At age 5, on my first day at school. the headmaster stood up in assembly and proceeded to reel off a number of rules to follow. One of them was not to walk down the grass bank. I wondered why. He never explained. So at the first break, I promptly went out on the school field and started to walk down the grass bank. A teacher saw me do this… Read More »The Rules Still Apply
The little bundle of joy has arrived! Paul Copcutt and his MacBook Air are ecstatic to welcome LinkedIn Desktop User Interface into their world! Appeared unexpectedly on the 16th February 2017 at 3,37 pm EST Big brother Mobile App is happy to welcome his little sibling. Visit our LinkedIn Profile and watch UI blossom! Well after much waiting and watching the new desktop interface switched over on to my account… Read More »3 Profile Updates to do Right Now With the New LinkedIn Interface
“85% of your financial success is due to your personality, ability to communicate, negotiate and lead. Only 15% is dependent on technical skills.” Carnegie Institute of Technology The challenge we are facing is that whether you believe the often misquoted figures that our attention spans are less than goldfish they are plummeting. The average adult can only focus for 20 minutes. And I know having two teenagers in the house… Read More »How to Add Personality to Your Personal Brand
Let’s conduct an experiment.LinkedIn’s data that says making online impression takes between 5-10 seconds, and you had to choose the one word that you think best captures your personal brand essence and makes an impact on the next person you meet, what is it? [tweet_box design=”default” float=”none”] LinkedIn’s data that says making online impression takes between 5-10 seconds [/tweet_box] If you had to choose the one word that you… Read More »Why Your Personality is Key
Companies that ‘invested’ in an ad for this year’s Superbowl were paying $5 million for 30 seconds, that’s over $160,000 per second and then up to an additional 25% was being spent on advertising to promote the advertisement!
This great cartoon from Tom Fishburne at Marketoonist.com sums it all up. Check out his previous Superbowl cartoons too by visiting his website.
The commercials and the half-time show are for many the primary reason they watch the game. Some people even plan whole parties around the ad breaks rather than the game itself.
So it’s official, it’s finally arrived. Well, at least LinkedIn’s blog is announcing it’s imminent arrival to your computer soon – the New Desktop Redesign. You can watch the promo video here that shows you some of the features;
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If you have been following this news it was back in the fall last year that the desktop redesign was first announced, to great fanfare. After several missteps and, as is common for LinkedIn, a number of glaring glitches and errors picked up by some early users, it seems that finally, the look for your profile on your computer will be changing. If you are one of the 10-20% of users so far, perhaps it has already changed. Of course, you could be one of the 65% or so of mobile users that maybe never uses the desktop version, in which case “Carry On!”
The hope it to see everyone switched over in the next few weeks.
There has been plenty of criticism of the new design, complaints about disappearing features and threats of departure from the platform. At the end of the day none of us really like change, yet if we embrace it and more importantly look for the positives then there are always upsides and it makes for a much better experience.
Now, if you are like me and use the desktop version to access your LinkedIn account the majority of the time, then you may want to note 3 critical aspects of the new design that will impact how your personal brand can be featured on the platform.
Read More »3 Positive Aspects of LinkedIn’s Redesign for Your Personal Brand
Either as a child or parent, or both, you probably remember the ancient nursery rhyme;
Rub-a-dub-dub,
Three men in a tub.
And who do you think they were?
The butcher, the baker,
The candlestick-maker.
They all sailed out to sea,
That was enough to make a man stare.
Perhaps these three men were the leading professionals of their time, many of the well paid and in demand jobs of that time would have been in the making or products.
The in-demand roles have changed over the years, with the leading ones turning to the accredited professions, Doctor, Lawyer, Engineer, etc. The latest LinkedIn Salary Survey of the highest paid jobs seems to bear that out if you add technology to the mix.
Of the top 20 highest paying jobs twelve were Doctor/Medical roles, three were Law/Tax, and three were Engineering/Software related. The remaining two were Marketing focused.
Whether you are in that top 20 or not, the chances are that given the right circumstances you are open to hearing about new opportunities. In fact, a LinkedIn Talent Survey from last year found that 90% of the 33,000 professionals they surveyed confirmed that and 36% of them were actively looking.
That means there is competition out there. That requires you to be on the MOVE with your career development in the following ways;
If you are like me, you are probably often having a conversation via email with someone and you say to yourself, “I must remember to invite Sheila to connect on Linkedin” or maybe one of the other main social networks you are active on. And then you forget. The challenge is you are probably working within your email inbox every day, however, although it’s something you should be thinking about, that’s likely… Read More »How to Connect on LinkedIn Straight From Your Inbox
When was the last time you asked a personal question in a business meeting?
Chances are recent. One client meeting I had, just before the holidays, involved at least 25% of the time the two of us covering every subject from politics to parenting to pasta and everything in between. None of which had a direct bearing on the very critical issue about which we were meeting. Before you say,
‘yes, but it was the holidays, so you were bound to be more relaxed’
this was the first time I had spent more than a few minutes with this client, and we only had a limited amount of time.
So, when someone shares something personal on LinkedIn, why do many professionals get bent out of shape? There never seems to be a day go by now without seeing someone on LinkedIn decry the ‘Facebookization’ of the platform. There have even been petitions started.
I am not talking about the functionality of LinkedIn or the look and feel, or even gamification of the platform, which seems to mirror Facebook in several ways. It’s the quizzes, IQ tests, cat photos, and posting something that is tantamount to click bait to which people are objecting.
There has been a highly covered example, generating thousands of comments, of Candice Galek, the owner of a swimsuit company, who posts pictures of models in bikinis.
“One man’s meat is another man’s poison.” Roman poet, Lucretius
If you are not happy with the content shared by a connection in your network, the easiest and most effective response is actually to do nothing. Anything else adds to LinkedIn’s ‘interest factor,’ which is what drives the algorithm, makes that post more attractive and ultimately that person’s place in search results. If it gets unbearable, you can choose to receive their updates no longer or finally disconnect from them.
While the platform is a business network and your profile is your own that you take with you throughout your career there are opportunities to reflect your personal brand in appropriate and impactful ways.
LinkedIn’s research has found that 87% of recruiters want to see personality reflected in a profile. Now, they are a picky lot (I know I used to be one!), and not wanting anything superfluous, so you can be fairly confident that others will have a similar viewpoint.
Read More »5 Places to be Personal in Profiles to Get Noticed Online
You would likely not ignore an email from a new business connection and certainly, would not shun them face to face. So why are you always doing it on LinkedIn? You, or they, have gone to the trouble of wanting to connect it only makes sense to start to build the relationship. With the platforms enhanced messaging system there really is no excuse. Whenever you accept a new connection or… Read More »Don’t Forget to Say Hello on LinkedIn