494. GIFs and games

John Espirian: 00:00:00

Are GIFs and games appropriate for LinkedIn? Let's take a look. It's episode 494 of the Informed podcast.

Hi, everyone, I'm John Espirian, your host of the Informed podcast, an independent show about LinkedIn best practice, and we always try to get the show started with the Postbag of listener questions. We've got some feedback for us this week. Let's start with the Postbag section and Nigel Cliffe.

Nigel Cliffe: 00:00:33

Hi, John. Nigel Cliffe here. Hope you're well. Listened to 493 episode this morning. Loved it as usual. I've usually got to consume it before midday. That's how keen I am, and I felt compelled just to provide a few thoughts on items you covered. There is a business about the analytics and the number of followers in your network versus a number of out of network people analytics.

Here's a thought. The number of people is now being given to us who are actually in your network by simply taking the out of network figures away.

So, let's say we have: 1600

By the way, I also love the fact that you mentioned topic-based content. I love topic-based content. Surely that you know, that's what we're interested in. That's what we're to get our comments out to people who sharing the same subject matter as we are, whatever that subject is. So, I'm loving the topic-based content focus.

And just lastly on commenting, I think commenting's great. I don't take into account much whether the original author actually responds to me. I'm much more interested in the audience that are reading that content and the likely impressions that my comment gets, which is now visible to us of course.

So, I'm not doing it necessarily for the author of the content always, but actually for myself to get my own comments and thoughts in front of a wider audience. So, I just thought I'd share that perspective with you. Great show. Looking forward to the 500, John.

John Espirian: 00:02:19

Well, thank you for that contribution Nigel. Always thoughtful ideas from you.

I still don't have those in network and out network analytics to check myself, but that's an interesting way of looking at it and trying to work out what proportion of your 1st-level network are actually seeing your stuff. I suspect the Numbers aren't going to be as high as we'd like to think, but I will certainly be checking that out when I get it.

And regarding commenting on other stuff, I think you're probably more generous than I am there, Nigel, but thank you for that contribution. Really glad that the show is landing well for you. And keep the questions coming.

OK, the other Postbag item this week is from Meena McDonald.

Meena McDonald: 00:03:00

I wholeheartedly agree with your comment about when you post a comment on somebody's post or make a comment on it and they don't bother responding in any way. I mean, I get it, people are really busy and it's really sometimes difficult and challenging to keep up with stuff.

But even an acknowledgement to say that they've acknowledged that you've done it. Just something to say. Thank you for taking the time and effort to respond to me.

Obviously it's much better if they respond with a proper response, but yeah, personally, in my point of view, I find it a little bit rude. It annoys me. I think it's rude, I think it's ignorant, and I think it's unnecessary not to respond when you've taken the time and effort to read their post and to respond to them.

John Espirian: 00:03:47

And thank you for that contribution, Meena. It just goes back to what I was saying to Nigel. I mean, you know, we want to be. We want to be recognised. And yeah, I feel it's a bit rude when people just blank you like that. And it certainly puts me off contributing to their content in the future. So, thank you for your contributions.

As usual, keep your questions coming so that we can fill the Postbag for next week. OK, that will do for the Postbag. And we've got a quite a short show this week. I'm doing it a day early because I'm actually traveling this weekend for a university reunion.

The main topic I wanted to talk to you about is GIFs on LinkedIn. They've been around for a long time. These animated images, they're like almost like mini videos that play inside posts and inside comments.

And LinkedIn has now rolled out a new GIF button so that when you're commenting on a post, whether it's on desktop or on mobile, you'll have a button and you'll be able to access a service built into LinkedIn which is powered by a product called KLIPY, which I hadn't heard of before, where you can just type in a couple of words and it'll give you a little animated GIF that you can insert in a comment.

LinkedIn has long supported GIFs, so you've been able to just upload ones that you've saved from elsewhere or even created yourself, but there hasn't been a kind of integrated way to add them to comments before, and you can now do that.

Some people love GIFs. I suppose they provide a touch of humour, and certainly for younger users, they in themselves become a different mode of communicating. You can carry over an idea in a gif that you possibly couldn't as easily in words or might take you a bit longer to express yourself, whereas these cultural touch points that you get, these memes sometimes are more relatable, but they tend to be more relatable for the younger user.

I suspect that the older user isn't going to be interested in putting little animated images on LinkedIn, and that slightly infantilises the platform.

I personally don't really use GIFs myself. I've got my own library of hundreds of custom image poses for my little BitmoJohn cartoon character, which I suppose you could argue is a little bit childish. But it's something that's now associated with my brand because it uses my colour and it's a recognisable face on it that suits me.

I don't really want to go to animated images. If you like GIFs, though, and if your audience likes them and your potential clients aren't put off by them, then I don't see a problem in using them. They're just not for me myself. So, look out for that. There's a new button when you're leaving a comment on desktop or mobile, and that will let you leave a GIF.

The other item I wanted to mention in this week's show is yet another game has arrived on LinkedIn. So, this one is called Wend and it looks like a word game. I had a quick look at it, didn't particularly like the look of it, and therefore didn't bother. I never bother with LinkedIn games.

I'm still an avid player of Wordle, which is now owned by the New York Times. That's like a daily ritual for me and occupies 10 or 20 seconds of brain space and it's good fun. But I've never bothered with LinkedIn games and I know a lot of people just can't stand them. You know, the idea that you're on a business professional platform to waste a bit of time, I guess, and play against other people. And are you really paying any attention to the leaderboards that are going on?

I don't know. If the whole thing about LinkedIn games has passed you by and you do want to take a look or all of the games are available at linkedin.com/games take a look and see what you think. Again, they're not really for me, so I've just moved on and ignored them completely. All right, I'm going to leave it at a very short show this week.

Really excited at the start of the World Cup, despite all of the political stuff going along outside it and the way that FIFA operate. Not a fan of those things. I'm not going to get into that here, but the actual football itself should be interesting to watch. That kicks off this week, and I've got my university reunion over the weekend, so really looking forward to that.

Again, as usual, if you've got any questions for the show, anything that you're not sure about with regards to LinkedIn best practice, please drop me a line. It's completely free to do so on LinkedIn, and I'll catch you all again next week.