All about LinkedIn best practice.

Mentioned in this episode:

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

News

• Jeff Weiner sells a fifth of his shares and nets a cool $10 million! You can read the detail here if you want to get green with envy!
• Facebook are rumoured to be planning a new 'Facebook at Work' service which could be a rival to LinkedIn. I'm undecided on whether this would be a good thing or not but I also doubt Facebook will follow through on it.
• LinkedIn launch a new 'Course Certifications' feature

Commentary

• Following an acceptance of an invitation to connect from a profile that didn't look fake (OK the profile picture is terrible but I've seen much worse!) I then received the following message;
• I'm not going to deny it, for a brief second my heart skipped a beat! Then I did a quick check on Google and found plenty of articles about a very similar email scam from a couple of years ago. I also asked a shared connection called Sam Hooper who replied with the following;

So it looks like I will have to wait a bit longer to find my multi millionaire benefactor after all......oh well!

I have reported the profile and message to LinkedIn, it will be interesting to see how long it takes them to take the profile down - the header image of this post is a link to the profile so you can check for yourself!

• I have been busy building a new website which is focussed on small to medium businesses and winning new business on LinkedIn. This site will also have its own podcast which will partly be information and guidance on how to use LinkedIn for business development and partly a 'LinkedIn Serial' story every other week. This has been inspired by the awesome chart topping podcast Serial as well as Start-up (both can also be found on iTunes). I have always been a big fan of storytelling as a way to educate and inspire so I am going to be following a journey where I interview, coach and help a team of relatively new LinkedIn users. I am really excited about this project and I will keep you informed.

Question

• This week's question was on voicemail and from Jennifer Holloway. In summary she wanted to know how to add an image to a status update instead of pulling the image from the website you are linking to.
• ANS = The secret is to paste in the link first and then delete the image by clicking on the X and then adding the image by clicking on the paperclip (see below)

Mentioned in this episode:

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

Google did not acquire LinkedIn in 2014 – but Microsoft did in 2016.

Mentioned in this episode:

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

This week we complete the interview with social selling expert Darrel Griffin (click on his picture below to see his LinkedIn profile).

Darrel's model for success is called SPEND (statistics, purchasing journey, Edelman, next generation & digital disruption);

statistics 

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• 92% of B2B buyers start their search online (Salesforce)
• 
  
• 
  
• B2B buyers complete 57% of the buying decision before they are willing to talk to a sales rep (CEB)
• 
  
• 
  
• 75% of buyers say they use social media as part of the buying process (IBM)
• 
  
• 
  
• On average decision makers consume 5 pieces of content before being ready to speak to a sales rep (Chief Marketing Officer Council)
• 
  
• 
  
• 82% of our potential customers can be reached via social media (B2B Sales 2.0)
• 
  

purchasing journey

edelman

Click on the image for more information about Edelman's trust barometer;

next generation

Here come the Millennials...

• 
  
• 50% of the global workforce by 2020
• 
  
• 
  
• 75% of the global workforce by 2030
• 
  

“Social media is by far the dominant way Millennials learn about things online.” (SDL)

digital disruption

Digital Disruption: Unleashing the Next Wave of Innovation

By James McQuivey

Thanks again to Darrel for taking the time and for sharing his knowledge - very interesting stuff! If you want to get in touch with Darrel his website can be found here and on Twitter he is @darrel_griffin.

Thank you so much for listening, I really value your support and interest.

As always I would welcome your feedback and questions. If you want to be on the show you can leave a comment by voicemail (right hand side of this page) or email me at [email protected].

Help me to promote the podcast

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Mentioned in this episode:

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

News

Apparently Microsoft attempted to buy LinkedIn for $500m prior to their IPO in 2011 but decided the price was too high. LinkedIn would cost them closer to $35 billion today!

Sony have collaborated with LinkedIn to produce a business card reading app that synchronises with LinkedIn in the way that CardMunch used to. Does anyone know of any other apps that do the same?

LinkedIn have announced their 3rd quarter results.

332 millions users

90 million unique visitors

28 billion page views

45% growth in revenue

Analysts impressed with the results but not the outlook!

Commentary

LinkedIn have really been pushing skills again with this article being just one of many over the last few weeks.

I have been very impressed with Conspire, a new FREE service that allows you to manage your contacts by analysing your email activity.

You can now add attachments to LinkedIn messages.

Publishing on LinkedIn. Is it really worth it? As more people obtain publishing rights on LinkedIn, the number of views per post seems to be dropping for everyone and this makes me question whether they are still worth doing?

Chris Gaborit is just a normal, regular LinkedIn user who started publishing in May and achieved an amazing result with over 300,000 views of the above post (click on it to read the full post) but over the last couple of months he has seen his posts viewed less and less...this seems to be a consistent story for most people.

His average number of views per post has been the following since starting in May;

May 2014 - 54,911

June 2014 - 28,260

July 2014 - 6115

September - 418

October - 2696

Maybe we are better off blogging on our own websites and promoting these articles via status updates?

Question

Why are LinkedIn persisting with Skills & endorsements when everyone knows they are a joke?

This question really got me thinking and my conclusion is that the big data that skills give them is something they intend to monetise. Endorsements are merely a red herring designed to encourage us to add more skills to our profiles!

Mentioned in this episode:

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

You can view Darrel's LinkedIn profile here

Darrel's Story

25 years in sales, mainly in the UK. Wine trade, screen printing and signage.

Moved to Perth, Western Australia in July 2012 - knew no-one!

Business Development Manager role for a signage contractor

Threw himself into LinkedIn

Annual target exceeded within 4 months!

50% of sales came via LinkedIn

Decided to aim to become Perth's social selling 'go to' guy

Launched Social4Sales - already fully booked until mid December!

Other links

Gary Vaynerchuck

Gary Vaynerchuck's books (my favourite is Crush it)

Gary's blog

Darrel's next door neighbour...as featured in the podcast!

Mentioned in this episode:

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

News

Another lawsuit is filed against LinkedIn and this one is just plain ridiculous! Apparently the ability to read someone's background and perform a few checks on LinkedIn when considering recruiting them violates a US law. Read the full story here. Has the world gone mad?!

LinkedIn plans to expand its publishing team. Its becoming increasing clear that publishing is a core focus for LinkedIn as demonstrated by their plans to open a major new office in San Francisco in 2016.

Jeff Weiner interview with Bloomberg

LinkedIn hits back and asks judge to dismiss the lawsuit regarding the email reminders sent to those who do not respond when an invitation to join LinkedIn message is sent to them. As opposed to the other lawsuit, I can't see how LinkedIn can defend this.

It looks like premium accounts may be about to re-vamped, effectively making them more expensive. The Spotlight premium account had a very short life - below is a reply from the help center on this matter.

Lets hope the 'test' fails then!

Tips & Features

You can now see personalised invitation messages in the quick menu by clicking on 'see all' (see below)

'Groups' has now disappeared in the reasons for inviting menu (see below). LinkedIn help center are claiming that this is a fault but I'm not convinced, lets hope so. In the meantime there are a few workarounds. Firstly there is the method using LinkedIn Contacts (2nd tier only) which is my favoured method - see here for a detailed guide on how to do this.  Or you can now customise invitations using a mobile app (not tablet) - scroll down to check out the show notes for episode 32 for instructions on how to do that.

Apparently a fault.....lets see!

New 'Actions' feature in the 'Who's viewed your profile' section. I have only just got this feature so have not really been able to understand its benefits but it seems like a good idea. Jo Saunders has published a more detailed post about it.

And finally the best article I read this week about LinkedIn was Data and the Power it Bestows by Raven Jiang. I'm not one of those people that worries about big data and security / privacy but I must admit that Raven puts a very interesting argument that the information we are providing to LinkedIn could be abused and they clearly 'hold the key' to its future access. 

Mentioned in this episode:

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

How to find anyone on LinkedIn, with Katharine Robinson.

Mentioned in this episode:

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

Searching for jobs on LinkedIn Update. Last week I talked about the 5 ways you can search for jobs but someone has revealed a 6th way - searching or browsing through updates in a company page

Some companies will have a specific 'careers' page on their company page (see top arrow) but you will also find jobs advertised in their status update stream (see bottom arrow)

News

New YOUniversity section which gives college/school students some great tools to help them select the right university for them.

This is divided into three integrated pages, lets look at each;

Decision Boards. This is the area where students can organise their search for the right course and university using a combination of organizational, social and insight tools.

Rankings. (See image at the top of the page) This is the most controversial element where universities are ranked according to the 'success' of their alumni with getting the jobs they wanted. There were only five careers listed when I looked but I am sure more will be added in time.

Finder. Simply enter your criteria such as career (ie law) and location (ie London) or/and employer (who you want to work for) and it will tell you how many alumni from each university achieved these goals.

Other news - SlideShare gets its first ever iOS app, I'm shocked they didn't have one already but it does look pretty good

Also LinkedIn is introducing a new 'Actions' section into the profile views section of Linkedin. I don't have it but Jo Saunders has written agreat post about it.

Searching. I'm still getting some odd results no doubt due to the new Galene search engine. My latest findings suggest that closeness in network has moved down the pecking order. What are your experiences of search, any different?

POEM

Actually maybe its not a poem, but amusing all the same! Thanks to Carl Whalley for sending it in;

Mark Williams has moved his mouse! Would you like to endorse Mark with his new skill: 'Mouse Moving", so future employers can help him use it to realise his full potential? An email from Joe Tester has triggered a Tweet which was automatically posted to his Facebook account and so in turn updated his Linked In status to "just doing my emails". Congratulate Joe now? It's been 2 years 3 days and 19 minutes since you first told us you're not interested in upgrading to a Premium Account. Would you like to upgrade to a Premium Account, and get more fantastic emails from us? Don't be left out - your network is talking about you behind your back - find out what they are saying about you with a Premium Account!Congratulations - you have been endorsed as a Turkey Sexer by Nettie Worker (LION 9999+ contacts!) HOT NEWS! All the LinkedIn directors have sold all their shares as they announce to the market the future looks brighter than ever.

Company Page Frustrations.  I got to see first hand just how hard it can be when trying to add images to company pages, merge profiles and create showcase pages (you can only create 2 each day - goodness only knows why!) and the interesting fact came out from LinkedIn admitting that the only browser LinkedIn is fully compatible with is Mozilla Firefox so I have started using it for all my LinkedIn activities and I must admit it is a pretty good browser and many activities do seem a bit smoother/quicker.

Question. How do you find the time to use LinkedIn effectively?

This is such a great question and not an easy one to answer as its something we all struggle with. My three tips are;

1. Schedule activities such as reading updates and posting.
2. Use mobile apps, the LinkedIn main one and the Connected app
3. Make your content engaging which allows your activities to be quick reactive things rather than having to spend time thinking of what to create and post all the time.

Mentioned in this episode:

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

News

• More shareholders sell their LinkedIn shares. Is this news anymore?
• LinkedIn state that Mozilla Firefox is the most compatible browser for LinkedIn and that they are not fully compatible with other browsers.
• LinkedIn make some changes to their terms of service this mainly relates to the ownership of published posts.
• InMail will be changing from 2015. LinkedIn are abandoning the 7 day guaranteed response policy and replacing it with a 90 day policy that allows you to get the credit back if the message is replied to. This may only apply to Recruiter and Sales accounts although the suggestion is that it applies to all InMails.

Special Offer

Want to find anyone and contact them for free on LinkedIn?

This pdf cheatsheet shows you how in an easy step by step guide

5 Ways to Find Jobs on LinkedIn

1) Jobs Section (nothing more to say!)

2) Job Discussions in a group (see below)

3) Recent activity of Recruiters (see below)

4) Search Published posts (see below)

5) Use the 'Find' function in your browser

BI Intelligence survey in the US reveals the following information;

• More people are on LinkedIn than Twitter
• LinkedIn's sweet spot for age is 30-49 years
• LinkedIn is the best social media platform to access over 50s
• More males were on LinkedIn 24% than women 19%

Mentioned in this episode:

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