From Facebook to Twitter to Instagram, most Social Media platforms are a mix of fun and informational. LinkedIn, above all, is the one platform in which you want to look as polished, refined and in the know as possible.
Of course, it’s not easy to do that if you aren’t keeping up with all the recent changes. And there have been a few key ones to LinkedIn this year. All of LinkedIn’s changes are designed to help its members by delivering more information and making it easier to use.
But what all is changing?
Group Updates: All in one spot
If you find it time consuming to scroll through all the individual groups you’re a member of, this change is a huge help.
LinkedIn has a new Group Browsing stream that allows you to keep on top of all the actions from your different Groups in one spot. It gives you the ability to comment on posts right from your Groups page rather than going into each individual group.
Along those same lines, you are now able to start conversations directly from the Groups page instead of going into the actual Group itself.
Also, this new Groups page gives you suggestions of which new ones you should join. The suggestions are based on the current Groups you’re a member of, your skills, your position and other characteristics related to your profile.
Polls Be Gone
Anyone regularly active on LinkedIn has probably noticed this bar stating the polling feature for Groups and Company pages is going bye-bye on May 15. Though this is a popular feature, it has been seen by some as unnecessary considering anyone can post a question in a group and still get plenty of interaction and opinions.
Group Moderation Changes
More than a year ago, LinkedIn implemented Site Wide Automatic Moderation (SWAM), which states if you get blocked from a Group, posts to your other Groups will automatically be sent to the moderation queue. Apparently, this made for some disgruntled LinkedIn members because they could be blocked or deleted from a Group simply if anyone — a moderator, a competitor — had a problem with them.
In order to fix this, LinkedIn has instituted a sort of “Time Out” policy. When someone gets reported to SWAM, they get a blue-box message. From that point on, the LinkedIn user is monitored for their behavior in other Groups. Based on how they act in those groups, they are brought back in an appropriate time.
Who’s Viewed Your Profile
The “Who’s Viewed Your Profile” feature has always been a useful tool for discovering new opportunities and networking. But recently, LinkedIn has amped up this feature by adding more visual analytics and insights to help improve your visibility.
The new version gives wider access to more data-driven insights, including the industry a viewer works in, keyword searches that funneled people to your profile and how the “viewer” found you. Also, LinkedIn members will get information on what regions their viewers live in, what profession they work in and what companies they work for. According to LinkedIn, this helps users identify trends and align themselves with professional goals.
LinkedIn is also providing personalized tips on how to make yourself more discoverable. These tips will provide suggestions on how to improve profiles, find relevant articles and actions to increase your profile views.
The goals of all of these changes, according to LinkedIn, is to take the guesswork out of how to build your professional brand and show off your skills. These changes will ultimately help you refine your profile and link up with like-minded professionals. Understanding these changes, and getting comfortable with them, should help you make your profile a super-charged networking tool.
Keeping on top of the ever-evolving and constantly changing world of Social Media is what NOW Marketing Group does. We take the mystery and guesswork out by studying the trends and changes and staying ahead of the curve. That allows your company to stay one step of the competition.
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