Let's Review - Relevant Changes to LinkedIn in the Last Year+

LinkedIn has been busy! They have added a lot of new features and functionality since Covid hit. Some of them are not relevant to Coaches, Consultants, and Small Business. IMHO - Most of them are. I am going to review many of them in this newsletter and the next. So, get a thirst-quenching beverage and settle in. This will be a Long One. 

1. LinkedIn Live - They are still rolling this one out. If you have not submitted a recent application, you aren't likely to see this. There are a lot of people that have great success with this. It doesn't happen overnight and requires some work to set it in motion. It's like podcasting, always building your audience. 

2. Stories - Many say this addition 'cheapened' LinkedIn because it copied FB. For some age categories it works. Always be thinking about your Ideal Audience before investing a lot of time and money in a new tactic. Not a fan. 

3. Newsletters - Currently only available to Influencers. Great feature as it notifies all your subscribers when you publish a new edition. I'm not holding my breath waiting for this one. 

4. Featured Section on the Profile - This one anyone can add and I highly recommend it. You can add a post, PDF, photo, blog, video, infographic, online article... This adds to your SEO. Add things that are great resources for your Ideal Audience. Add something new each week to freshen up your Profile Optimization. 

5. Profile Headline - It was 120 characters. Now 240. I have a worksheet to create a Client focused headline. DM me if you would like to try it out. 

6. Name Pronunciation - From your phone, you can add the correct pronunciation of your name. This is rather awesome if you have a challenging name. 

7. Longer About Section - 600 more characters. Use every single one for the SEO boost. 

8. Events - This one confuses people. If you create an event promotion in this feature and invite people, they sometimes assume they are signed up. If the signup is on Eventbrite or your website, they may miss that step and be upset about missing your event. Use the newsfeed, your Featured Section, and newsletters to promote your events - with a direct link. Avoid the confusion. 

9. Creator Mode - Please spare me the excitement. They have made such a big deal out of this. With Creator Mode turned on, you get to add 5 hashtags to your profile. You also get 2 extra posts to show on your profile activity. I'm not excited, but stay tuned. I will be watching this.

10. Message editing - This is useful. If you mess up a message you send, a misspelling, etc. - you can correct it. I love do-overs! 

11. Polls! - I love this one! You can now add a poll into the newsfeed. My first one was to help me decide what to offer as my first 6-Week Course. Market Research. What an opportunity. That first class was such a huge success because I let my Ideal Clients decide. I just did another silly one about wine. Over 5000 views. I mined it for 17 new contacts. So much fun. Create one every month. 

(Click the link to the post to find out what the answer is)

12. Longer Posts - Posting used to be limited to just over 1000 characters including spaces. Now it is over 3000. (Using emojis or bolding eats up double the characters) I have very mixed feelings about this. I still love the blogging platform on LinkedIn (write an article). Why?

• more shareable, how are you going to find a post you published 3 months ago to send to someone?
• Articles are easy to find if you are checking someone out. It's a great way to learn about their style, values, philosophy...
• The options - adding video, diagrams, hyperlinks (it's the only place on LinkedIn you can), images, your mini-bio, quotes... so many features you don't have in a post.

What's the downside? There is a lot of crappy content out there. I'm all for QUALITY. If you couldn't provide value before in 1000 characters, having 3000 characters isn't going to change that. Maybe I should be happy. More bad content will increase the value of good content. Having a great Headline for your content just became more important.

But, LinkedIn giveth and LinkedIn taketh away. 

What have they taken away? A lot. They are stripping features from free or Basic LinkedIn. No more analytics chart for Who's Viewed Your Profile. No more saved Searches unless you are a Sales Navigator subscriber.

And they have taken a lot of features away from the bottom 3 Premium levels. For example, With Premium Career, you used to get 10 InMails. Look below to see what it is now. Same price.

Not to mention we lost a lot of organic reach. In December, they scrambled and recalibrated the algorithms to add 'dwell time' and show a little more favor to 3rd party article sharing. It messed up a lot of people for a month or so until things found a new normal. 

There have been a lot more changes for job seekers and to the Co. pages. I won't be addressing those. 

I am curious if you are having any success with any of these updates. Especially if you disagree with me about one. We all think differently and have different business models. What works for one of us, does not work for all of us. 

Where have you found success with these new features? Please share in the comments below, I'd love to start a conversation!

The next newsletter will be about all the updates to messaging from the mobile app. They are so amazing, they require an entire newsletter! 

Have a great week! 

Angela

Angela Dunz is a LinkedIn Coach for Coaches, Consultants, and Small Business. She focuses on Professional Branding, Profile Optimization, Business Development, Content Strategy & Lead Generation - all on LinkedIn. She offers On-Demand, Group, and One to One options. Learn more on her website and check out her YouTube Channel. She is also a Keynote and Public Speaker, Author, Intentional Business advocate, and Green Bay Packer fan. To schedule a Virtual Coffee Chat, click here.