them a direct message. Once the connection is confirmed send them a message. This is less likely to work if you instigated the invite and you haven’t engaged with them previously – I would normally recommend engagement prior to inviting, although that is not always possible.
By far the most personalised and effective type of message is a voice or video message send via the mobile app. Simply tap and hold to record on the mic symbol for a voice message and you will see the video record option after tapping in the + symbol highlighted below.
The key here is that you need to ensure a reply. That will give a significant boost to your relevance with that person which means there is a much greater possibility that they will see your content and vice versa.
Make sure this message is a short, friendly greeting that offers them help and co-operation. Do not under any circumstances pitch them or even mention anything about what you do, this could easily put them off replying.
A good thing to offer them is an introduction, encourage them to browse through your connections and if they see someone of interest, you will try to make an introduction where possible.
If you don’t get a response, don’t keep plowing on as this will just make you look desperate. It’s better to keep looking for opportunities to engage with their content.
Keep in mind that direct messages will always help your relevance to that person so this should be the only DM conversation you have.
Check their connections. Once connected and provided their settings allow, you should be able to look through, search and filter their connections. This gives you an opportunity to look for other possible connections plus find anyone of great interest that they might be able to introduce you too. Don’t ask for introductions too early though, build the relationship carefully first and try to introduce them to others before you ask for one in return.
Unfortunately there is currently a problem when conducting a search of someone’s connections. For instance when you click on my connections you will see a number that could be anything up to 999.
Then if you remove the connections filters, the number changes, it will still be under 1000 but usually increases, in this example by just 1 but I have seen much greater fluctuations.
Not only is this weird but more bizarre is that I don’t have 997 or 998 connections, I actually have 11,171!!
Whilst I’m aware that we can only see the first 1000 profiles in a search result, we should be able to filter the whole list, not just the first 1000 and who decides who the first 1000 is anyway?!!
The point here is that you should be able to filter my full 11,171 connections by things like location, job title, company etc.
This has been a glitch for as long as I can remember and LinkedIn must know about it but seem unable or unwilling to fix it.
Maybe it’s not a glitch and it’s in place to stop people knowing exactly how many connections someone has – in line with the ridiculous 500+ number we see at the top of someones profile.
Post Of The Week
I love this post from Daniel, who is well worth a follow as this is by no means a one off!
It’s a clever technique but most importantly it’s a powerful message that may be helpful to so many in these difficult times.
I always check post of the week nominations to make sure they are not copies and whilst checking this I found dozens of copies which motivated me to produce this video post.
That’s all for this week, keep in touch and have a fantastic week.
