On any network, there are going to be differing views and differing goals among those who frequent it. It’s to be expected … and, in this sense, LinkedIn is no different. Given the huge diversity of people on the site and the wide variety of reasons they have for being there, the opinions expressed will naturally include some you may not agree with or indeed wish to read.
For me personally, I like to remain focused in terms of what I share and what I read on the site and one of the places where this is most relevant is on LinkedIn’s homepage – or rather MY homepage – where my newsfeed displays Updates, news and commentary from people in my network.
Of late, LinkedIn seems to have been in a constant state of flux – some changes have been good but one of the most noticeable results has been the increase in perhaps less ‘business focused’ Updates including maths quizzes, word search and the like, as well as overtly political or religious posts – some have called this “Facebook-ification” of LinkedIn. Whatever it is, I for one could do without the vast majority of it.
Luckily, however, we have a certain degree of control over what appears there – allowing us to cut down on the noise and to focus on the content that is of interest to us individually.
This article looks at a couple of key ways you have control over the tool that is YOUR homepage.
A. Control the Updates you receive – New drop down menu
The key changes have been in expanding your options when it comes to the updates that fill your timeline. Up until a couple of months ago, the only thing you had the option to do was to hide the person who had sent it, so that you wouldn’t see their updates in the future – now, we have a couple more possibilities.
1. Hide this particular update
If that particular piece of news or information is not something that you wish to see in your newsfeed, then you can now hide them individually. This means that they should never resurface, though it’s true that if a new connection shares it, it will probably make an unwelcome return as that will be considered a new thread. Still good to weed out the items that you don’t wish to clutter up your homepage.
2. Copy link to share
Turning to the positives this time, clicking this gives you a link to the individual update (and associated comments) that you are looking at and allows you to retrieve the URL link for whatever use you wish to put it to.
This is a great idea if you want to share something you have read in correspondence with others but also great as a “save” option so that you can tuck them away to be able to refer back later.
3. Unfollow …
A more expansive form of hiding updates – instead of hiding a individual update, this time you are hiding all of the Updates from that particular person. You still remain connected with them but essentially this is a “mute” button, in case they are a little over zealous in the amount that they share.
I guess it’s probably a relevant moment to tun it around the other way and remind you that you probably also don’t want to share too freely either – particularly multiple Updates in a row – just in case that in turn pushes people to “unfollow” you.
4. Report this Update
At the bottom end of the scale, there may also be Updates that you feel are inappropriate to LinkedIn as a whole, and this gives you the chance to report them or indeed the author back to LinkedIn. You will be asked why you consider this to be the case, and given the choices below:
If you click on either of the top two it will remove the Update and send a message to LinkedIn – the 3rd option gives you the chance to say why you feel it is inappropriate before then sending the message.
B. How is the Information ordered – the “three dots”
When you arrive at your homepage, you are presented with a set of Updates – these used to be in chronological order but now try to reflect a mix of the most important (ie. most shared, liked, etc.) Updates from your connections which means you are likely to miss a lot of information that might be of interest to you.
So, consider changing this to just see the most recent updates instead so that you don’t miss the latest information or insight – at the top of the page, look for the three dots and you can change the order to see what people have been talking about most recently.
This will give you a much more recent flow of information though it will contain a number of “New Connection” notifications as well as the chunkier Updates.
Caution: just to keep you on your toes, LinkedIn defaults back to the “Top Updates” again very time you refresh the page. Well, I didn’t say it would be easy now did I?
