As the temperatures drop with Australia’s winter, there is plenty of fire stoking updates on LinkedIn and diverse conversations.
LinkedIn is unlike any other social media platform with far more civil discourse. But there have been plenty of lively and heated debates over the last twelve months.
Many new features have landed this year. Some have appeared overnight, others rolling out and some still in beta testing camps.
Political content
Given the recent Federal election, it’s interesting that LinkedIn in the USA is trialling a ‘Political Opt Out‘ feature. The definition being ‘content from political parties and candidates, election outcomes and ballot initiatives’.
I wondered what members felt about consuming political content of this type in their newsfeed. I ran a small poll, the results being: 48 per cent NO; 35 per cent YES and 17 per cent Unsure/depends.
Statistics
There are now 12.7 million Australian and 830 million global members, LinkedIn’s Q3 FY22 report quotes a 22 per cent increase in platform engagement.
This is interesting as circa only nine to 15 per cent of members contribute and engage. This may indicate an over-representation of the same members perhaps.
However, it signals there is plenty of room, and indeed hunger for fresh voices and content from small businesses with unique value and solutions.
New features
Lead generation forms
Company Pages have flexible lead generation forms with a CTAs and data collection in Excel spreadsheets. . A Privacy Policy URL is required to create the form for member protection. This is a very good tool and will be valuable with clever marketing integration.
Website / URL link on Profiles
On the top Profile card, under the headline field (with Creator Mode ON) you can add a live URL to any website or page of choice. Adding a personalised description to inspire clicks is a long-awaited feature that encourages company engagement and a better user experience.
Newsletters for companies
Newsletters are being rolled out for publishing under Company & Showcase Pages. I recommend this for businesses who have amassed a high volume of followers (say 1500 plus). Like Newsletters from personal profiles they are subscriber- and notification-based with Google indexing SEO juice.
Workplace Module
Section in Company Pages to list top workplace and HR policies that employees care about. With a talent-short market and candidates evaluating new employers rigorously, the Workplace Module will help small business attract candidates.
Who’s viewed your profile analytics
Understanding who has viewed your profiles is very important. The analytics dashboard has been expanded to statistics on industry, location and companies.
Crackdown on gaming and polls
LinkedIn notified in May that they will apply better filtering of Polls and a crackdown of newsfeed gaming. Polls have been badly misused with nonsense questions purely for vanity eyeballs and algorithm traction.
A crackdown on low-quality content has also been flagged which should address engagement pods, click farm engagement and MLM content. That’s a big task and, hopefully, a dent will occur.
Hot security tips
Security and hacking attacks are an issue on all social media and LinkedIn is no different and indeed are ramping up again globally. There are a few simple steps to significantly reduce risk.
- Two-Step Authentication: this is essential to turn ON. Yet less than 40 per cent of members have it activated.
- Notification Settings: ensure all LinkedIn notifications are received only on the LinkedIn platform NOT via email. There are many clever bad actors sending emails appearing like they are from LinkedIn. Click them and you’re hacked!.
The key to LinkedIn is consistency, unique value and community. Combine these for the winter and beyond for visibility and successful results.
Sue Parker, Founder, DARE Group Australia
DARE Group Australia is a valued content partner of Inside Small Business
