Do you find yourself being tagged in irrelevant posts on LinkedIn, or being flooded with far too many notifications? Perhaps you’re seeing a heap of irrelevant posts in your feed?
Before you lose your focus, try personalizing your LinkedIn user experience by exploring and adjusting your profile settings.
Here’s a list of a few tweaks you can make to your profile settings to improve your LinkedIn experience:
1. Choose Whether Other Members Can Mention You
Do you enjoy being mentioned in other LinkedIn members’ posts – or do you like calling the attention of other LinkedIn members in your posts?
Being mentioned or tagged in other members’ posts and comments can encourage engagement, but not every member enjoys being mentioned, especially in irrelevant conversations.
If you prefer not to be mentioned in other people’s posts and comments, you can always ‘opt out’.
Here’s how: Go to ‘Me’ → Settings & Privacy → Mentions by Others
If you choose YES, then other members can tag you in their posts and comments, whether they’re your connections or not. According to LinkedIn, choosing ‘No’ will disallow other members to mention you in their future posts and comments, but you won’t be removed from past mentions.
There is, however, a way to remove your mention in previous posts and comments.
Go to the actual post and follow these simple steps:
- Click the options listing in the right top corner of the post to see the drop-down menu.
- Click ‘Remove mention’.
And that’s it – here’s how it looks now:
My name is still there, but it won’t link to my profile. The person who mentioned me won’t be notified that I’ve untagged myself from the post and I’ll no longer be notified when people continue to engage with it.
2. Personalize Your Feeds
For a much better LinkedIn experience, you can personalize your feeds by choosing which content is relevant to you, so you don’t end up spending your time scrolling for nothing.
Here’s how to do it: Go to ‘Me’ → Settings & Privacy → Feed Preferences
Clicking on this option will take you to this page where you can ‘Follow fresh perspectives’ by following specific people or topics/themes you’re interested in.
This page also shows how many of each you’re already following and how many followers you have.
You can also ‘unfollow’ any of your connections or the companies you follow. For example, since I no longer work for a business brokerage firm, the IBBA’s posts would no longer be relevant to me, so I could ‘unfollow’ it, removing it from my feed.
Here’s how:
- Go to the actual post on your feeds.
- Click the options icon in the top right of the post to see the drop-down menu.
- Select ‘Unfollow’.
Remember: Garbage in, garbage out.
If you follow or connect with irrelevant people and topics/themes, you’ll end up seeing more irrelevant content on your feeds.
Take the time to personalize your feed, instead of ranting that your network is sharing photos of their cats on LinkedIn. You really can’t control what other people will post, but you can personalize your feed to see only the content that matters to you.
3. Manage Active Status
One of the more recent features LinkedIn has added is its chat function which gives members the ability to interact on the platform in real time.
You can choose to let your connections know whether you’re currently active on LinkedIn by managing your active status. Here’s how:
Go to ‘Me’ → Settings & Privacy → Privacy → Manage Active Status
If you display your active status, you’ll also see who among your connections are currently active on LinkedIn.
What the circles mean:
- Solid green circle – Indicates that the person is currently active on LinkedIn.
- Green circle – Indicates that the users are currently not on LinkedIn, but they can receive notifications on their mobile devices if someone sends them a message.
If you’re experimenting with the best time to post your content, or to comment on your connections’ content, this feature is helpful. Make sure many of your connections are on LinkedIn, so they immediately see your post if it appears on their feeds.
This feature is also helpful if you want to reach out to your network. If they’re currently active on LinkedIn, you can exchange messages in real time.
And if they’re currently not on LinkedIn, you know that they’d be notified on their devices once you’ve sent them a message.
4. Mute Conversations on LinkedIn Messaging
Sometimes, even if you want to join conversations in group chats, you just can’t read messages any time of the day, and you don’t want to be notified each time someone posts a message.
Some members choose to politely leave the conversation, but if you want to stay in the group chat without being bombarded with notifications, you can simply ‘mute the conversation’ and read the messages whenever you’re available.
Here’s how to do it:
Go to the chat window, then:
- Click the options icon in the top right corner of the chat window.
- Click ‘Mute conversation’.
Of course, if you find the conversation totally irrelevant, you have other options – leave, delete or report the conversation. You also have these options in one-on-one messaging.
5. Manage the Alerts You Receive
If you want to stick to your goals and avoid being distracted by irrelevant alerts, you have to adjust your LinkedIn notification settings.
Go to ‘Me’ → Privacy & Settings → Communications → Notifications on LinkedIn
You can practically select how you want to engage with people in your network. Not interested in your connections’ birthdays? Turn it off. Want to know if your connections are having work anniversaries? Keep the notifications on.
You have the capacity to decide whether you should receive alerts on the following:
Conclusion
Making simple tweaks to your profile settings will not only improve your experience on LinkedIn, but it will also help you become more productive and intentional in your activities.
Remember what LinkedIn says: “You’re the boss of your account”. Get rid of the unwanted noise, focus on your goals and spend more time building relationships that can help you succeed.