Welcome to episode 141….the calm after the #linkedinthebin storm of last week!

The feedback was great from last weeks show, thanks to everyone who voted. The result was a draw between myself and Angus.

If you want to hear another round of Linked-in-the-bin, let me know and I will have a think about who I can invite as contestants.

Interesting stuff I saw this week

Search Filters are being removed

A Business account holder received the following message this week

Message from LinkedIn reads;

At LinkedIn, we're always looking for ways to simplify and improve your experience – helping you be more productive and successful. This sometimes means removing features that aren't heavily used by most of our members to invest in others that members tell us offer greater value.

As such, we're removing the Premium search filters feature that allowed you to apply additional advanced search filters to find people on LinkedIn. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you.

If you'd like to continue using this feature, it's available on our Sales Navigator platform, which you can now enjoy for a free trial period of 3 months*. LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a product we launched a couple of years ago and is targeted at sales professionals - it lets you keep track of your existing relationships, research your network, and find new leads faster with tailored recommendations.

Please feel free to contact us with any questions regarding your Premium account.

The LinkedIn Premium Team

This would appear to suggest that the premium filters are the only thing they are removing but that is definitely not the case with the new UI - perhaps this is an interim move whilst the roll out to the new UI takes place?

Do you have a business account? What do you see in the advanced search area now?

I checked someones free account and the premium filters were still showing

As usual with LinkedIn, a lack of clear communication leaves us all confused!

Tags & Notes

A number of people have also contacted me this week to say they had received notification that Tags and Notes were being removed.

This was originally announced several months ago and I haven’t see the relationship tab on connections for some time now so I was surprised to see this.

As with search filters / advanced search these features have all moved to Sales Navigator.

Whilst I’m a big fan of Sales Navigator, I do think it’s a very poor show to remove these features from free users as well as Job seeker and Business account holders.

Sponsored InMail

LinkedIn Releases Sponsored InMail Campaigns for All Advertisers

This could be useful for some although I fear more spam is likely to come our way!

Microsoft deal approved by EU due to Xing concession

Microsoft Said to Use German Site to Appease EU Over LinkedIn

Great article from Greg Cooper about Sales Navigator

Should I Upgrade to LinkedIn Sales Navigator? A Guide for SMEs (SMBs)

Don’t Trust LinkedIn

I was reminded by a follower this week that I warned people against using Tags in June 2014

when I wrote a post on LinkedIn titled Be careful LinkedIn......

Which included the lines

“For instance. LinkedIn Contacts is a fantastic feature, effectively a free social CRM system built into LinkedIn. So why aren't people using it? Well what happens if I write notes, add reminders etc and then find they have all disappeared because LinkedIn changed its mind and decided that this was not the direction they want to go in!”

So now LinkedIn are basically saying the following;

“I know we gave you something and asked you to use it and now we want you to pay to keep using it but please use it…..we promise we won’t take it away or suddenly increase the cost.

The lesson? Don’t use features that tie you into LinkedIn….period.

This is not a reason to upgrade the Sales Navigator in my opinion, unless the info you wish to add is non essential to your business

If your content and followers are all on LinkedIn - diversify where you place your content. Keep writing posts but don’t just rely on LinkedIn.

By all means link Sales Navigator to your CRM but don’t add any valuable data into your LinkedIn account.

I hate to say it but we have to learn from experience. LinkedIn are not a company to be trusted!

With these changes and the impending outcry when everyone gets the new UI, I fully expect the likes of BeeBee to encourage a migration away from LinkedIn.

Whilst I understand the sentiment and the desire to protest, there really is no point in cutting your nose off to spite your face!

LinkedIn is useful to us because of it’s members, the company that run it may annoy us and at times act in ways which prove they are not trustworthy but that is no reason to leave.

The right response is to keep using LinkedIn because the majority of professionals will be there. I have no loyalty to LinkedIn but I believe that the point of social media is to engage and build relationships with those that you wish to do business with and to do that you need to be active where they are…and most people are on LinkedIn.

Voting with your feet and migrating to other smaller networks is not the answer, the vast majority of people on LinkedIn will never leave so neither should you.

Just don’t trust them with anything of value or importance to your business.

Stop ‘Bigging’ yourself up!

Don’t tell me…let me find out

This week a connection of mine posted a status update showing a screenshot of a recommendation they had received on LinkedIn!

This loses all impact - stop telling me how great you are (even if it’s someone else words)

A product with a testimonial printed on it is seen as blatant, untrustworthy marketing. A product with a review attached to it is seen as credible…both the same thing

Slideshare - RIP?

Following a voicemail from Gary Stockton, I started to investigate the rumour that Slideshare could be shutting down.

I haven’t asked LinkedIn about this (because they never tell you anything!) and the ‘Todays Top Slideshares’ feature has now been updated but I still smell a bit of a rat….watch this space!

Below is the article referred to;

Is LinkedIn Killing SlideShare?

Mentioned in this episode:

This show was created by the original host of the show, Mark Williams.

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