Archive for category: LinkedIn

Post Author: Mic Johnson, talking about whether LinkedIn filters what people see if they don’t have paid LinkedIn accounts.

I post status updates to LinkedIn a few times a week and have for years. Sometimes it’s a blog post from Blue Gurus or MJMeetings. Sometimes it’s a #micnugget. Sometimes it’s a question. Sometimes I’m sharing content from my connections or other people/companies I follow.

The other day I got to thinking how it seemed like the level of engagement I’d been getting (LIKEs, comments, views, etc.) seemed to be less and less over time, regardless of what I posted.

Now I’m not saying every one of my status updates is life-changing content, but I’ve become accustomed to a certain amount of engagement/interest in things I choose to share.

I recently downgraded from a paid LinkedIn account (I just wasn’t using the features enough to justify the monthly expense) to the free LinkedIn account, and I wondered to myself…”Is LinkedIn filtering what people see from me because I don’t have a paid account anymore?”

So I decided to run a little experiment.

I posted the following status update (click the link or the image if you want to see the actual post on LinkedIn):

I also emailed LinkedIn Customer Service and asked them if they filtered things based on whether a person had a paid account or not. To their credit, they got back to me quickly, even it was with a response that didn’t really answer my question…a non-answer answer, if you will:

“Hi Mic, Thank you for reaching out about your post. The feeds of your connections are personalized for them based on people they follow, their connections, and their engagement on LinkedIn. The more engaging and relevant your post is, the more likely it is to appear in their feeds. We work to keep the platform focused on discussions relating to professional interests and activities. Content that doesn’t appear to relate to these topics may not reach a wide audience. Lastly, any content that doesn’t comply with LinkedIn’s User Agreement
(https://www.linkedin.com/legal/user-agreement ) and Professional Community Guidelines (https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/34593 ) may be subject to removal. However, if this is not the case, please provide the URL of the post you are referring to so we can check further. I would look forward to hearing from you Regards, Pooja LinkedIn Consumer Specialist”

Finally, I tagged LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner on the post hoping that he might chime in and provide a little rationale. I’m still waiting on that.

So what did I learn from my LinkedIn experiment?

1. While LinkedIn didn’t specifically say they increase/decrease the visibility of status updates, etc. based on whether a person has a paid account or not…well, let’s just say I have a healthy dose of skepticism and intuition that those who pay, likely get a little more play.
2. LinkedIn DOES control what you do or don’t see in your feed from your connections. They say “The feeds of your connections are personalized for them based on the people they follow, their connections, and their engagement on LinkedIn.” So, and I understand this to a certain extent, LinkedIn is determining what THEY think is relevant content that your connections will see. Of course it makes sense if a person is spamming, trolling, etc. but outside of that…I DON’T LIKE IT. I’ve chosen to connect with the people I’m connected to. I don’t like that LinkedIn is deciding what THEY think I will be interested in…nor do I like them deciding if my content is relevant enough to my connections. That should be left up to the USERS…not LinkedIn. (Facebook does the same thing and I hate it there too.)
3. I really had no idea what the outcome would be of this experiment. My initial expectation was that I would get quite a few “LIKEs” because all I asked was for people to simply hit the LIKE button. I have over 1200 LinkedIn connections, so I was expecting at least a few hundred to take a second and LIKE the post. As of this writing, it’s been about four days and the post only has 149 LIKEs.
4. Many of the LIKEs I got were from people OUTSIDE of my connections. So when some of my connections LIKE’d the post, people in their network saw it and joined in on the fun. That’s how social works. That’s how things go “viral”. But that means that even more people saw my post than just my connections, so I still would have expected to see more than 149 LIKEs.
5. As of this writing, according to LinkedIn, there were 6,534 views of my status update, which makes it that much more unbelievable that only 149 people took a second to LIKE the update. Did that many people really see it? Are people really that lazy? Was it just not that interesting?
6. Ironically, the 149 LIKEs and the 6,534 views of my update are BY FAR the most engagement I’ve ever received on any status update or post/article I’ve ever shared in all of the years I’ve been on LinkedIn. Did LinkedIn boost this post? Did the 149 LIKEs set off some behind the scenes mojo at LinkedIn that kept increasing the visibility of my status update? Was this really the most relevant and engaging thing I’ve ever posted (at least in the eyes of LinkedIn)? Was it because I asked people to do something so simple and easy? Do I need to ask more questions like this to see increased engagement? The answers to those questions are YES (I think?).
7. A lot of people were at least interested in the same question I had based on the responses and engagement the status update received.

Unfortunately, while this experiment was fun and will probably keep going as the status update continues to get LIKEs and views, I find myself feeling almost as confused as I was when I first wondered about whether LinkedIn was “pay to play”.

LinkedIn Customer Service really didn’t answer the question.

Jeff Weiner didn’t answer the question.

And so I guess we may never know.

LinkedIn (and Facebook and other social platforms) always change things and are always fine tuning things…and most of the time they’re not good (intentionally or not) about letting the users know what changed or why. It’s one of the most frustrating things for me about how these companies run their platforms.

In the end, my instincts tell me if you’re giving money to LinkedIn via a paid account, then your status updates and other content you post on their site will probably get more love than those of us who have a free account.

I just wish LinkedIn would have answered the question.

Maybe if I get a paid account again, they will.

Post written by Mic Johnson talking about 5 LinkedIn No-Brainers To Help You Look Like You Know What You’re Doing

1.Humanize your LinkedIn Profile

People look at your LinkedIn Profile every day. What does your profile say about you?

Does it say “I’m awesome!” or does it say “I have no idea who I am or why anyone would want to connect with me.”? If it’s the latter…

Upload a smiling, current headshot. Personalize your professional headline. Write a thoughtful Summary using “I” language. Update your work history showing people where you’ve been and what you’ve accomplished.

A great looking profile goes a long way in making you look like you know what you’re doing.

2. Personalize EVERY connection request.

If you’re on your laptop/desktop, go to a person’s profile page, click the blue Connect button, click “Add a Note”, and write something meaningful telling the person WHY you want to connect.

If you’re on the app, go to a person’s profile page, click the three little dots near the blue Connect button, click “Personalize Invite”, and write
something meaningful telling the person WHY you want to connect.

3. Claim your name.

If you haven’t claimed your name, your public profile URL probably looks something like this:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/I-Look-Like-A-LI-Noob-383aa427/.

Go to your profile on your laptop or desktop, click on “Edit public profile & URL”, and then enter your first and last name. If someone has already claimed it, get creative or use your first name, middle initial and last name.

Here’s mine:https://www.linkedin.com/in/micjohnson

4. Update your status at least 2-3 times a week.

Share an image, an inspirational quote, an article you read that helped you, information on a business event going on in your community, or better yet…write an article and share some original content of your own with your network.

5. LinkedIn isn’t a dating site. Act accordingly.

This one should really go without saying, but it happens. LinkedIn is for business purposes. Keep it that way.

Was this helpful? If your team might benefit from LinkedIn Training, drop me a note at mic@bluegurus.com to get the conversation started. 

By Jason Terry, talking about some common questions and concerns we hear when executive teams are considering allowing LinkedIn use on company time.

I was talking to a good friend recently about push back they were getting from their executive team about supporting LinkedIn use on company time. I’ve heard the concerns before. And it was a great opportunity for me to put some responses to those concerns in an email. The goal was to give them ammo to use when trying to convince the team to move forward.

My email was well received. And after reading it again I thought it might make a good blog post. Primarily because lots of companies are struggling with some of the same issues and concerns. My hope is that if you are hearing these kinds of things in your organization, that you can use some of my ideas to break through the roadblocks.

1) LinkedIn is a way for people to hack into our network.

There are thousands of ways to hack into a network. Emails with bad links that install malware. Firewalls and routers that haven’t been updated in years. Servers running web applications with known security holes. And yes, LinkedIn is another possible way. The truth that any knowledgeable IT person will agree with is that the best defense is a layered approach of software, anti-virus, employee training and robust backups.

Blocking LinkedIn use to protect your company network is a big problem from a risk vs. reward perspective. Yes, you might make your network a bit more secure. But you lose all of the business benefits that your company can realize if they use LinkedIn effectively. Growth through referrals. Improved company culture. Stronger talent acquisition. And more.

2) Our competitors will steal our employees if they’re on LinkedIn.

If another company wants to poach your employees, it will happen regardless of whether or not someone has a LinkedIn profile.

Sure, a strong profile with lots of connections makes any employee more desirable, but so do all the other things like their reputation around the city, them showing up at events and not-for-profit participation, etc. In most cities, and in most industries, everyone already knows the good people working for other companies. Having a LinkedIn profile doesn’t make much of a difference in this situation.

Yes, LinkedIn does make it easier for someone to pull together a list of your employees. So what? I’ve always said if you take care of your people, they will take care of you. And the good ones will give you the heads up that they are getting calls from headhunters or competitors if/when it happens. If they leave you for a competitor, the reasons are usually compensation, job satisfaction and growth opportunity. Having a LinkedIn profile (or not) won’t move the needle when a competitor wants to attract one of your top employees.

3) Social media is a waste of time, and I don’t want my team wasting their time during business hours.

I can tell you from personal experience that Blue Gurus has grown every year since 2009 using nothing but storytelling in our blog, networking and linking in with people on LinkedIn. We’re staying top of mind with all our referral partners. LinkedIn is a proven business tool for growth and reputation building. I think using LinkedIn should be part of their job responsibilities!

And yes, there are people that will abuse access to Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and more during work. But the ones that truly want to waste time are going to use their cell phones in the bathroom every hour if they can’t do it on their work computer. And good employees (that you hired because they have a good work ethic) can use social media interaction to give their brain a break and recharge a few times a day. If they’re getting their work done, it shouldn’t be an issue.

That said, trust but verify. If you’re worried about people spending too much time on social media sites, check with your IT people. You may have the ability to run reports about time spent on social sites by team member. Run those reports to see if your concerns are valid. If they are, have a conversation with the problem children. In most situations, simply making your team aware that their internet use is being monitored is deterrent enough.

4) None of our executives have profiles.

That may be true at your company, but if you do research on other companies, I think you will find a very different story. The majority of the companies in Kansas City benefit from their executives and salespeople using LinkedIn.

In some situations, based on the size of the city or the industry, there might not be as many executives using LinkedIn. This is an opportunity to be towards the front of the trend… not bleeding edge, but leading edge. And what a great opportunity to beat your competitors to the relationship market by embracing LinkedIn with some training and a good strategy?

5) Our executives see very little benefit from using LinkedIn.

How can they see benefit if they’ve not invested any time in the tool?

In terms of sales and marketing expense, using LinkedIn for relationship building and storytelling through blogging are two of the lowest cost, farthest reaching methods for getting your message into the minds of your clients, referral partners, employees and prospects.

Mic likes to make the analogy about going to the gym. It’s like someone telling you that the gym has no benefit for them. Even though they’ve never bought a membership (set up a LinkedIn profile) and never worked out (connected to people, shared stories.)

Does your company block LinkedIn at the office? Are there any other concerns you’ve heard from management about using LinkedIn or social media while you work that I didn’t cover? I would love to hear your thoughts. And I hope this story was helpful to you in some way. Thanks for reading!

Author: Mic Johnson, talking about how my LinkedIn profile views went up 620% in one week. 

My fellow Blue Guru Jason Terry recently wrote a post that talked about what to do when you have trouble thinking of a blog topic to write about.

And wouldn’t you know it, the Universe apparently decided to play some sort of cosmic joke on me. Why? Because I have been struggling all week to come up with a topic that inspired me enough to write about. I probably sifted through 100 ideas in my mind, but nothing was stirring my creative juices.

So I started thinking about all the things I’ve been doing over the last several days. One of the things that came to mind was some recent status updates I shared on LinkedIn that received some really good traction.

LinkedIn Status Updates….Dear Everyone

These were thoughts that, for various reasons, were top of mind with me. Instead of leaving them in my mind, I decided to share them on LinkedIn. They were short and simple and each one started with the phrase…”Dear Everyone”.

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it 1,000 times…To differentiate yourself from most people on LinkedIn, here's what you need to do: USE IT. Click To Tweet

As a result of this activity, my profile views are up 620% IN THE LAST WEEK.

Now don’t think that my phone started ringing off the hook with people wanting to buy from me and Blue Gurus. That’s not how it works, folks.

But there have been people commenting and “LIKE’ing” the updates and, whaddya know, some actual, real human ENGAGEMENT has happened as well. I’ve also gained a few more followers on LinkedIn.

But that’s not why I do it. I do it because I like to make people think, laugh, be inspired…and maybe something I post will help them change a behavior, try something new, or who knows what else.

Again, don’t miss this important point: I didn’t post these things for ME. I posted them to HELP people. Think about that the next time you’re sharing a status update or blog post on LinkedIn. Helping people comes in many forms.

I’ve included screenshots of the posts below. You can click on any of the images to get to the actual post in LinkedIn. I’d love to know what you think. Leave a comment or email me at mic@bluegurus.com.

(P.S. – If you want to try something new, do a short LinkedIn video and see how your audience responds. The first video I did is over 800 views now.)