Has the LinkedIn newsfeed changed from all business to personal videos and images? Can you be professional & show your humanness at the same time?
You may be one of the people complaining that the LinkedIn newsfeed is looking like Facebook with too many non-related video’s and images.
What’s happened?
I think what you are seeing is an effort to humanize how we show up in business. Obviously, that’s different from our individual perspectives, but rather than being irritated, you have the power to change what you are seeing in the newsfeed with these simple steps.
Send LinkedIn feedback on individual posts
Click the three dots in the upper right corner of a post you don’t like.
You see a drop-down menu of choices from staying connected to the person but report that you don’t want to see their posts in the feed. You can remove the connection all together if you decide you simply don’t want to have this person in your network. You also have the choice to indicate you don’t want to see that post and after you click that another pop-up appears where you can let LinkedIn know what you don’t like about the post.
By taking a minute to do this with posts you don’t want to see you are actually training the algorithm to stop showing you this type of content, so the point is – you do have control over what you see!
The point here is rather than throwing in the towel on LinkedIn, focus on how you can make the newsfeed better with your own content strategy that adds value to those you want to influence.
We are often attracted to those people we can relate to – so when people appear approachable, interesting and add value, we want to know them, follow their content and add them as a connection.
Letting the humanness of you, your company and brand shine through can be a good thing. Here are 4 Ways to Let Your Humanness Shine Through on LinkedIn.
- Think about how you are BEING in the world
Stop being so transactional and start being more relational. Make interactions both genuine and meaningful, this way your connections and conversations can serve as your best advertisements! - Show off your team!
Some of the best LinkedIn company page posts are candid pictures of your team.
If you invite your customers to learn more about the personalities on your staff, they’ll definitely see the human, fallible side to your brand. - Incorporate user-generated content into your posts
This not only humanizes your brand, but it gets your customers excited and demonstrates you are about them. This can be content not related to business, but showing off something they care about, maybe a charity they sponsor. - Write your posts with a conversational tone.
Invite people into your post by asking what they think, this could be in the form of a poll.
It could also be a post sharing your opinion & asking others for theirs by commenting. The key is to be plainspoken, not a lot of industry jargon.
CONCLUSION
Social media has changed with the times and to expect that LinkedIn wouldn’t change along with it isn’t realistic. LinkedIn has jumped into the Clubhouse style Audio Events and Facebook’s live video events. They are adding new features at a faster pace than ever and we can learn to implement those features into how we use LinkedIn or leave the platform behind, but with over 800 million profiles and growing, LinkedIn is not going away and will still be known as the #1 platform where professional connect and do business.
