Tag: LinkedIn

LinkedIn has added some new measures designed to better protect users from inappropriate comments and content, while it’s also updated its Professional Community Policies to better reflect member expectations of professionalism and respect in communications across the platform.

First off, on individual content warnings and actions – from this week, LinkedIn members who have had their content removed due to rule violations will now get new notifications on their posts informing them of such, while those who make any such report will also get more info on what happens next in the process.

As you can see in these examples, when you make a report about content on LinkedIn, you’ll now see this new page which outlines the next steps, while those who have had a post removed will be alerted via a new informational prompt.

Up till now, LinkedIn hasn’t provided any real transparency on this process, and while you won’t get a full rundown of what actions have or have not been taken as a result of each report, the new prompts will provide more context on how LinkedIn actions such.

The new warnings are being rolled out to LinkedIn users in the US, France and Canada from today, with more regions to follow in the coming weeks. 

In addition to this, LinkedIn’s adding new prompts to its post composer in order to encourage civil interactions, while it’s also adding new warnings to messages that may include harassing content, enabling users to easily report such for review.

This is part of LinkedIn’s broader crackdown on inappropriate messages – last month, LinkedIn also shared how it has updated its automatic detection systems to better detect such messages based on past incidences of harassment within its connection streams.

Romance scams, inappropriate advances and targeted harassment were the three most common issues identified in LinkedIn’s investigations into such, and its new systems can now detect these types of messages more accurately, and better protect users from even having to see them.

These new report prompts are built on the same system, making it easier for users to quickly report LinkedIn creeps and alert the platform to such behavior. 

In addition to these new tools, LinkedIn has also updated its Professional Community Policies “to make it even more clear that hateful, harassing, inflammatory or racist content has absolutely no place on our platform”.

The new guidelines are built around four key principles:

• Be safe – We require everyone to be civil and respectful in every single interaction. Especially in our world today, hate, discrimination, racism, harassment, including unwanted romantic advances, or bullying have no place on LinkedIn.
• Be trustworthy – We require members to use their true identity, provide accurate information about themselves or their organization, and only share information that is real and authentic. We do not allow fake profiles, fake jobs, or misinformation.  
• Be professional – We require content to be professionally relevant and on topic, such as sharing and gaining expertise, hiring or how to get hired, or learning or teaching a new skill. Explicit, shocking or inflammatory content is not allowed. 
• Respect others’ rights and follow the law – Adhere to privacy, copyright, and other applicable laws when you’re using LinkedIn.

The regulations are pretty much as you would expect, and largely in line with the previous guidelines for LinkedIn, though the specifications around harassment, discrimination and racism are more specifically spelled out, which is in line with LinkedIn’s renewed approach, under new CEO Ryan Rozlansky, on tackling inappropriate content on the platform. 

Part of that effort can be linked back to the #BlackLivesMatter movement, which served as a wake-up call to all social platforms as to how they can, and need to be part of a broader societal shift in how such issues are addressed. But LinkedIn, now with more than 700 million members, is also seeing more on-platform engagement and activity – and with that, there also comes more inappropriate actions, which requires a more defined approach to address.

LinkedIn’s also likely to see a major uptick in activity as the economic conditions recover over time, so it’s important that LinkedIn does indeed take steps like this to better protect its increasingly active user base.

LinkedIn has announced an update to its Marketing Partner Program, which is designed to make it easier for businesses to find the right experts to assist them with each element of their LinkedIn marketing and growth process.

As explained by LinkedIn:

“Today we’re announcing updates to specialties – how you work with our partners – which will make it easier for you to find the right solutions for your marketing on LinkedIn. Whether you’re looking to create content, grow your brand, convert leads, or measure the impact of your investments, our LinkedIn marketing partners are here for you.”

As you can see here, the new categories are split into three distinct areas of focus, with sub-topics beneath each.

LinkedIn now provides dedicated third-party support in:

Page Management — Marketing is perpetually under-resourced, especially now. Partners for page management can streamline activities across social channels, reducing the time and resources needed to maintain an effective publishing strategy. 

Content & Creative — From narratives, white papers and videos to individual posts, these experts will deliver you content and creative on time and in-budget. And, by mentioning the marketing partner community, you’ll get preferred rates. 

Audiences — Targeting is the key to improving the efficiency of your ad investments. Partners for audiences enable you to bring your data or a partner’s data into Campaign Manager to enhance LinkedIn’s native targeting facets. 

Campaign Management — There are endless opportunities for testing and optimizing LinkedIn ads. The right partner for campaign management will help you get started, scale efficiently, and improve the return on your spend. And, with self-service partners, you’ll gain functionality such as cross-channel management, rule-based management, and ABM. 

Lead Generation — Adding a partner for lead generation to the mix may be the fastest and easiest way to get immediate value. These partners will automatically route leads to the platform of your choice, saving you time from manually downloading lists and enabling sales to follow up quickly. 

Reporting & ROI — It’s challenging to understand and optimize performance with disparate reporting. Partners for reporting & ROI build robust reporting for LinkedIn alongside all your other marketing programs to show a holistic view of campaign performance data and visualize return on investment.

Insights — It can be time intensive to surface the right content and audience insights for your marketing strategies and tactics. Partners for insights will uncover the information you need to build informed content and campaigns for LinkedIn. 

Tapping through on any the topics takes you to a listing of approved partners that can help you maximize your on-platform strategy, and get better results from your LinkedIn efforts.

Of course, for many, such assistance will be beyond the marketing budget, especially in 2020, but there could be significant benefits in gaining new insight if you are looking to improve your on-platform performance.

You can read more about LinkedIn’s Marketing Partner Program here.

LinkedIn has given its platform a new, fresh update, while it’s also announced the global rollout of LinkedIn Stories after trying it out in selected nations over the past five months.

First off, on LinkedIn’s new look – as you can see in this screenshot, the new LinkedIn looks brighter, with a pastel-type color scheme on a gray and white background – and less blue overall.

As explained by LinkedIn:

“Two years ago, our brand evolved to better reflect LinkedIn’s community of members and organizations that come together to help, support, and inspire one another. Now, we’re bringing the next chapter of this brand evolution to life across our platform with an entirely new look and feel that embodies our diverse, inclusive, warm and welcoming community.”

The update is mostly aesthetic, but LinkedIn’s also added a range of new features and tweaks to coincide with the new format.

The main addition is the global rollout of LinkedIn Stories.

As noted, LinkedIn has been testing Stories over the last few months, with users in Brazil, the Netherlands, Australia, UAE and France able to access to option. The roll-out of LinkedIn Stories seemed to slow of late, with Australia being the last region to get access back in June, but according to LinkedIn, user reception for Stories has been ‘amazing to see’.

Now, everyone will be able to try it out – and while it hasn’t become a major function of note as yet, the broader audience could give Stories a boost. Stories will be rolling out to Canadian and US users from this week, with all other regions to come shortly.

Along with the roll-out of Stories, LinkedIn’s also revamped its search process to incorporate more of its functions into your search matches. 

“Before, search was about finding people or jobs but now, you’ll have one blended search experience to easily find jobs, people, courses, groups, content and more. For example, if you’re searching for “Java,” you’ll see what’s new to learn that skill, jobs that are being hired for, relevant groups to join so you can connect with others and people you might know who have Java as a skill.”

LinkedIn’s also making searches more personalized, with results from your connections more likely to show up, and it’s added keyword filters on mobile, which, up till now, has only been available n the web version.

LinkedIn’s also incorporating the capability to launch a video meeting via a LinkedIn message, with integrations for Microsoft Teams, Bluejeans and Zoom.

It’s also adding some other new messaging tricks, like editing functionality for sent messages:

“If you make a mistake in a message, you can now edit/delete a sent message.”

There’s also a new bulk actions option in your message stream, so you can delete or archive your messages all at once, and new reactions within message threads.

Quick reactions to messages has become a fairly common functionality, so it makes sense to LinkedIn to add it in, aligning with general usage trends. 

These are some interesting functions and tools, which add to the ways in which you can connect and communicate on the platform. And the new look does add something different, maybe removing some of the corporate stuffiness that’s lingered on the platform and giving it a new sense of life.

LinkedIn’s rolling out these new features from today, so if you’re not seeing them yet, you will soon.   

July 14th, 2020

Marketing


Erica Perry