Welcome to a new episode of LinkedInformed.

The main content this week is the second half of my recent interview with Lynnaire Johnston about LinkedIn pods plus my conclusions on the subject.

But first……

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week

How to beat LinkedIn : The Game

This spoof article made me chuckle…enjoy!

Microsoft quotes from their latest earnings call about LinkedIn Taken from this article from The Motley Fool

Microsoft’s 2016 acquisition of LinkedIn is increasingly looking like a winning bet. Sure, Microsoft had to fork over more than $26 billion to acquire the company, but LinkedIn continues to see incredible momentum nearly two years after the social network for professionals was acquired.

Over 575 million members strong, fiscal 2018 was a record year for LinkedIn. Further, Nadella said LinkedIn’s year-over-year revenue growth accelerated for the fifth quarter in a row in Q4, to 37%.

“We saw record levels of engagement and job postings again this quarter, with sessions growth up 41% year-over-year,” Nadella said. “This strong engagement is driven by quality of the feed, video, messaging and the acceleration of mobile usage, with mobile sessions up more than 55% year-over-year.”

Listener Feedback

Part 1

Part 2 (Thierry)

I love getting feedback like this, Thierry is referring to my comments in episode 214. Let me address the two points Thierry raises;

1. QR codes. I can’t accept that QR codes will catch on just because they are used in China! I did mention in the show that they were popular in China, India and Japan so I could see the sense from that perspective. That said, the feature in the mobile app doesn’t really require QR codes to catch on - the app shows your code and reads others so the feature is fully contained within the app….it could be a barcode (or any other technology) rather than a QR code, it doesn’t matter because it’s not used really outside of the app. I do still think it’s unlikely to be used in Europe and the US, ‘Find Nearby’ is much better and more likely to catch on in my opinion.
2. Company Pages. I think Thierry argument is that you do not need to see engagement on posts (from a company page) to assess whether they are worthwhile because if engagement was important why would anyone ever advertise on TV! Well I think TV advertising is an interesting example because I believe ad revenues are growing at a much lower rate than social media for this very reason (see article) - you can’t measure if it’s working whereas engagement and clickable links (less effective on LinkedIn) make social media advertising much easier to assess. Because external links tend to fail on LinkedIn, the best measure is via engagement and company page posts flop in this regard. I totally agree that the content would be much better if they were not run by HR (job ad content) or marketing (promotional posts) but by people that understand that content should be designed for the audience but even if the content was better, I still suspect engagement would be lower because LinkedIn members prefer content from individuals.

New LinkedIn Features

• Bring Your Conversations to Life with New Updates in LinkedIn Messaging
• Company page logos now accept GIF’s

Topics / Communities are broken! It seems the gremlins have got to this excellent feature that I introduced in episode 213 . Let’s hope we get our followed Topics back when they fix it!

UPDATE: Clearly a temporary blip, they have returned and all saved topics are safely back too!

Voted for by listener Paul Copcutt. This is the first time I have come across Dan’s content and I’m liking what I see! I don’t think he is to everyone’s taste and the sensitive execs at LinkedIn have censored some of his posts but he definitely appeals to a younger generation of users as you can see by the amount of engagement he is attracting.

Click on the image below to see the comments thread

LinkedIn Pods - Part Two

This is the second half of my chat with Lynnaire Johnston, if you haven’t yet listened to last weeks episode, I strongly recommend you do so before listening to this one.

My Conclusions

• Pods can clearly work but need to be run correctly. This is likely to involve the following;
  • Clear guidelines on what type of posts are appropriate
  • A careful selection of appropriate members who all post great content and are willing to help others. Smaller pods tend to work best
  • A committed group of members who actively participate, ideally all within the same time zone (engagement in the first hour is critical)
  • Usually managed by one person. Lynnaire’s group doesn’t work this way but I think their circumstances are quite unusual
  • Using a LinkedIn message (group) is a limited method of communication. Better to use a multi-channel format such as Slack. This way group conversation can be segregated from boost requests.
• The advantages of a well-run pod are;
  • The opportunity to meet new, interesting people which could lead to collaboration in other ways
  • Better content on your homepage feed
  • Greater engagement opportunities with your followers because you are making more comments
  • Being part of a pod disciplines you to post regularly and engage more and both these lead to greater visibility
  • Higher view numbers for your posts but this in isolation is not an effective measure of success. Comments are more valuable but ultimately it’s the increase in enquiries and business won that have proven to be the most compelling reason for joining a pod.
• Are pods ethical?
  • I don’t believe they are. For me, it just makes sense to ‘play the algorithm game’. It’s no different from posting at certain times of day when you know people are more likely to engage
  • Ethics are however, a very personal thing so you may feel differently.
  • LinkedIn should be all about community and helping each other and Pods are a great example of that in action.