What is LinkedIn?

I have never really discovered the value of LinkedIn until about a year ago when I started using it seriously to search for a new job opportunity. I have always viewed it as a Facebook clone with a horrible and inconsistent UI. But I was surprised to discover that LinkedIn had updated their UI with a copy-paste job from Facebook. Using LinkedIn is now a much more pleasant experience!

Anyone who needs a refresher of the old LinkedIn UI should look at the screens below. Seeing the text density this UI in 2020 gives me shivers!

The Post Goes Up

This brings me to the point of this blog post 😊 Late in 2019, I decided to leave Microsoft and accepted an opportunity at Oracle’s Cloud Infrastructure team in Seattle. Saying goodbye to the friends and colleagues I had worked with during my 6 years with the Azure team was an emotional event. I had learned so much during my time there and worked with some fantastic people. I wanted to let my LinkedIn network and colleagues who I had worked with know about this change in my life. So, I crafted a message reflecting on my time at Microsoft and its transformation recounting how lucky I was to be a part of it. Then I posted expecting it to be a regular post like any other. What happened next kept surprising me. Day-after-day.

The Aftermath

As of writing this blog, my post had 90+ comments and ~290,000 views! I also got numerous profile views, which led to 600+ connections requests.

Typically, the graph on “Who viewed your profile” feature on LinkedIn is pretty empty for my profile as my profile hardly gets any views. Once this post went up, the graph went through the roof to heights I didn’t know existed. This is how it looked for the week after the post went up.

What I Learnt

1. The LinkedIn post visibility filter has a significant effect on who sees your message. With the visibility set to “Anyone”, there’s a good chance a lot of people not in your immediate network (1st, 2nd, or 3rd connections) will view your post. This is precisely what happened with my post. I was surprised by the power of the social graph and how information can reach diverse audiences all around the world.

   

   

2. With so many connection requests and messages, it pays dividends to be in control of your LinkedIn app’s push notifications. Otherwise, it’s easy to turn your phone into a constant ringing bell! To customize the LinkedIn Android app mobile push notifications, see this blog post.

Contact

Reach out if you have any questions! Feel free to follow me on

• Twitter - @singhkays
• LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/singhkays/