Early in 2020 LinkedIn memberships reached 11 million in Australia and 675 million globally. The platform continues to grow, holding strong as the world’s premier social media for business, brands and professionals.
But with such scale and the scamper for visibility and market influence, there has been a deluge of both rubbish and high-value content. Like life, we often must wade through the mud to get to lush lawns. And your personal LinkedIn newsfeed can be no different.
So, it’s vital to maximise your experience and time to have a newsfeed delivering more of what matters and less of what doesn’t. Whilst it is impossible to tidy up the whole feed 100 per cent. You do have a lot of control. It’s very much individual. As what one person considers gold another deems as trash.
But LinkedIn has an intuitive algorithm with an AI to deliver more of what it believes a user is interested in and whom they want to engage. But we need to train the AI beast by being direct and often tough.
Here are my top 10 tips to tailor your LinkedIn feed:
Ellipsis menu
There is a three-point drop-down menu at the top every post. This is gold as it contains the touchpoints of much of the below. It is where you start to tailor.
Unfollow
Hit the Unfollow button for connections whose content and their engagement is just not what you enjoy. Often this is a strategy to clean up the dross of banal Pod engagement that filters the clogs your feed. You are not disconnecting from that person and they will never know you are not following them.
Blocking
Unfortunately, this is the only way to ensure that you never see unwanted content of a member (read ‘vacuous influencer’) with whom your connections engage. This is a big one as it removes the spider web of unwanted drivel.
Engage
Like and comment on articles and posts you really enjoy. You will notice new connections posts will automatically show in your feed. If you want to see more of them, ensure you engage to keep them coming. Try and respond to everyone who comments on your posts (esp people you value). AI picks up the creator side engagement patterns of reciprocity. Perceived interest aligns more of the same. So be very intentional in what you post and those who engage with you that you care about.
New connections
Be really vigilant and don’t accept every Tom, Dick or Mary. Enough said!
Delete connections
Have the courage to audit and delete the connections that are no longer relevant, or aligned to your objectives on LinkedIn.
Searches
Use Boolean and basic searches for topics and companies you are interested in.
Hide
When you come across a post or in feed sponsored advertisement that is irrelevant then press “Hide” from the three ellipsis drop-down menu. The AI machine will gradually pick up these pattern sequences and reduce similar distribution. But patience, grasshopper!
Improve your feed
Spend time tailoring this section regularly on your profile.
Hashtags
Search and follow the topic hashtags you enjoy. Whilst it isn’t 100 per cent to be honest for feed distribution it has some good weightage and AI.
Implementing these tips are guaranteed to make a difference to what you see in your news feed and impact your overall user experience. Some tips will deliver instant results and others need a longer tail. Be brave and tough.
Sue Parker, Founder, DARE Group Australia
DARE Group Australia is a valued content partner of Inside Small Business
