Informed: the podcast for LinkedIn® users

News

• LinkedIn hits 20 million members in the UK 
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• How many users are actually active though? I estimate the figure is nearer to 6-8 million that are regularly using LinkedIn - still an impressive number!
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• LinkedIn announce UK top 10 power profiles (most viewed) in 6 categories
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• Is a LinkedIn takeover of the Financial Times as crazy as it sounds?
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• Top Seven Stupidest Titles on LinkedIn
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The 5C System.

For a limited time I am allowing free access to module 1 of my new e-learning LinkedIn business development programme.

All I ask for in return is some constructive feedback and, if you like it, a testimonial.

Sign up for FREE access here

Commentary

How do you become a top ten power profile on LinkedIn?

I might argue that Charlotte Proudman must have been in one of those top ten lists but she was excluded - maybe for good reason but who else was excluded?

So what do you have to do to get profile views;

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• Being famous obviously helps!
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• Laura Chetcuti isn’t famous and her posts are not very well read but she is very active and has 14,000 followers (presumably mostly connections
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• Ian Moyse (previous guest and LION) has a massive number of connections (33,772 followers) and came in the top ten technology list.
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• Bianca Miller - not especially well read but fairly active and has nearly 11,000 followers. She managed to get into the Leaders list alongside Richard Branson and David Cameron!
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Question

is there a polite way to let people know that you are NOT an open networker / LION?  Our marketing strategy has led me to be featured by LinkedIn as "someone you might be interested in following" as part of the on-boarding process of the new app, and this has increased my exposure hugely and I've gone from 3,000 followers (2,500 connections) to 16,000 followers in the last 2 months. Nice. But it also means I get invites from engineering graduates from every corner of the globe.... Can I stop that?

Answer = The best way to deal with this would be to prevent people from inviting you to connect, unless they have your email address.

Go to settings > Communications > ‘select who can send you invitations’

Mentioned in this episode:

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

Welcome to a new episode of LinkedInformed, here are the main topics covered this week.

News

• New feature coming - videos are starting to autoplay (without sound) in the homepage feed. This is not something I have seen first hand but John Nemo covered it in a recent post
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• This guy wrote to all 1,109 of his LinkedIn connections last year.
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• Are LinkedIn falsely reporting their page view numbers? Itai Leshem thinks he knows how they are doing it.
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• The new social network called beBee (awful name!) that practices ‘affinity networking’ as detailed in this post from the excellent John White.
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Episode 100

I really want to do something different for our 100th episode, I am still open to suggestions but one I had recently was that someone (maybe a listener) could interview me! Any volunteers or suggestions as to who would be a good candidate.

Let me know at [email protected]

Commentary

The 5 things you may have missed on the new app.

I have written a more detailed published post about this but as a summary, the 5 things are as follows;

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• Individual Message Notifications.
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• Advanced Search
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• Desktop Search History Visible
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• Invitation To Connect Replies
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• See How Many Connections You Have
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Questions

1. 
   
2. How do I find my sent invitations so that I can withdraw some of them?
3. 
   

Go to the area where you view your invitations (see all) and then click on ‘Manage invitations’

Mentioned in this episode:

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

The bizarre behaviour of LinkedIn users!

Welcome to episode 96. Christmas seems a distant memory and I am very much into the swing of things again now.

News

• A lawyers LinkedIn profile is ‘not an advertisement’ states a US Bar Association.
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• LinkedIn’s worst ever chat up lines.
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• The new auto viewing tool called Profile Hopper
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• I was interviewed this week for Motor Trader Radio. You can listen to the recording here
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LinkedIn Publishing. What happens ‘post a post’!

Really interesting and revealing LinkedIn post from LinkedIn top publishing man Daniel Roth about what happens when you press ‘publish’ on your new LinkedIn post.

Key points for me are;

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• LinkedIn now accept that it’s OK to connect with someone you ‘want to interact with’ rather than insisting you must ‘know them well’.
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• A post always appears on the home page feed of ALL of your connections presumably at the time it is posted (timing is therefore very important).
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• An algorithm filters out suspected spam by looking for keywords associated to jobs or events. These posts do not trigger a notification.
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• Notifications are only posted to ‘strong connections’ determined by leveraging the connection strength score from the LinkedIn cloud service. Cloud service maintains connection relationships between members. This must be based on activities (profile views, messages, post/update/group interactions) and similarities (industry, company, groups etc).
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• Quoting your post to  tip@linkedinpulse on Twitter will increase your chances of getting into a channel.
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• There are now 66 Pulse channels including new country / location ones.
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Winbusinessin Podcast

Next Tuesday’s new episode will be covering the 5 essential skills for creating great content;

Writing - People - Video - Audio - Visual

Why not subscribe to the show on iTunes or go to Winbusinessin to listen to the first 2 episodes?

Commentary

Are we lazy or just very reactive with LinkedIn?

Why are LinkedIn users so keen to use canned responses such as ‘great post’ or ‘Congrats on your anniversary’?

I think it looks terrible but that isn’t really my point, I’m more interested in why these messages seem to work so well. Any suggestions please leave a voicemail or email me at [email protected]

Suggested replies (such as I see when using Googles ‘Inbox’ app) are highly effective and useful but LinkedIn’s version seems very crude - yet clearly popular!

Finally I am still keen to gather more ideas for episode 100 (it’s fast approaching). Is there someone you would like me to interview? Perhaps a previous guest or someone who you have heard on another podcast.

Drop me a line at [email protected]

Mentioned in this episode:

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

Welcome to episode 95 and more importantly welcome to 2016!

News

• French social network Viadeo has closed it’s Chinese LinkedIn competitor Tianji
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• Data Shows How Google Drives Search Traffic To LinkedIn
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A quick review of the main events of 2015

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• The biggest story of the year involved Barrister Charlotte Proudman rebuking a senior solicitor for complimenting her on her LinkedIn profile picture. This story went global and is still being debated by many people today.
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• 2015 was the year when ordinary LinkedIn users really took to publishing posts.
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• LinkedIn made a significant attempt to improve groups, upsetting many users, especially group managers in the process
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Winbusinessin Podcast

We are now in season 2 of my other podcast which focusses on social selling and business development on LinkedIn. On Tuesday we will be releasing episode 3 which is an interview with Christoph Trappe, a storytelling expert as part of our focus on content marketing.

Why not subscribe to the show on iTunes or go to Winbusinessin to listen to the first 2 episodes?

Commentary

Here are 5 things you can do this year to make 2016 your best LinkedIn year ever!

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2. Refresh your profile.
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6. Perhaps now is a good time to get a new profile picture
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9. Revamp your headline. The new mobile only initially shows the first 68 characters of your headline so consider updating it.
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12. Update your summary to express your goals for 2016, this is a great way to show people that you are actively using LinkedIn.
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15. Produce more content.
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19. Commit to writing more content, either LinkedIn posts or blogs on your own website.
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22. Consider producing video content, I am focussing on developing my Youtube channel this year.
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25. Perhaps this year could be the time to start producing radio content? If you want to start your own podcast I can highly recommend this free tutorial series.
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28. Engage more with updates on your homepage.
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32. Take more notice of your home page stream
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35. Look for opportunities to comment
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38. Try to comment rather than ‘like’
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41. Cull your connections!
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45. Take a look at your list of connections and disconnect from this that are no longer relevant and hide the updates those who post irrelevant content.
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48. Disconnecting is easy, simply click on the link as shown below on their profile. They will not be notified.
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51. Get out more!
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55. Make the effort to go and meet some of your connections. If you have developed a relationship online, why not take it to the next level by arranging to meet them in person.
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58. Take a look at what conferences or networking events you can attend this year and use the opportunity to grow your network.
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Mentioned in this episode:

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

• LinkedIn revamps its job section.
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• LinkedIn announced there top voices for 2015 and Paul Drury decides to crowd source his own list from real LinkedIn users (without editorial or commercial bias).
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• Brynne Tillman and her social sales GPS team write an open letter to Jeff Weiner.
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• Nintendo create a profile for Mario Bros which is quickly taken down by LinkedIn. 
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• A London based recruitment firm posts a picture of its female staff at the Christmas party. All hell breaks loose as it goes viral which prompted this post from one of the girls in the picture. What do you think of this. Appropriate or not? let me know - leave a voicemail or drop me an email [email protected]
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Commentary

Why do LinkedIn insist on creating responses for us search appalling "Great post" message which can only be sent when someone has not read the post!

I didn't have time to cover this fully in the episode but you can read my blog about it here.

LinkedIn advertising

Peter Gold updated us on his LinkedIn advertising experiment. It would appear that sponsored updates work in terms of clicks but are too expensive to make it worthwhile.

Mentioned in this episode:

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

• The new mobile seems to be getting decent reviews but these are from people who rarely use LinkedIn and are therefore not able to see its faults.
• Linkedin recruit 100 new people in Dublin and manage to persuade the Taoiseach Enda Kenny to attend an event at their offices by persuading his office that Dublin was LinkedIn’s ‘worldwide headquarters! 

Commentary

• LinkedIn new iOS mobile app review
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• First impressions of the app are really good, the design is more modern and the navigation looks more intuitive.
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• The app is split into five sections.
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Here you will see status updates and publish posts from your connections and those you follow as well as sponsored updates.

Unfortunately you cannot change from the algorithm driven order to ‘recent’ updates as you can on the desktop version.

This means that you see updates from 15 days ago, then one from 3 minutes ago followed by one posted 20 minutes ago. The order is supposed to be tailored to your needs and interest and I guess we will be able to train the algorithm to be more accurate through our actions but as things stand, my updates were pretty poor. The app updates are also completely different to the order of the desktop ones (that was also the case with the old app).

I noticed that every time I opened the app the second update I saw was always a sponsored advert. This is a significant increase over the amount of advertising we saw in the previous app.

At the top of the homepage you can see links to share a status update or a photo, As with the desktop version the share option also allows you to add an image therefore making it pretty much the same thing!

‘Image updates are broken’

I found it's extremely difficult to successfully post an image update. When tapping on ‘photo’ and selecting an image from my phone (taken with the phones camera) the app just hung for along time before it eventually informing me that the upload was unsuccessful.

I did eventually managed to post a more simple image via ‘share’ but not before posting the same update five times!

I made this short video showing exactly what the problem was

In the top right corner of the home page you can see 9 dots in a square, tap on this to reveal the ‘other apps’ feature which allows you to seamlessly open LinkedIn’s other apps.

Note how the Connected app is missing from the list. Could this be an indication that Connected and it’s desktop cousin ‘Contacts’ are soon to be retired? It wouldn’t surprise me.

The Sales Navigator and Recruiter apps are also missing but this may be because they are premium accounts.

LinkedIn’s strategy has always been to produce multiple apps covering specific areas rather then have one app try to do everything and this feature nicely brings it altogether, this works well with iOS 9 which allows an easy return to the last app used.

On a more positive note they have corrected the issue that meant you could only @mention people by their full name.

I always thought it was very odd to refer to someone you know in an update - your own or commenting on theirs by their full name such as

“You make a good point Teddy Burris”

As opposed to the more natural

“You make a good point Teddy”

It’s these apparently small details that make all the difference, especially when they involve communication.

You have always been able to do this on desktop, now you can on mobile.

My final observation is also a positive one in that you can hide updates from people who post irrelevant things in your stream (quizzes, irrelevant images and posts in a foreign language).

Simply click on the three small dots on the top right of the update;

This then reveals three options as shown below;

Mentioned in this episode:

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

Quote;

“We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people."

[Remarks on the 20th Anniversary of the Voice of America; Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, February 26, 1962]”

― John F. Kennedy

I’m back in the cold and windy this week after my lovely week away in Spain, I made a short video of what I learnt in the week away

My Thoughts From Spain

News

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• Musician Walter Martin releases his new track on LinkedIn!
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• The Most Valuable Social Media Tool You Are Overlooking - article about Slideshare in Forbes.
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• LinkedIn confirm that member search in groups will be returning (see group post from a LinkedIn representative below).
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Interview with Peter Gold, LinkedIn Advertising Experiment.

You can listen to the initial interview I did with Peter regarding his LinkedIn advertising experiment in episode 85.

Peter has not had a single click on his adverts as yet but is hoping for more success with sponsored updates.

Commentary

Why are LinkedIn so secretive?

Excellent post from Itai Leshem about LinkedIn publishing and LinkedIn’s lack of transparency;

Is LinkedIn headed for an Enron style fiasco?

Quotes;

“Truth never damages a cause that is just.”

― Mahatma Gandhi

“There is not a crime, there is not a dodge, there is not a trick, there is not a swindle, there is not a vice which does not live by secrecy.”

― Joseph Pulitzer

I am calling out for LinkedIn to be more transparent and honest!

Mentioned in this episode:

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

NEWS

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• Naomi Lewis wrote an article for ‘Look Magazine’
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• Here is the new LinkedIn sales tool called elink. It looks expensive but maybe an option to Autopilot if your market is very active on Twitter.
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• A LinkedIn success story. A start-up founder get his funding by connecting and building trust with someone in Australia who knew someone who wanted to invest. 
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•  Shocking sexist job ad by a company from Toronto that appeared on LinkedIn. 
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•  Three changes to LinkedIn this week; 
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• The main font and colour scheme has reverted to the dull black and grey scheme. 
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• You can now embed link to a wider variety of media in LinkedIn published posts 
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• Invitation ‘cards’ have been redesigned making it easier to see a customized message.
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COMMENTARY

I have found great success with my new VAR system. 

V = View a profile (a lot with autopilot) 

A = Accept the invitation (assuming they are a prospect) 

R = Reply to their invitation 

It certainly works well for me, why not give it a try. 

QUESTION (From James from the US)

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• How does LinkedIn determine someone’s ‘function’ on LinkedIn when there is no field in a profile for this? 
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Mentioned in this episode:

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

News 

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• 3 charts that prove that LinkedIn is on fire! This article’s most interesting fact is the comparable rate of member/user growth amongst the three main social networks. 
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• Woman creates fake LinkedIn profile to give credibility to her Disney scam. This is a timely warning that we should all check that the listed employees associated to our company pages are legitimate. 
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Commentary 

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• I have gathered more feedback about the new LinkedIn app from Android users and it seems to be universally disliked!  Whilst I can’t make a judgment myself yet, it does seem shocking that LinkedIn are still unable to produce an effective mobile app!
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• This week I enjoyed chatting with Sarah Santacroce about her LinkedIn challenge, which starts on 1 December.
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• Thanks also to Kate Lister for her voicemail stating her reasons for connecting with someone. Kate is a florist in Grimsby who wins business from her LinkedIn activities, I interviewed Kate in episode seven of my Winbusinessin podcast. 
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Question 

This week I was asked a question that I regularly get when I am running training sessions and it’s always a tricky one to deal with so, on the spur of the moment I asked Sarah to help me answer it! 

“I have two businesses that are both applicable to LinkedIn so should I have two separate profiles or try to cover both within the same profile?” 

Have you checked out my YouTube channel yet? Subscribe for regular tips and tricks. Click here.

Mentioned in this episode:

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

Welcome to a new episode of the award-winning LinkedIn podcast. This week I covered a wide variety of topics.

News

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• LinkedIn announced their new Air Traffic Control (ATC) platform for improving the quality and quantity of messages and notifications we receive from LinkedIn. 
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• LinkedIn appeared to have ambitious plans for Lynda.com 
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• Profile view daily limits have reduced to an estimated maximum of 850 per day. 
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• LinkedIn release their new mobile app on Android (that’s a first).
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Commentary 

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• Will the LinkedIn groups go the way of the dodo? Excellent article from Bruce Johnston. 
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• Who do you connect with and why? Do you follow LinkedIn’s advice to only connect with those you already know or do you just invite anyone? Please let me know, It will be really interesting to hear the views of everyone on this one. You can email me at [email protected] or simply leave a voicemail by clicking on the link on the right of this page. 
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• Be aware that a scam email is circulating that looks remarkably like a LinkedIn invitation email.
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Question

This week we had a voicemail question from Paul Copcutt about the new LinkedIn messaging app.  Paul is unable to read long messages for some reason, I have checked and I cannot replicate the problem. 

Does anyone else have this issue? 

Other links 

The Mr LinkedIn YouTube channel 

Mentioned in this episode:

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