Welcome to episode 184, this week I’m expanding on the subject of the meteoric rise of LinkedIn in terms of engagement and activity and I want to to focus on some of the key characters behind that change - the class of 2017! But before I get to that….. Interesting Stuff I Saw This Week HiQ turn to crowdfunding to fight LinkedIn’s legal appeal of a recent court decision LinkedIn announces the ‘Most socially engagement employment agencies’ but the get the measures all wrong! Native video is coming to company page updates. Currently only a few have access including Mashable. See one such update here. Mashable video update Huawei and LinkedIn announce a new phone collaboration embed https://youtu.be/C5gXjyGimRA As reported recently ‘smart replies’ are improving in LinkedIn messaging and here is the Engineering blog on the detail of how it is done. The Class of 2017 (plus Oleg!) When we look back in years to come we will see 2017 as being THE year LinkedIn really became a mainstream social media platform. 2008 was a similar year, that was when LinkedIn initially became widely used but this year is different. It’s not so much that LinkedIn are attracting new members, it’s more that more users are engaging on LinkedIn. A 60% increase in engagement levels vs the same period last year is pretty phenomenal so how has this happened? I mentioned recently that a big part of this has to be attributed to the new design and LinkedIn deserve a lot of credit for that but another big part of this has been down to a new generation of LinkedIn users who have started to use the platform in different and more ‘socially connected’ ways. I have been studying this for some time now and I just love the way the class of 2017 are challenging the status quo and rewriting the rule book on how to use LinkedIn. Here is a list of some of the most impressive and influential members of the class of 2017 (in no particular order) Michaela Alexis Janet Murray Tim Queen Mike Morgan Josh Fechter Jonathan Pollard Gretta van Riel Eli Hochberg Chris Williams Ben Rea Alexandra Galviz Matt Wilson Lila Smith Tom Mallens Simon Dodson Josh Quigley Erik Eklund String Nguyen Amy Blaschka Anna McAfee Manu Goswami Simon Chan And last but not least, I can’t go without giving a mention to the honourable ‘mature student’ of the year Oleg Vishneplosky who consistently continues to set the pace with some of the highest levels of engagement ever seen on LinkedIn! I’m sure I have missed some important names, so please do not be offended if I have not listed you! I’m not stating that I agree with everything these members do on LinkedIn but they are definitely pace setters in this new age of LinkedIn engagement. Take a look at their posts and you will see similar patterns; Storytelling, often of a personal nature Use of hashtags Lots of @mentioning Large, diverse networks and followers A sense of community - many comment, share or Like each others posts A sense of fun about their LinkedIn activity Rarely, if ever, promote themselves or their businesses Use of native video Many long, text only posts As I have stated before, some of them post things that I think are not always suitable for LinkedIn but who am I to argue with the level of engagement those posts get? Many (not all) of the above are millennials and one concern I have is whether they are likely to drop LinkedIn like a stone when something ‘new and shiny’ comes along - this is very typical of how this generation use Social media and it could happen to LinkedIn. This weeks questions are all regarding last weeks topic of GDPR and were all aimed at Jeremy Kajendran following his interview. Jeremy has been very generous in answering all the questions I sent him by recording his answers. Topics covered were; Do subscribers on pre-GDPR email lists need to opt-in again to be compliant? If I work under the name of another company as a Consultant and promote them as a company etc. Do I still need to register with the ICO? Am I still abl