Informed: the podcast for LinkedIn® users

The Microsoft Acquisition

 Welcome to episode 118 of the LinkedInformed podcast at the end of a truly historic week for LinkedIn.

As you would expect I am going to concentrate all of this episode on evaluating Microsoft's acquisition of LinkedIn.

Advantages for Microsoft

• Entry into the social media space. An area they have neglected to get involved with previously which was beginning to look like a serious weakness.
• 
  
• An opportunity to increase sales of Office 365 via extensive integration with LinkedIn’s functionality.
• 
  
• Dynamics (Their CRM solution) will benefit the most from this acquisition and potentially allow it to become the market leader (currently Salesforce).
• 
  
• Content from LinkedIn publishing allowing greater advertising opportunities.
• 
  
• Big data. Rich information about people and their online behaviour.

Advantages for LinkedIn

• $26 billion!
• 
  
• Greater resources to enable new products such as Profinder to be launched and rapidly expanded.
• 
  
• $26 billion!
• 
  
• Use of Microsoft’s massive cloud infrastructure.
• 
  
• A way out of their stock-based compensation conundrum.
• 
  
• $2.3 billion into Reid Hoffman’s bank account!

Advantages for Members

• I expect the under-resourced help centre to improve significantly
• 
  
• Skype integration
• 
  
• Integration with Outlook 365 & Dynamics.
• 
  
• Better distribution of published posts

Disadvantages for Members

• Less Google optimisation
• 
  
• Another secretive ‘closed’ culture
• 
  
• Focus on corporates at the expense of SMB’s
• 
  
• And …..

Mentioned in this episode:

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

LinkedIn : Too many to-do’s to do

Very interesting document outlining why LinkedIn are a bad investment from an Equity Research firm. Here are their main 5 reasons;

(1) Lack of key functionality in its flagship Voyager app.

(2) Relevance of proposed job openings or “Sponsored Updates” hasn’t improved.

(3) A slow ramp to get the right content on lynda.com to make it more attractive to Enterprises.

(4) High penetration of Hiring Solutions – translating into slowing growth in FY16.

(5) The technical immaturity of Sales Navigator.

Other highlights;

• New company pages will provide salary data and allow for anonymous employee reviews (similar to Glassdoor). This could provide LinkedIn with a "Tricky balance” to find as many of these organisations are their biggest clients!

• The SMB Recruiter product will be slow growth and likely to have a high cost of sales.

• 20% of LinkedIn members are students.

• Advertising solutions will be opening up their API to third-party operators.

• New members are less engaged.

• Less than 2% of members upgrade to a premium account.

LinkedIn Changes

• New Company Page insights.

• More information on job postings.

Other interesting stuff I saw this week

• Is LinkedIn disconnecting us?

• Contrary to rumours LinkedIn has not removed the connections download feature.

• Some people are reporting a 403 error which may be due to LinkedIn being hyper sensitive

about suspicious activity following the recent sale of passwords. It may be good advice to

reduce activity in the short term until things die down.

• The return of the Galek! The interview with our beloved infamous swimwear entrepreneur!

• Exaggerated LinkedIn profile question.

Mentioned in this episode:

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

Hey! We have a new website! The url is still the same www.linkedinformed.com. Let me know what you think. It's Linkedinformed Episode 116.

News

• Changes to LinkedIn
• 
  
• How big should your network be?
• 
  
• You Want More Business? So Get on the Phone!

•    Interesting Stuff I saw this week 
•  How LinkedIn Is Able to Consistently          Increase Pricing                                        
• 
  
• 'Social worth' and creditworthiness: Need                  loans? Just raise your popularity level on                    LinkedIN

Question:

"Recently, I have noticed my profile views are not good as they used to be. My target keywords are "Engineering Manager" and "Engineering Director". In the past when I search for those phrases my profile was always number one listed. Lately is buried deep down in the list.

Mentioned in this episode:

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

Welcome to this weeks episode where we continue the discussion with Rosie O'Hara we started in in episode 110 regarding 'Words that change minds'.

In this show we talk about;

• How to reply to accepted invitations
• 
  
• What sort of message to send to someone who has viewed your profile
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• The dangers of commenting without taking time out to calm down!
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• The recent 'Gracegate' issue where a senior banking executive causes a storm by posting a screenshot of a comment made that she found offensive.

Vote for the podcast

I would really appreciate it if you could take a few minutes out of your busy day to vote for me in the UK podcast awards.

This is a Facebook poll, click here and scroll down until you find LinkedInformed (and Winbusinessin if possible) and vote.

As always you can find links, images and everything else mentioned in this episode at LinkedInformed.com

Thanks

Until next week....

Mentioned in this episode:

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

Would you like to buy someone’s login details for LinkedIn? How do you feel about someone else's buying your login details for LinkedIn? This week’s 114 episode we talk about security.

LinkedIn Security

• Millions of hacked LinkedIn IDs advertised 'for sale’
• 
  
• LinkedIn’s statement about the issue
• 
  
• Test your email address here

I would really appreciate it if you took a few secs to vote for the podcast by clicking on the link below and scrolling down until you find LinkedInformed  and also Winbusinessin.

Click here to vote for the show: http://bit.ly/voteforLinkedinformedInteresting stuff I saw this week

•  LinkedIn Buys Run Hop, Seeks to Make Feeds More Engaging
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•  LinkedIn help refugees find jobs in Sweden
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• Why I Write On LinkedIn - And It’s Probably Not Why You Think I Do

Cool Thing

This week’s cool things are 1Password and Dashlane. Store all your passwords, PIN codes, documents, credit cards and more. Automatically log in on every website and every device.

AFQ

This week’s question comes from Paul Copcutt via voicemail who’s asking if there’s an issue with the formatting of a published post on LinkedIn.

Here are the images Paul sent me of the issue:

How it looks when editing.

Mentioned in this episode:

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

How would you feel if when you joined a company they asked you to changed the name of your LinkedIn profile from your name to the company name and when you left that company, you are then required to close that account down? This week I talk with Greg Cooper about an article from a top law firm that suggests the above as best practice!

Mentioned in this episode:

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

Welcome to episode 112.

Investors are now speaking more positively about LinkedIn Shares after a solid performance in Q1 2016. For this episode I’m going to dig deeper into those results and find out what else we can learn about where LinkedIn are heading.

Mentioned in this episode:

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

Welcome to episode 111, more of the

mobile dilemma later but I want to start with an ongoing issue that

everyone seems to be talking about;

It’s NOT

Facebook!

LinkedIn is clearly different to

Facebook in that it is a business & professional network but

it’s not different in that it is a network of people and it’s

social!

Rather than complain about

inappropriate posts wouldn’t it be better to pay more attention to

those connections who are posting more interesting content and

building stronger relationships with them?

I saw a comment this week which I

thought hit the nail on the head;

How about you focus on what you

do, what value you bring, who you help, who you identify, contact

in an authentic not all-about-you-and-what-you-want way, meet in

person, build rapport, work out how you might help each

other.

The key is to understand, truly

understand what you want out of being on LinkedIn (& out of

Business/Professional networking in general) and then... realize

it's all about people, other people.  Get good at researching using

LinkedIn and 'what's in my feed' will be less of concern to you

because that won't be where you find the value. The value will be

in what YOU do.

Well said!

Interesting stuff I saw this

week

• 
  
• 
  
• Lynda is now available on Apple
• TV
• 
  
• 
  
• Recruiters welcome updated LinkedIn Recruiter
• product
• 
  
• 
  
• LinkedIn passes 20 million users in
• China
• 
  
• 
  
• LinkedIn top execs harvest pay
• raises
• 
  

I also came across this legend of

business on LinkedIn this week!

LinkedIn

changes

Some people are seeing the number of

followers on profiles rather than connections, this might be an

experiment, I don’t have it yet but it could just be in the early

stages of being rolled out.

We can now ‘like’ comments in status

updates

It is now possible to remove

yourself from a group conversation in Messages

The Field Of Study search is being

discontinued on May16th.

This weeks cool things is another

free Chrome extension called

Prophet.

This handy tool will often be able

to locate the email address of people you find on

LinkedIn.

AFQ

This weeks question came from James

Muir regarding the issue of only seeing the last ten

notifications.

James didn't specify whether this

was a desktop or mobile issue, so I have answered both;

Mobile

I suspect this is what you mean as I

only see the last ten on my app.

You can refine which updates you see

in the app notifications in your settings, this is done as

follows;

Go to the 'Me' section and click on

the settings 'cog' as below;

Now tap on 'Communications' and select 'Push

notifications' as below;

This will allow to reduce the amount

of less important notifications appearing in your last 10.

Alternatively, you can ensure that you receive emails to alert you

(see desktop solution below)

Desktop

Firstly I am not experiencing the

same issue on my account, I can see numerous updates going back

weeks. This may just be that the changes haven't reached my account

yet or it may also be a short-term glitch on your account. I know

that contradicts what the help center told you but it won't be the

first time they have given out incorrect information!

It is certainly worth logging out,

clearing cookies and trying again. If you haven't already done

so.

Secondly, there are a number of ways

around this;

If you are mainly interested in

responding to activity/comments on your updates and activity then

you should be able to do this by viewing your activity. Go to

Profile>Your updates - there you will see the last 2

weeks.

Alternatively, you could refine your

notifications by unsubscribing to certain ones that are of no

interest to you, this would mean that more of your important ones

will show in the last 10. This is done by clicking on the 'x' in

the top right of a notification.

Finally, you can compensate for the

lack of notifications by adjusting your email settings

> Go to settings

> Select

'communications'

> Select 'Email

frequency'

> Select

'Notifications'

> ensure 'Comments on posts you

publish' and 'Summary of your notifications' are set to

on

That’s it for this week, please feel

free to get in touch if you have any questions you would like me to

answer on the show.

Have a great week.

Mentioned in this episode:

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

Welcome to a new episode. This week I thought it was time for a change in format and it's been quite a while since I did an interview so please let me introduce Rosie O'Hara.

Rosie talks about her experience of how the words we use (specifically on LinkedIn) can have a significant effect on how others react to us when we send invitations to connect and other LinkedIn messages.

Edited 9 November 2025: this episode should have mentioned Shelle Rose Charvet, author of the book Words That Change Minds. Apologies for the oversight.

Mentioned in this episode:

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

Welcome to a new episode of the LinkedInformed podcast.

I seem to have had a frustrating week with LinkedIn - glitches and weird mystery settings have somewhat go in the way of productivity!

LinkedIn Typo’s

I was working with a client this week and spotted several spelling mistakes in their LinkedIn profile. This person is highly intelligent and definitely knows how to spell, The problem is they didn't take their time and pay attention to detail when writing their profile.

This got me thinking about how common this might be so I conducted searches for some commonly misspelt words and here are the results;

Mangers (Managers)

Here are the companies with the most Mangers!

Catagory (Category)

Beleive (Believe)

And then there are plenty like this!!

Seriously though, it’s obviously easily done. Check your profile carefully, double check it and then get someone else to check it!

You only get one chance to make a first impression with your profile, make sure it’s the right one!

The 5C Business Development System is now for sale!

….and for a limited time it’s discounted by a massive 63%!

I’m really proud of this course, I was looking at some of the earlier lessons and I actually started recording the videos 9 months ago! It’s taken a lot of work to get to this position and it doesn’t end here as I will need to update all the ‘settings’ lessons with the new design.

The 5C system contains 5 modules as below;

In total there are 65 videos covering every aspect of using LinkedIn as an effective business development tool.

I’m very excited to see how people react to this course and I hope you can take advantage of the limited time launch price (just £146 but only for the next 7 days, then it will be £396).

I am also giving away a free e-book to those who expressed an interest in the 5C System.

Click on the Image below to get your free LinkedIn toolbox.

Interesting stuff I saw this week

• 
  
• Job seekers getting caught up in online scams
• 
  
• 
  
• Will This Year’s College Grads Job-Hop More Than Previous Grads?
• 
  
• 
  
• How dare you put that on LinkedIn!
• 
  

Cool Thing

Typorama

Images are critical to the success of status updates so I strongly advise using images in the majority of your updates.

A fantastic tool that can help you produce great looking images is Typorama. I produced the image below in seconds as well as the main header image of this page.

AFQ

Question: LinkedIn has removed messaging someone before accepting their connection request. Apart from using InMail is there another way to send them a message before choosing to accept or not?

Answer: LinkedIn haven't actually removed  this feature but they have made it harder to find!

On the Mobile app you can only reply to a customised invitation

but on the desktop version you can reply to any invitation before accepting as follows;

1. 
   
2. Hover over the invites icon (top right) and click on ‘see all’ as below;
3. 
   

2) Now hover over the speech bubbles in the top right of an an invitation card and click on the arrow to reply

Now I have a question for you!

Whilst updating the settings lessons in my 5C training system this week I came across the following new setting in the communications section.

This is found under Communications > Basics > email frequency > Notifications

I have no idea what this setting controls! Any ideas?

I’m wondering if it might be notifications about people viewing my profile but if so it’s a very poor and misleading title!

I have asked LinkedIn and they seem stumped! Someone is running around trying to find the techie who wrote the code to get a definitive answer…..it’s been 3 days so far!

Mentioned in this episode:

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