We Are The Test Dummies!

Welcome to episode 197, I’m back and it’s just me this week.

Someone alerted me to a shocking issue regarding invitations to connect this week and it got me thinking about the ineffective way that LinkedIn introduce new features. It seems that introduce features on a slow roll-out and rely on their users to report issues…..but what if we don’t or aren’t able to spot a problem…….based on the evidence of this week, it appears that such issues just remain until someone does report it. …..and that is simply not good enough!

More of that later but as usual I scanned the internet to find any interesting articles about Linkedin, I found a few but it has been noticeable this year that LinkedIn’s own blog seems to be focussed mainly on job seekers - very few LinkedIn users are looking for jobs so why are Linkedin writing virtually all their blog articles for jobseekers? So far this year on LinkedIn’s main blog 9/10 (and the last 9) have been jobseeker focused!

Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week

People Still Spend an Insane Amount of Time on Facebook, But Trust it Much Less than LinkedIn Results from a report released by Business Insider I’m not sure how people it interpret ‘Safe to participate or post’ but LinkedIn was by far the most trusted with 48% of the votes (Facebook was 2nd with 24%). LinkedIn is clearly seen as more reliable for ‘real’ content and a place where you will get less abuse This is good news for LinkedIn ads Six Ways Millennials Can Take LinkedIn To The Next Level Interesting article, not just relevant to millennials Number 1 is ‘Make it fun’ - this is such good advice. Yuck! to CV style profiles! Activity (inc post searching) is great advice Number 6 (stop being cheap) is unrealistic and unnecessary for most Remember LinkedIn? A year on from the $27bn Microsoft takeover - was it worth it? Very little has changed on LinkedIn - as they said would be the case at the time of the takeover! LinkedIns revenue is growing ($1.3bn in the quarter) Microsoft say that LinkedIn is “performing better than we expected, and I think today we would even say it's a more strategic asset than we even maybe thought a year ago.”

#LinkedInLocal

I will be attending three Linkedin local events in the next month or so; Aberdeen 22nd February Manchester 14th March Warrington 15th March (this has changed from the 8th as stated in the show)

The #LinkedInLocal concept is really taking off with an amazing 48 events happening in February and March across the world including Bristol, Leeds, San Francisco, Paris, Las Vegas, Edinburgh and Lahore to name a few

To find an event in your area go to https://linkedlocally.com/explore/

Post of the Week

A great video post from José Chávez-Ruz that hits the mark for being relevant, interesting and highly shareable.

New Feature

LinkedIn are improving the skills endorsements feature (mobile only at the moment).

Now when you endorse a skill you are asked to grade the level

And then give it some context

In addition you can now see the actual number of endorsements on mobile, rather than the previous 99+

Will this make skill endorsements relevant? I very much doubt it - too little too late, endorsements are not taken seriously because previously they were too easy to give. Adding the extra steps to endorse does make them more credible but you can’t separate the new ones from the old ones! I personally think this is a tactic to stop those ridiculous ‘Auto-endorse’ bots that are becoming popular…….more of that subject next week when I will be debating LinkedIn automation with John Nemo. If you have any thoughts or questions about automation, please get in touch as soon as possible.

Your Personalised mobile invitations have not been sent!

I was truly shocked to find this out this week - thanks to an eagle eyed connection who spotted it. For years I have been encouraging people to personalise their invitations to connect on mobile by using the 3 dot ‘More’ menu rather than the blue Connect button. It would appear that this invitation (the actual invitation, not just the message) have not been sent!! I have no idea how long this has been the case……quite possibly since it was added as a new feature (years ago). The problem seems to be mainly on the iOS app although a few Android users are experiencing the same issue. You wouldn’t know there is a problem as it states the invitation has been sent but when you check your sent invitations, it does not show and I have confirmed on 4 occasions now that the recipient does not receive anything!! Outrageous!

This is, I believe a direct result of LinkedIns ridiculous feature launch policy that appears to involve zero testing or quality control and relies 100% on the user reporting a problem……but what is the user is unable or highly unlikely to spot the fault?

It’s time that LinkedIn stopped letting their members down and implemented a proper, thorough quality control testing procedure.

Do you agree?

“How do I stop those irritating badge posts from LinkedIn appearing on the left of my screen while I'm working? The ones which talk about how it bases choices it offers me on my interests or posts or some such nonsense. I've only really noticed them this week”

ANSWER This would appear to be an early release of a new notification. It is not possible to stop these types of pop-ups but you can give feedback to LinkedIn that you find them irritating and perhaps they will think twice about rolling it out further.

Mentioned in this episode:

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