LinkedIn Updates for 2023 You Need to Know

Speaker 1: 0:01

So I was on a call with a marketing technology partner this week and he thanked me for accepting his LinkedIn connection request a few months ago, and he told me since then he has already started to create carousel posts on LinkedIn, one which generated more than 100,000 views, and he just joined LinkedIn a few months ago. Linkedin is changing and this is my annual update for you on what you need to know about LinkedIn today. On this next episode of the digital marketing coach podcast. Hey everybody, this is Neil Schaefer, your digital marketing coach. Welcome to episode number 332 of this podcast. If you are new here, I am a fractional CMO, a marketing consultant, also an author and speaker really on all things digital writing books, from books specifically about LinkedIn to books about social media, marketing strategy, influence of marketing, and working on my fifth book, which is going to be hopefully the ultimate digital marketing playbook for the post COVID economy that we live in today, but that is a story for another episode. Today is my annual update on LinkedIn. I provide an annual update not just to my podcast listeners, but also to my email subscribers and my community, because every year, I religiously update this free ebook that I have called maximizing LinkedIn for business. It's currently in its fourth edition. There were a few years where I didn't update it, but I have updated it every year over the past few years and I will put a link in the show notes. But it is now available. I just released it earlier this week. It is now available for immediate download and if you don't want to look at the link in the show notes, you want to try going directly there. The exact link and my apologies it's a little bit long it is neilshaefercom slash. Linkedin dash book dash free dash download. I'll create a bit for that in the future, but for now, linkedin dash book dash free dash download. This is a 55 or so page PDF and, as I said when I introduced this book in my LinkedIn post, I said what do you do after you publish two books on LinkedIn but would rather work on new content rather than revise the older books? You offer a free update on LinkedIn best practice and with that thought, that's where this free ebook was born. Now, in its fourth edition, it is a 55 page PDF chalk full of recommendations and best practices. That has become a labor of love to revise annually and to make sure it is even more up to date than a published book could be, because they aren't as frequently updated. Well, let's get into the book, because by getting into the sea book and what I covered, I think it gives you a snapshot as to where LinkedIn is today and what you should be focusing on. I do this by revising chapters and sometimes replacing chapters. Last year was the first time I introduced something called creator mode, which was only invite only and beta. Obviously, this year that is now available for everybody. But let me take a step back. I want to cover four areas where I have seen the biggest change in LinkedIn, including that teaser where I talked about LinkedIn carousel post. So hold on for more information about that. But I want to first begin. Where I talk about this is chapter two how LinkedIn is used today for business, and I talk about the different ways in which LinkedIn has been used over the years Simply recruiting for sales and social selling, and if that is your thing, please, please, please listen to my previous episode, which was with John Ferrara of Nimble the secrets to successful social selling. Obviously it is used for marketing. It has been used for something called employee advocacy. It is also been used for just general thought leadership, in fact, linked in and this is sort of on the paid side. But they have recently introduced thought leadership ads, where you can actually, as a corporation or organization, boost the content of your executive team. Pretty cool, right? Only available linked in. But I added one more section this year and that was employer branding. Now this is a topic I've been talking more about. If you remember, if you've been subscribed this long back in September, 15th of 2022, episode number 284, I offered my own introduction to what is employer branding and why is it important to marketers. But just to give you a feel as to what I cover in the book, I have seen this become more and more important. These thought leadership ads, employee advocacy, employee engagement they're all sort of related. In fact, I would say influencer marketing is related to this as well, especially when we leverage our employees, but they give you a feel in just a really quick snapshot. Employer branding is how you market your company to desired job seekers. It is marketing, but not marketing products to people or organizations as by them. It is marketing your culture and your company to desired job seekers, who are obviously active on linkedin, and a brilliant way of thinking about it is through this quote, one of my favorite quotes on the topic from someone at linkedin on their recruiting blog said your company also has a second brand, related to its primary brand, about how you're viewed as an employer. This is your employer brand and it lives and breathes in the minds and hearts of your former, current and future employees. So because linkedin is such an important place of source talent, you can imagine how it becomes the most important social network for employer branding. An employer branding itself, if you don't realize it already, is becoming more important for the following reasons. The job market is as competitive as ever, so a strong employer brand is going to be critical to attract and retain the best talent. Without an employer brand, it becomes difficult and costly to hire and retain the best employees and, in this age of AI and always changing landscape, you really need to have the brightest working for you in order to advance your company, and the best way to find them and attract them is to present your company as a fantastic, absolute, best place to work, where people spend their time, and that is in social media. So, as a result of all this, employee advocacy programs are also being evolved into employer branding programs, finding new ways of collaborating with employees to find new ways to positively promote their brand to potential job seekers and make current employees feel good about their workplace. If you are in charge of influencer marketing for a B2B or even B2C company and you're looking to tap into your employees, if you manage an employee advocacy program, if you work in HR or if you want to try to figure out a way to include your employees as part of your marketing employer brandings for you, definitely go back and listen to that episode number 284. But I think this is a new way in which LinkedIn is being used compared to last year, obviously related to what we see in the past with employee advocacy, employee engagement, but a new take on it. So that was a minor revision to the ebook, but I just wanted to bring that up with you today. The other minor revision is that of creator mode. So when I talk about LinkedIn's newest features, when I also talk about the way you should optimize your profile, this is where LinkedIn creator mode comes in Now. A year ago it was in beta. I've already talked about LinkedIn creator mode on this podcast and, to refresh your memory, it was just two months ago in episode number 324, linkedin creator mode your killer, secret weapon for LinkedIn growth. I still believe that way, but I covered it in more detail now in this ebook. So if you do not know what creator mode is, if you haven't turned it on, I have a great YouTube video that I'll handhold you through the process. That I am going to link to in the show notes as well, and it is covered in the ebook. But one thing I want to point out about creator mode it gives you ability for a few different things, and you can add hashtags to your profile. You get access to LinkedIn live to start live streaming. You have the ability to have members subscribe to newsletters that you can send them. You can create a customizable link to probably place right under your location on your profile. But one thing that I didn't mention of these four things is that you also have the ability to do an audio event, and I don't know about you, but almost every day when I go to my notifications, I am seeing a promotion for a LinkedIn audio event. I'm not seeing promotions to sign up to a newsletter. I'm not seeing promotions for live streams or for events. I'm seeing them for LinkedIn audios and audio events. That, once again, this is part of creator mode, and this seems to be today and I'm recording this in mid-August of 2023, what the algorithm is emphasizing. If you come from the clubhouse space or Twitter spaces space, this is a natural. If you haven't tried a LinkedIn audio event I actually haven't Something I want to do I highly recommend that you give it a try. Obviously, you need to be in creator mode first, but that is definitely something new that we do not see or did not see a year ago. The popularity of audio events, especially since clubhouse itself, has sort of died out, for lack of a better word. I know it's still there and it has its fans, but it's just not the same buzzwordliness that it used to be. Now, as part of this annual revision, if there is something major that demands its own chapter, I create its own chapter. If there's something that doesn't need a chapter anymore, I delete it. This year, I deleted a chapter on LinkedIn automation. I think it just has no place in LinkedIn. Trust me, I have a blog post on how to send a complaint to LinkedIn. I wrote this blog post more than a decade ago, when I was an angry little punk, an angry Elvis Costello about some things that LinkedIn had done. I wrote this blog post about complaining, basically, and helping other people complain, but almost on a daily basis these days I will get an email. My LinkedIn accounts have been restricted, please help me. And it's like look, I'm not related to LinkedIn, I'm just a blogger. You have to contact LinkedIn customer service and I will tell you that as well. I have had a member of my digital first mastermind community also be put in LinkedIn jail temporarily for a few weeks, but it is very, very stressful. So Do not use LinkedIn automation. Do it manually. You can hire a virtual assistant. You can have someone else do it for you. There's a little bit of security that you need to go through in order to do that, but if you understand the way that LinkedIn automation works, you can do the same thing manually. Yes, it's more time, but guess what? Linkedin is the most valuable network of them all. I do not wanna see you even having the slightest chance of getting kicked off, and I know that there are some that have religiously used automation tools for years, never had a problem, but there are a lot others that have had problems. The ones that don't have problems don't really talk about it. The ones that do have problems I hear about. So I'm just gonna tell you that's why I literally deleted the chapter from the previous year's ebook and why it is not part of this, and that, I think, is another real update, because LinkedIn today and when I go over one of these two new chapters in just a second it's just very different than it used to be. It's not about connecting and then sending a message that is clearly right after you accept the connection request. They're trying to pitch you something. It's really about engagement in the feed, it's about publishing content in the feed and it's about commenting in the feed, and that is where you're actually gonna get your most visibility right, and that's really one of my I wanna encourage. And that's why this next big revision is really chapter nine in the sea, but called the art of LinkedIn content, and it'll give you an introduction. Linkedin has become one of the more engaging social media platforms, believe it or not. We're talking 100,000 views on a carousel a few months after joining a social platform. That's pretty amazing, if you ask me. More people are sharing more content than ever before. Where the news feed used to be boring and I put those in air quotes, now one can find a range of content, from personal selfies to videos, photos and even carousel posts which read like mini ebooks. If you really wanna make a splash on LinkedIn and reach more people while also engaging with your own network, there is no better way to do it than by regularly sharing content. Even just publishing content once a week can ensure that you remain top of mind with your LinkedIn network. In order to do so, I wanna give you some ideas, as well as decipher the most popular type of LinkedIn post formats to help you. Now, for each one of these, I go in a little bit more detail and I even have some sample imagery in the ebooks. You're gonna have to download it, but to give you an idea, right, we begin with share links. This is old school LinkedIn and, yes, I still share links, but instead of sharing 100% of links as my content, I am trying to cut that down to 75%, 50%. I'd love to get to a point where I don't share links at all, and this is because, when we think about the art of LinkedIn content, linkedin wants to keep you on the platform and therefore, the content that keeps people longer on the platform is the content they're gonna serve. A link you know it sends people off the platform, and that's why you see people putting link in comment, although I think LinkedIn can figure that out as well. But it just goes to show you and this is not just LinkedIn, this is any social network. Even I heard today it has not been confirmed, but on X, apparently Elon Musk has slowed down the speed when, if you click on a link in X, formerly known as Twitter, and you go to a site that Elon or X does not like, like certain news media sites. So, anyway, I don't know if that's real or not, but it's another example of social networks disliking people leaving the site. Therefore, sharing links should be a minimum and actually, if you do all these other types of content that I'm gonna talk to a lot, it's gonna help raise the boat, raise the ocean, so that when you do have a link-based post to share that's really important it's actually gonna get more visibility, right? So well, what can you post beside sharing links? You can actually post a selfie. Now, some older LinkedIn users may scoff at this idea, but with newer generations flocking LinkedIn, it has become quite common to see a selfie in the news feed, especially when you pair it with some compelling commentary. You can also share multiple photos. This is not a carousel post. On other social networks like Facebook or especially Instagram, it would be a carousel post. This shows up sort of like a photo gallery. I have an example in the ebook where there was someone who went to an event and shared three photos and, you know, one photo takes up the top two thirds and the other two photos are split left and right in the bottom third. But it looks very attractive, looks very engaging. A lot of people will click through. These are really effective when you have client meetings and they're okay. You posting when you go to events, when you have, you know, internal meetings. It's a great medium that I highly suggest you do, especially if you don't wanna do a selfie, at least do a gallery or share multiple photos of an event that you're part of that you can comment on as well. Now the fourth type is experimenting with a poll. I mentioned how audio events show up very commonly in the notifications. Well, polls used to show up very frequently and very prominently in the news feed. We do not see that today, but it still shows up and it is still a type of content to experiment with and thus I put it in there. Another type of content is uploading a video. Now, you know, live stream is another type, and uploading a video is a way of keeping people on the platform longer, and I like to look at it this way. You know, in YouTube, I will get a little stat in my YouTube studio analytics that say your audience prefers to see long form videos, or do they prefer to see shorts or short form video, or do they prefer to see live stream? And it really has this meter, like from one to five, of the popularity of these different things. Everyone's different, right. Some people love shorts, some people love live stream, some people love the longer horizontal videos. So, whatever is that is something that you will definitely wanna consider as another type of video. It could be a live stream, it could be recorded video. I am now uploading my YouTube videos natively in LinkedIn. I'm not posting a link to YouTube. Now, another type of content that I referred to in the teaser of this podcast episode that I didn't even talk about. In fact, now that I'm going through the ebook, I seem to have completely forgotten to put it in the ebook. Man, how did that happen? But anyway, it is the carousel post. The carousel post is a, so only people listening to the podcast get this information. But the carousel post is and probably why I didn't put it in the ebook is it is the most difficult to create. It is a PDF document. Right, it is like a mini ebook or a mini. I mean. It's almost like a slide share, the way they used to be, but it is a mini PDF that people can scroll through and these, I think you would agree, are featured prominently in the news feed. In fact, there is a paid media type, an actual paid carousel type, where, if you wanna keep scrolling through, you literally have to give away your email address in order to see the final pages of that carousel post. So this is not a carousel post in terms of multiple photos, it is a carousel post in terms of an actual PDF document and right now, today, in mid-August of 2023, that is going to be the most popular type of content and sorry, it's not in the ebook, but I plan to publish more content on that. I am still doing my own R&D. Those that are in my digital first mastermind group, that are listening, know that we talk a lot about this and I encourage you as well when you see one of these carousel posts in your feed to just you know, you can actually click on it, maximize the screen and there is a way to download it. After you maximize the screen, I recommend, like what I did, was download a few of them and I think you're gonna see patterns and I think you're just gonna see you are able to repurpose your own content into these and I encourage you to do that to give more value to those around you. All right, one last thing I want to cover, and this is also another new chapter. So this 10 chapter ebook is now 11 chapters, 10 minus 1 plus 2, right? The second new chapter, after talking about the art of LinkedIn content, is literally called the two LinkedIn AI tools I use and recommend. Now, if you've been subscribed to my YouTube channel, hintent, youtubecom slash, neal Schaefer, you've already seen me post some tutorial videos of some of these. One of these I have yet to, but I will just, you know, tell you one of these is great. When you want to share link-based content, it will easily. Or you want to share a video? You want to redo a description, I would say, for shorter form content. I really like to use this tool. Like I said, I especially use it when I share podcasts and links to my blog. It makes it really really easy to share and to schedule. It's a tool that I talk a lot about on this podcast and in my digital first community and whenever I speak to about social be. I'm going to put an affiliate link in the show notes, but you can go to Neil Schaefercom slash social be. That's a B E E, as in that Bzzz. That stings you. The second tool is really a killer, killer tool for creating more of these long form content. It is the tool that I use for my own selfies, where I want to tell more of a story, and it's really, really a compelling AI tool that will help you create longer form content and really help you tell your story or your stories. You're gonna have to go into the ebook and download it in order to see what that one is. I've got to do a video of it on YouTube, but it is a really awesome tool that I highly recommend as well. So there you have it. Employer branding, creator mode, including the popularity of audio events. The art of LinkedIn content let's do a reset on how we think about LinkedIn content, including Carousel posts and then the two LinkedIn AI tools that I use and recommend. It is time to embrace AI and find ways of using it for better ideas and to potentially make our life easier as well, creating better content in shorter time. I'm a big believer, I'm a fan. I'm already using it as far and wide as I can. I do not use it for long form content like blog posts, and I demand that if I have guest bloggers and it goes through an AI detention tool and if I see it's AI, I do not approve of it. That's how far. I believe that AI should be used in certain situations, but not in others. But once again, you're gonna have to create your own rules for that. So I encourage you to go to neilchafercom slash LinkedIn-book-free-download. You can also go to the bottom of my website. There's a link there in the footer, and I will have a link in the show notes. I would love for you to download it and I would love to hear your feedback on it. It really, as I say in the LinkedIn post where I introduced it. I'll stop here. The landing page link for the ebook is in the show notes. Hope you like it and it serves you. That is my Ikigai, after all, and if you don't know what Ikigai means, it's an important concept for my new book. Just listen in to. It was actually just two weeks ago. Episode number 330, finding your marketing purpose with Ikigai. Alrighty for a solo episode. I hope that this gives you something to think about, something to take action on. If you've had a lot of success with your LinkedIn posts, I'd love to hear from you. Let's decipher together how we can be successful. Feel free to reach out to me at any time. Neilatneilschafercom I am the real Neil NEAL at nealscaffercom, and if you would like to be part of my digital first mastermind community, it is limited to only 15 participants. I am currently only at 14. I have an opening. I would love for you to be part of it. Go to neilschafercom, we can sign up and hopefully I will see you on our next weekly Zoom meeting and I hope to serve you there as well. That is it for another episode of the your Digital Marketing Coach podcast. This is your digital marketing coach, neil Schaefer, signing off.

Speaker 2: 23:36

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