4. Remember, building a great environment will be one of our most challenging tasks. It will bring multiple rewards for a long time to come.
5. Make sure your conversations are in the right place—anything regarding JOBS goes in the JOBS section—anything regarding LEADERSHIP goes in the DISCUSSIONS section.
6. All conversations placed in the wrong section will be flagged and deleted. You may also lose your membership.
7. Group settings:
■ Discussions and new features are enabled to all members
■ LinkedIn is allowed to move discussions automatically to job
■ Members of Leadership Think Tank are free to post
■ Anyone on LinkedIn is free to post comments and submit discussions for approval; submissions are reviewed periodically
■ New group members require moderation during 1 day
■ New people on LinkedIn require moderation for 5 days
■ People with few or no connections require moderation and approval
■ Content is automatically removed when flagged as inappropriate by group members. Number of flags: 5 flags. Discussions and comments cannot be retrieved once removed.
8. Let the conversations flow.
As you see, the rules are clear and simple. If you violate them, you will be removed from the Group. This is a great example you can use to create your own rules.
When you add a new member, LinkedIn automatically emails them the group rules. If someone violates the rules for a Group I’m running, I send that person a copy of the rules and point out how they are violating them. If they continue to break the rules, I remove them from the Group and block them from being able to reapply.
As a group manager, you’re also responsible for getting discussions started and helping to keep them going. As you read earlier in the chapter, discussions keep your members actively engaged.
Group Etiquette
Most LinkedIn members joined to expand their professional network, gain social influence, and increase the visibility of their business. For this reason, people generally follow the rules to present a professional image to their peers and prospects. As group manager, you are empowered to resolve difficulties with any members who decide they do not want to follow the rules. You need to act quickly to resolve issues and ensure that your members have an enjoyable experience as a part of your LinkedIn Group.
You set the tone for the discussions. If you do not want to see a certain kind of language used, you need to make that clear in the rules. The ideal tone for discussions in a Group—especially a business-related one—should be professional. Most of the time this is the case, but there will be occasional exceptions. If you see inappropriate conduct, remove the post immediately and contact the offender. Explain why their post was offensive and remove them from your Group if they refuse to obey the rules.
CONCLUSION
Remember: The image of your Group reflects directly upon you and your company. You need to maintain a high standard and a high-quality reputation.
If you are not the group manager, it is also important to respect that role. If both group managers and members follow the rules, the LinkedIn Group experience can be rewarding for all.
In the next chapter, we will learn how to manage your LinkedIn connections and remain top of mind with key decision-makers.
For additional updates and how-to videos, visit https://tedprodromou.com/UltimateGuideUpdates/.
Chapter 14
Managing Your LinkedIn Connections
As your LinkedIn network grows, you will want to keep track of the people being added. LinkedIn provides some great tools to help you monitor your network. You can see a snapshot of your LinkedIn network, which includes the total number of connections, as well as 2nd- and 3rd-degree connections. With two people joining LinkedIn every second, your network two and three degrees away can grow very quickly. You’ll also see the total users you can contact through Introductions.
As you see in Figure 14–1 on page 156, I have 15,867 1st-degree connections in my network. I can reach these professionals through an introduction or an InMail, which is unbelievable. Where else do you have access to so many targeted resources?
Each time I add someone as a 1st-degree connection, my network grows exponentially, because their entire network becomes part of my 2nd-degree connections. LinkedIn used to show us how many people were part of our 2nd- and 3rd-degree connections in a dashboard, but now we have to look this up manually using LinkedIn Search.
To see your entire network, click in the Search box and select People. I have 15,867 1st-degree connections, and my total network size is 8,819,876 people, as you see in Figure 14–2 on page 157. Now, I select 2nd under the Connections button and can see that I have 843,818 2nd-degree connections. Remember that they are essentially “friends of my friends,” so getting introduced to them is relatively easy. That’s the power of exponential networking on LinkedIn.
FIGURE 14–1. Your Network Connections
USING NOTIFICATIONS TO ENGAGE YOUR NETWORK
To increase engagement, LinkedIn added a feature where you can congratulate people when they get a new job or when it’s their birthday. I log into LinkedIn every morning and spend five to ten minutes congratulating people or saying happy birthday. This may seem trivial, but when you do this, the people are notified that you reached out, and it puts you top of mind with them. I’ve had students land big deals with people by doing this after not communicating with them for years. You can easily access this feature by navigating to Notifications on your main menu, as you can see in Figure 14–3 on page 158.
SYNCING LINKEDIN WITH GOOGLE CALENDAR AND CONTACTS
Another way to manage your LinkedIn life is to link it. I don’t recommend sending mass invitations, but you can automatically sync your Google Calendar and Google Contacts with your LinkedIn account, as you see in Figure 14–4 on page 159. LinkedIn will try to match the email addresses in your Google Contacts with existing LinkedIn members so you can connect with them and maintain a synchronized address book. When you are setting up an appointment through LinkedIn Messaging, LinkedIn will automatically look for available appointment times on your Google Calendar and suggest possible times in the message. LinkedIn plans to roll out numerous intelligent “bots” in the near future to automate many of our daily scheduling and messaging tasks. It is also working on extensively integrating the site with Microsoft’s flagship Office 365 and Dynamics CRM.
FIGURE 14–2. Viewing Your Full Network and 2nd-Degree Connections
FIGURE 14–3. Your Notifications
FIGURE 14–4. Google Calendar and Google Contacts Synchronization
You can set up the automated sync, or you can choose to just import your Google Contacts into LinkedIn. This is a quick way to grow your network with people you already know or are doing business with.
Here is how LinkedIn says to sync your contacts:
1. Click the My Network icon at the top of your homepage.
2. Click See All below Your Connections on the left rail.
3. Click Manage Synced and Imported Contacts near the upper right corner of the page.
4. Click Manage Contacts Syncing on the right rail of the Manage Your Contacts page to see your synced sources, or click Sync next to any source you’d like to sync from the pop-up window.
To import a contacts file:
1. Click the My Network icon at the top of your LinkedIn homepage.
2. Click See All below Your Connections on the left rail.
3. Click More Options below the Continue button on the right rail.
4. Click Upload a File on the right rail.
5. Select the file you’d like to upload and click Open.
Your contacts will be imported into LinkedIn and you will be able to easily connect with these contacts if they are not already part of your network.
CONCLUSION
The power of networking on LinkedIn is limitless. There is no other resource that lets you reach so
many business professionals with a few clicks of your mouse. The Notification feature prompts you when your connections share content, have birthdays, or change jobs so you can quickly reach out to them and remain top of mind.
In the next chapter, we’ll explore publishing and content marketing, so you can share your expertise with your network, company followers, and everyone else on LinkedIn.
For additional updates and how-to videos, visit https://tedprodromou.com/UltimateGuideUpdates/.
Chapter 15
The Definitive Publishing Platform
In a 2014 interview on CNBC, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner stated that, at the time, LinkedIn wanted to maintain focus on the company’s “core value propositions, professional identity, and making sure that the profile meets the needs of all of our members.” He also made it clear that one of his goals was to make LinkedIn more than just a site for connection, but rather, “the definitive professional publishing platform.”
LinkedIn has since delivered on that promise. Today, more than 100,000 unique articles and pieces of multimedia content are shared on LinkedIn every day. This content appears in the LinkedIn newsfeed as well as in Google search results. LinkedIn pushes the content to its partner networks as well, so the article you share on LinkedIn is now appearing all over the internet.
LinkedIn’s transition to focusing on becoming a world-class content publishing platform and creating a better user experience resulted in the complete overhaul of its desktop and mobile applications beginning in late 2016. LinkedIn wanted to make it easier for users to see relevant content and filter out content that didn’t interest them. That meant big changes for LinkedIn, starting with Pulse.
LinkedIn bought the news app Pulse in 2013 for $90 million, integrating its content into the desktop version and using it to enhance the mobile app. Pulse was a very popular news aggregating app that let you create customized newsfeeds. You could quickly and easily scan the app to see breaking news, industry-related content, and entertainment. You could subscribe to your favorite news sources, like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, ESPN, and other major news outlets. You could even subscribe to specific content channels like Entrepreneur Media so you always saw only content relevant to you.
Pulse was relatively short-lived. As part of the overhaul, LinkedIn Pulse and the Pulse app were retired in May 2017. If you post an article on LinkedIn now, it appears in your connections’ newsfeeds. In 2018, LinkedIn expanded the reach of your content, so it can also be seen by anyone on LinkedIn and their partner networks, as well as Google. People no longer need to be a 1st-degree connection to view your content.
The elimination of Pulse was part of LinkedIn’s consolidation of its numerous apps, which were integrated into its core user experience. The mobile app was expanded so the primary functions of networking, messaging, and your newsfeed were easily accessible. In the past, LinkedIn had up to six different apps performing very specific tasks, which confused many users, so the new integration was a needed improvement. The move paid off. After the launch of the new mobile app, LinkedIn messaging increased 83 percent in the first year.
Now, with everything integrated, you have even more control over what you publish, where you publish it, and—most importantly—who can see it.
CONTROLLING YOUR CONTENT
In addition to controlling which content you see on the LinkedIn newsfeed, you can now control who sees the content you share as status updates or as articles.
When you post a status update, an article, or a video, you can control who can see it by using the drop-down menu, which magically appears below the your name as you type your update. You can select: Public, Public + Twitter, or Connections.
If you choose Public, your post will appear on:
1. The newsfeed of your 1st-degree connections
2. The newsfeed of your 2nd- or 3rd-degree connections if one of your 1st-degree connections reshared, commented upon, or liked the post
3. Content search results for keywords contained in the content you’ve posted
4. Search results for hashtags you’ve used in posts or in the newsfeed of people subscribed to those hashtags
5. Your Activity page, which you see when you click on Who’s Viewed Your Posts
6. Your public profile, which is also visible to people who are not signed in to LinkedIn and in Google search results
7. Other sites off LinkedIn, which is called the Partner Network. This includes sites like Bing, Google, and Yahoo!
8. Your followers’ feeds. Followers can see your content and activity like a 1st-degree connection, but they cannot message you without using InMail
Your connections’ feeds are personalized for them based on people they follow, their connections, and their engagement on LinkedIn. Posts that are professionally relevant will benefit from organic distribution through your network with community engagement, such as likes, comments, and shares, allowing your content to reach the largest group of professionals. One of the most organic ways you can reach your intended audience is with your status updates.
STATUS UPDATES
LinkedIn status updates are a quick way for you to share short updates or article snippets with links to the full article. LinkedIn prompts you to “Share an article, photo, video, or idea” in the status update box, as shown in Figure 15–1.
FIGURE 15–1. LinkedIn Status Update
The character limit for a status update is 1,300 characters, which includes links, hashtags, and tagging other LinkedIn members. You can add an image, a link to additional content, a link to a YouTube video, or a native video MP4 file directly to your status update.
LinkedIn wants to keep people on the site, so it is encouraging users to upload video directly into the status update instead of adding a link to a YouTube video. The LinkedIn algorithm also rewards users for not adding external links to their status updates by receiving more views; it may also be shown to relevant 2nd- and 3rd-degree connections.
In Figure 15–2 on page 164, you see a status update by my friend and client, Doreen Hamilton. She uploaded a short video describing her “Seven Secrets to Fearless Speaking,” and offered a free PDF if you commented on her post. Doreen also included numerous targeted hashtags, which helps push her status update to everyone who follows those hashtags.
FIGURE 15–2. A Sample LinkedIn Status Update with Native Video
The result? At the time of this writing, Doreen has received more than 5,000 video views in just a couple of weeks. More than 300 people requested the PDF, and she has more than 150 new 1st-degree connections who were previously 2nd- or 3rd-degree connections who saw this post thanks to her hashtags. This is a powerful way to let the LinkedIn algorithm get your status updates to your target audience.
ARTICLES
LinkedIn articles are the new Pulse. In the past, articles appeared under the URL www.linkedin.com/pulse, where you could see all your subscribed content on one screen. Today, it appears in your newsfeed. To be honest, I’m not a big fan of the change because I often miss important content in my very busy newsfeed. I would prefer to see my subscribed content on a separate page like the old Pulse page (are you listening, LinkedIn? LOL).
Publishing LinkedIn articles is a great way to establish yourself as an industry leader because millions of people can potentially see your content on LinkedIn and millions more may see it on Google and LinkedIn’s partner networks. LinkedIn doesn’t specifically say which websites are part of their partner networks, but I do know Bing is one of the bigger sites. I often see LinkedIn articles when I do Google searches on specific topics. This is because Google loves quality content, and it considers LinkedIn a trusted source.
When you add LinkedIn hashtags to your articles, everyone who is subscribed to those hashtags will potentially see your article in their newsfeed, even if they are not 1st-degree connections. For example, if you add the hashtag #publishing to your post, the more than 4.5 million LinkedIn members who are subscribed to that hashtag can potentially se
e your article. Make sure to use hashtags that are related to your article topic so you are attracting the right readers. When you are ready to publish an article on LinkedIn, click on the Write an Article button in the status update box. See Figure 15–1 on page 163. Here are the character limits for a LinkedIn article:
■ Post headline: 150
■ Post body text: no limit
I like to add at least one image per page in the body of the article. As people scroll through your article, the image breaks up the text and makes it easier to read. I also like to add my bio with links for additional, related content or a call to action at the end of each article.
Remember, most people are reading on their smartphones, so don’t feel you need to write War and Peace. I like to write shorter, focused articles and send people to my website if they want more information.
Many of my clients and students ask me what they should write about in their LinkedIn articles. I always ask them what stories or news items they’re seeing in their newsfeed. Popular stories will trend upward as they go viral and more people read them. The LinkedIn algorithm detects trending topics and places the stories in the newsfeeds of other members, multiplying the effect. If you can write an article that gets the attention of a high percentage of your 1st-degree connections (with views, likes, and comments), LinkedIn will push it to your 2nd- and 3rd-degree connections.
An easy way to see the most popular content on LinkedIn is to do a search using the Content filter, as shown in Figure 15–3. Sort your search by relevance, and you see a post shared by Susan Cain, which has 2,121 likes and 144 comments. If this content is relevant to your niche, you can write a similar article, since you know your network is interested in this topic.
Ultimate Guide to LinkedIn for Business Page 15