How to Take Control of Your LinkedIn Feed

A valuable LinkedIn Connection of mine, friendly and forward-thinking accountant Aimeé Hargreaves of Ultra Accountancy, recently posted the question on LinkedIn:

“Nigel, I wondered if you could please help me improve my [LinkedIn] feed?

“My feed is full of, for example ‘so and so is interested in Kia Motors’

“How do I get rid of these?! I’m not interested!!”

Noticing Aimeé’s exasperation and frustration I was keen to help.

Here are my solutions for taking control of your personal LinkedIn feed:

1. The dot-dot-dot button

Click on the ellipses (three dots) in the top right-hand corner of the post in question that you wish to see less of. There you will be greeted by options such as:

• Hide this post — which basically tells LinkedIn you don’t want to see the post in your newsfeed. The more you ‘hide’ posts of a similar nature or on a certain topic the more you inform LinkedIn that you no longer want to see content like the posts you keep ‘Hiding’. You should see the impact of you selecting the ‘hide’ button quite quickly.
• Unfollow X — meaning you remain connected to the person, but you will no longer see their posts in your feed. This is handy if you wish to remain in contact as they are not notified when you unfollow them but keeps your feed free from posts that you find annoying, repetitive, irrelevant or of little value. Please note, you can still directly message people you don’t follow but remain Connected to.
• Report this post — if you believe the post is from an account which has been hacked or you perceive the post to be particularly offensive you can take this option to flag the post up to LinkedIn themselves.
• Improve my feed — a good way to gain more control of your LinkedIn feed is to customise it by choosing from LinkedIn’s recommended sources for you to follow. For instance, a marketer may choose to follow ‘#contentstrategy’. You can follow whichever pages, profiles or hashtags that catch your eye!

It’s worth noting that sometimes unwanted content appears in your newsfeed thanks to one of your 1st-degree Connections engaging (Liking, Sharing or Commenting etc.) with the content of one by their Connections — someone you might not necessarily be Connected with. When you click on the three dots in the corner of the post, LinkedIn will give you the option to ‘Unfollow’ or ‘Hide’ content from your first-degree Connection, not the person who originally posted the content that doesn’t interest you, so take care with these options!

2. Remove or block

You can go one step further and block/delete the person responsible for publishing the posts you often find unhelpful or irrelevant (rather than simply ‘unfollowing’ them) by clicking on the ‘More’ button when on their profile and selecting the ‘Remove Connection’ option or ‘Report/Block’. Thankfully LinkedIn is quite discreet, and the person won’t receive a notification that you have removed them as a connection but if they go searching for you directly, they will see that the two of you are no longer connected. You’ll also see their name disappear from any messages between the two of you share, with them simply showing up as ‘LinkedIn user’.

3. Keep interacting and engaging

Make sure you keep relevant on your posts and activity. What I mean by this is that LinkedIn’s algorithms send you more of what they think you like. The more you interact and engage with posts about, for example, cars, commenting, liking and sharing content on that topic, the more LinkedIn will serve you posts on that subject.

This issue about improving LinkedIn feeds has reminded me how important it is to be selective when accepting LinkedIn Connection requests.

Just because someone invites you to Connect doesn’t mean to say you have to accept. View the person’s profile and ask yourself: Does this person post fairly regularly on LinkedIn, and more importantly, does this person publish content that:

• will teach me something new?
• will help me solve challenges and conundrums?
• inspire/motivate me?
• add value in some way to my LinkedIn experience?

You can read my blog post on my personal criteria for potential LinkedIn Connections here.

Hopefully, the above steps will make it easier for you to personalise your LinkedIn experience!

If you have any other LinkedIn questions please don’t hesitate to ask me on LinkedIn — let’s get a discussion going!