A is for… Activity Feed

A is for… Activity Feed

LinkedIn has a timeline on your home page displaying the recent activity of all your connections.You can also view your own recent activity feed or the activity feed of others on their profile page. If you don’t see any activity the user may have set their recent activity to private (or may not have any recent activity).

Recent activity shows all updates that you have made recently and changes that you have made to your profile including:

• when you share a post – you can choose whether you want to share publicly or with your connections only.
• when you share, like or post a comment on a public post – this will be visible to all LinkedIn members. If you share, like or post a comment on a post visible to your connections only. It will be visible to your connections only.
• Updates to profile and milestones will show up in your activity feed.

The following updates will be posted regardless of your activity settings:

• sharing content
• following a university page
• upgrading to a premium account
• liking shared content
• commenting on shared content.

However, if you are using LinkedIn for networking – you should be liking and sharing content and using your activity feed to increase your personal brand and your visibility.

The activity feed can also give you insights into your connections. If a connection is active on LinkedIn their activity feed can provide you with a solid foundation for your next ‘check in’ or your next coffee meeting or event with them.

You can learn a variety of information from their LinkedIn feed such as topics of interest based on the content they share or ‘like’, changes in job role/company, mutual contacts (or other people they connect with), their group activity and who they follow.

This information can be a big help in building your professional relationships. Checking a connections LinkedIn activity feed before a meeting can help boost your topics of conversation for when you meet up and is something that I find is a worthwhile and simple habit. It takes no time at all to quickly look up a contacts activity feed on the go. If you are using the iPhone app, the activity feed is right at the top of their profile page for easy access.

If you are a LinkedIn user – do you use the activity feed? and do you use it in your networking routine?