What is real and what is fake on LinkedIn? We're looking at some fake accounts this week.

Gillian Whitney voice note

Can anything be done to stop DMs fragmenting when sending LinkedIn recommendations?

LinkedIn security fake account

Update on fake LinkedIn security accounts via Guy Strijbosch

Where did all the Top Voices go?

Keep your headline short: check out some tips on the importance of making a quick impact with your profile headline.

Our most recent LaunchPad call went well, and now we're offering a conference discount to Informed listeners.

Use INFORMED to get 20% off an in-person ticket to UpLift Live 26. That offer is valid until 11.55pm UK time on Saturday 17 January, and then it's a 10% discount after that.

Happy New Year!

Postbag

Hanne Møller – reposting your own post

Caryn Yuen – hashtags

I know LinkedIn has removed the ability to follow hashtags, but people can still use them. Some include hashtags within the body of their post to draw attention to certain words, while others add several at the end in a more Instagram-style approach. So what purpose do hashtags actually serve on LinkedIn now?

My top LinkedIn questions

1. Where do I start?
2. What do I post about?
3. Should I post personal stuff?
4. How do I approach people?
5. Do I need LinkedIn Premium?
6. Should I switch to creator mode?
7. How do I increase my Social Selling Index (SSI)?
8. Should I put links in posts?
9. Do I need a company page?
10. How do I get more engagement and visibility?

What's in your LinkedIn Year in Review? This is LinkedIn's version of Spotify Wrapped.

Should a CTA be included in the headline?

Caryn Yuen

If the CTA is very short and part of a reasonably short overall headline, then that’s OK. Headlines that are too long won’t be read by humans, and if the intention of the text isn’t clear to the AI-powered LinkedIn search, that could do you harm.

How to share achievements

Famey Lockwood

LinkedIn has a new template for an individual to announce an achievement – degree, certification, award, etc. While the post is flashy and eye-catching, the question that I have and don’t understand is where does an individual show the actual document for the achievement? If the document is posted as a comment, the document isn’t always viewed in the feed. In addition, a person can say they have an achievement without actually having the evidence. (I have seen an individual post she had a certification from an organisation that I belong to so I knew the certification did not exist.) So, does LinkedIn want us to say we have an achievement without showing the evidence? There’s too much room for errors.

Check out the Add profile section button on your profile, where you can add relevant items that work better than the templated LinkedIn post:

1. Licenses & certifications
2. Projects
3. Courses
4. Publications
5. Honors & awards

1. Joined in 2008 (but I wasn't active until 2017)
2. Active for 344 days (most of us got the same)
3. Top 5% (again, most of us got the same)
4. Peak times 10am–7pm (yawn)
5. 1 certificate
6. 634 new connections
7. 1382 connections "on the move"
8. 10K+ profile views
9. 1708 searches completed
10. Most used Premium feature: InMail (no way)
11. 192 posts (public posts only – I've done way more private posts)
12. 9173 reactions
13. 7076 comments
14. 3796 new followers
15. 3300 comments on others' posts
16. 1025 reactions on others' posts (must be more!)
17. 18 reposts
18. Support was my most used reaction after likes
19. I was a "Catalyst" (I've heard of a couple of people with "Amplifier")
20. Gus Bhandal was the person I kept up with most

Make sure you back up your LinkedIn data from time to time. See Mic Adam's analysis of how he uses his data with AI: part 1 and part 2.

Does the industry setting matter on your profile?

Christopher Johnson (voice note) 

LinkedIn industry options help page

Fake accounts with similar headlines?

LB Brittingham

I'm searching for other experts supporting introverts and I keep coming across profiles with "introvert living in an industry of extroverts" or similar. Many seem like real accounts. Maybe it's some sort of LinkedIn insider knowledge/meme? Kind of like newbies to Threads don't understand the rage bait from fake accounts when they first get there. I'm wondering if the same thing happens on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn release a community report twice a year and the latest one covers January to June 2025. They say they've stopped 61.2M fake accounts at registration. 22.2M have been restricted proactively before reports were needed by members, and only 385,900 accounts were restricted following member reports. If you suspect you see a fake account, you can report it via the More button on their profile.

I joined in May 2021, paying £399.90+VAT. That's £479.88 per year or ~£1.31 per day. Here's what you get on Premium Business:

• Unlimited People browsing and searching
• Who viewed your profile over 90 days
• 15 InMails per month
• Custom CTA button
• LinkedIn Learning
• Open Profile
• Rotating banner
• Feature content at top of profile
• Enhanced Services panel
• AI features
• Gold badge
• Perks, currently including 3 months of free YouTube Premium and Spotify Premium

You might get a discount to stay when trying to cancel Premium, but I'm not offered that.

LinkedIn now has 100 million verified members, and Zoom will soon show your LinkedIn verification badge.

Some interesting videos to check out on YouTube:

• Rory Sutherland Behavioural Science & Marketing Q&A ~1h
• Algorithmic bias discussion ~1h 30m
• Lynnaire Johnston and Mark Williams ~1h 10m

UpLift Live 26 free ticket prize draw – ENTER NOW

Come to the LaunchPad call on Thursday 8 January 2026 at 11am GMT where the winners will be announced live!

This week's main topic looks at how many active accounts there are on LinkedIn. See my LinkedIn membership tracker, particularly the updated section titled "How many active users are on LinkedIn?"

– What do you think of people customising their pronouns?

In short, don't do it!

– There are quite a few LinkedIn experts who seem to attach an image to every single one of their posts. Do text-only posts perform less well than posts with images?

Looking at my own data since the start of 2024, my text-only posts get 27% more impressions than my posts where I include an image.

Lynnaire Johnston's livestream with Mark Williams (creator and former host of this show) at 8pm on Wednesday 10 December 2025: "LinkedIn, Legacy and Letting Go".

UpLift Live 26 LaunchPad calls for those attending or considering attending our conference on LinkedIn best practice:

• Thursday 8 January 2026 at 11am UK (public)
• Friday 20 March 2026 at 1pm UK

I'm speaking in Milan, Italy at Inspire Day, on 29/30 January 2026.

Congratulations to Gus Bhandal on the launch of his The Squeeze membership!

Postbag

via Beth Kirk: Loving the informed podcast! I have a question around the proactive use of DMs to build relationships on LinkedIn. Do you have any top tips for people with established audiences please?

— Look for opportunities to start conversations: birthdays, job changes

— Look through your network to find key referral partners and potential clients, then scour their profiles and content for anything that could start a conversation

— Don’t jump in out of the blue with a sales message. That will look like a campaign. Be more human!

— If there’s any sign that the other party might be open to it, use a voice note or even a video note to further humanise. I get great response rates.

via Espresso+: Does anyone get high levels of impressions with comments as a company page?

via Espresso+: How to be found through ChatGPT?

via Espresso+: Does an emoji in the Name field lead to spending one day in LinkedIn jail?

Engagement pods

Pods are unholy alliances of LinkedIn users who are trying to artificially boost their posts’ visibility in the LinkedIn feed. LinkedIn are trying to crack down, with a new video about this by Gyanda Sachdeva, a VP of Product Management at LinkedIn.

Thanks to an update from Tony Restell, UpLift Live26 speaker, who got this direct from LinkedIn:

Any profiles or companies you come across that are selling fake engagement services, please report directly via email to [email protected]

Thanks to Mark Williams for his kind farewell newsletter.

• Profile verification: to verify or not? (see more)
• Post timing: when is best to post?
• Recommendations: should they be up to date?

Everyone is talking about algorithmic bias against women. I’m going to investigate.

A couple of text-plus-image posts:

• Changing the skin tone in emojis
• “Quiet Piggy”

Starting a post with a short bit of quoted text often seems to get me good engagement, as per the second example.

Why put a date and time stamp on posts? I wish LinkedIn would do something about this.

This feels a bit meta but here are some things related to the development and marketing of the podcast:

• There’s a new page at espirian.co.uk/informed
• There’s a new banner image as part of my rotating Premium banner
• I’ve invited 250 people (the monthly limit) to follow the company page
• There were ~1000 downloads for episodes 466 & 467 – thanks!

The first episode of the new-look show took me 6 hours to record, edit and produce last week.

• How do you manage lots of ongoing DMs?
• How much should we care about algorithms?
• Downgrading desktop features

Why not refresh your About statement with some icebreakers? Pick 3–5 conversation starters and drop them into your profile so that people doing their research can say something interesting to you.

Free LinkedIn members can now send only 3 free personalised invitations per month – there are 5 quick tips in the show for how to get around this very annoying limitation.

This is the new-look Informed podcast, all about LinkedIn best practice, hosted for the first time by John Espirian. 

There’s a quick backstory of the handover from the show’s creator, Mark Williams, to John, and then on to listener questions in the Postbag.

Postbag questions

• Can you deactivate a company page without closing your personal profile?
• Can you talk about visibility being down on LinkedIn?
• Should we invest time in making newsletters, livestreams and videos on LinkedIn?
• How are comment impressions gauged and are they a useful metric?
• Is post boosting a good idea?

Generative AI data training: how to turn it off if you don’t want to give your data to LinkedIn for free.

Microsoft’s 2026 Q1 results are out, with some nuggets about LinkedIn growth.

Links

• Growth stalling post 1
• Growth stalling post 2
• LinkedIn membership growth tracker
• Ryan Roslansky on LinkedIn’s results
• Book a consultation with John
• Espresso+ community

My final ever episode. I have made the decision to retire, which means no more LinkedIn™️ training or LinkedIn™️ at all so the podcast needs to be handed on to someone else.

Mentioned in this episode:

This show was created by the original host of the show, Mark Williams.