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A special version of the Informed podcast as it reaches its 500th episode, with voice note contributions from several listeners.
Plus, a reminder to join us in Bristol for UpLift Live Nano on 17 September 2026. Your chance to ask your LinkedIn questions in person and even have your profile reviewed – and we even throw in a delicious buffet lunch at our fab venue on the Bristol waterfront.
Get tickets to Bristol on 17 September
Full transcript.
We have made it to the half millennium and you are listening to episode 500 of the Informed podcast. Hi, everyone, I am John Espirian, your host of the Informed podcast: a weekly show about LinkedIn best practice, and this is an important episode. We’ve reached episode 500 of the show and I thought we get lots of contributions from our listeners for this special episode.
We normally do start the show with the Postbag section of listener questions and feedback, and there’s lots of different categories of contribution for this week’s episode. So, I’ll get stuck into that in just a moment.
Just firstly to say that this show has been running since 2013, when Mark Williams – known as Mr LinkedIn – started the show as LinkedIn formed and he managed to record 465 of the episodes of this podcast. I took over at episode 466. So, I’ve done the last 35 episodes.
Looking back, I found that we’d done something like, I think it’s 24,000+ minutes of content on this show, which is about 405 hours worth of free material about how you can be better on LinkedIn. So, you might want to look back through the archive and see if any past episodes float your boat and check them out.
I couldn’t actually find episode 1, which I found a bit frustrating. I thought I’d go all the way back to the very beginning, but the earliest episode I can find is episode 2, which was recorded in December 2013.
Anyway, loads of content for you to look back at there, and we’re going to now dig into our Postbag section.
OK, let’s kick off with a load of LinkedIn tips, actually, that have come in from various members of the Espresso+ community, my small business community of people around the world who are interested in LinkedIn best practice, and many of them are LinkedIn trainers.
So, I asked the community whether they wanted to submit something special for the podcast and a load of people came forward, not just with questions, but also with their own personal tips for LinkedIn. So, let’s check those out now.
Brenda Meller: 00:02:24.100 – 00:03:20.490
Hey, John, this is Brenda Meller. As far as LinkedIn tips that I think that people should know, I think the big thing is that LinkedIn won’t tell you everything, and that’s partially because when new site features are launched, they’re in a test phase. And I’ve heard from others there could be 5 different ways of the tests that are occurring.
So, they don’t really want to let us know because we’re part of that test until things are fully rolled out. And then you might start to see some rumblings, either in a LinkedIn blog or a press release, or occasionally a post by LinkedIn employees.
But your best bet, and my tip for all of your listeners, is to reach out to individuals who are independently employed. People like John Espirian, Kevin D. Turner, myself, Brenda Meller, and others who are specialising in working on the platform, because we’ll tell it to you like it is. And if we don’t know an answer, we will ask our fellow colleagues. Hope that’s helpful.
Mary A Wu: 00:03:21.770 – 00:04:00.470
Hi John, Mary Wu from the US here, part of your community. Congratulations on 500. One of my favourite tips goes out to anybody who’s 16+ in high school and college. You can start building your community on LinkedIn, and then when you graduate and you’re starting to look for a job, you’ve now got a great group of people that they connect you with, the people that you need to know for your next step. So, connect with all of them: your family, your church people, your school people, and have them there forever.
John Espirian: 00:04:01.590 – 00:04:11.430
So that was two voice notes from Brenda Meller and Mary Wu, both in the States. We’re going to hear from someone else in the States now, Gillian Whitney and then Lynnaire Johnston in New Zealand.
Gillian Whitney: 00:04:12.550 – 00:05:02.060
Hi, John. Congratulations on reaching episode 500. So, here’s my LinkedIn tip. Newsletters are the most versatile form of content you can create. I think they’re the ultimate multimedia experience.
In a newsletter, you can include texts of various sizes, italics, bullets, hyperlinks, pull quotes, graphics, GIFs, embedded videos from YouTube, native video, and even embedded podcast episodes. But here’s the real magic: newsletters bypass the LinkedIn algorithm because they’re delivered straight to your subscribers inbox – well, unless they opt out, of course. But what I love is LinkedIn helps us keep growing our subscribers by recommending our newsletter to anyone new who follows us. Love them.
Lynnaire Johnston: 00:05:07.580 – 00:05:08.180
Hi, John, and congrats on reaching the 500th episode. Well done. The podcast is required listening for me every weekend.
My tip is don’t just use your company page to promote what you do. Use it instead to demonstrate what you know, share insights, lessons from client work, research, useful explanations, and your expertise. Because anyone can claim to be an expert, but the pages that build authority and are cited by AI are the ones that prove it. Good luck for the next 500 episodes. Looking forward to it.
John Espirian: 00:05:45.890 – 00:05:56.770
Nice one there, ladies. Thank you for those. And let’s keep going. We’re going to switch to a couple of Brits now. First of all, copywriter Judith Rafferty, followed by LinkedIn and sales coach Niraj Kapur.
Judith Rafferty: 00:05:58.210 – 00:06:37.500
Happy 500th episode of Informed, John. And honourable mention, of course, to Mark Williams for his initial heavy lifting.
Now, my top tip isn’t revolutionary. In fact, it’s quite rudimentary, but something that often gets forgotten.
So, just to remind everyone, don’t worry about contenting if you’re not commenting. It’s one-dimensional broadcasting if you’re not joining in conversations and cultivating reciprocity. So, let’s not forget it’s the biggest networking party for us to all join in. So, dive in there and get commenting.
Niraj Kapur: 00:06:39.320 – 00:06:57.080
LinkedIn advice I’d like to share with you is that don’t be afraid to sell in the LinkedIn DMs. So, many people are terrified of doing it because they’re worried about how they’ll be perceived.
But as long as you’re giving value to people, it’s absolutely fine to do it. It’s also incredibly effective to do it as well.
John Espirian: 00:06:58.280 – 00:07:05.880
Let’s keep it going. We’ve got a tip now from Beth Kirk. You’re going to hear her voice again a little bit later. But first of all, a LinkedIn tip from Beth.
Beth Kirk: 00:07:07.410 – 00:08:03.800
Hey, John, it’s Beth here. Congratulations on hitting the 500th episode.
My tip for LinkedIn that I wish more people knew about is that don’t be afraid to show some personality on LinkedIn. So, lots of profiles all sound and look really similar.
And actually, one of the best things I think you can do on LinkedIn is add real personality to your content.
Let people see who you are through your profile, let them see what makes up your whole work ethic, why you do what you do, and kind of give them a little bit more of a rounded view of you as an individual. And that applies to anyone from senior through to middle to junior, people coming up through their careers.
Don’t feel that you have to blend in with Everybody else on LinkedIn. Just be yourself, add personality to your profile and your content and people will really remember you.
John Espirian: 00:08:04.760 – 00:08:13.640
OK, and how about a couple more? This time we’ll have a bit more of an international flavour. We’ll have Mic Adam from Belgium and Karen Tisdell from Australia.
Mic Adam: 00:08:15.400 – 00:08:42.430
One of the most underrated features of LinkedIn is the fact that you can actually download your archive, which really means that one, you have a complete backup of whatever you did on LinkedIn, including your network. But more importantly, all that data can be analysed and you can actually learn what to change in your behaviour based on the analysis.
Karen Tisdell: 00:08:43.790 – 00:09:22.350
Hi, John, forgive me going full Karen on this but it really annoys me on LinkedIn when I see LinkedIn constantly asking people to put posts in their Featured section and then they do.
My tip for the 500th episode is please don’t do what LinkedIn is asking you to do. Do what is in your own best interest.
And that Featured section is, as I know you would say yourself and say often in your community, Espresso+, it really is a place to put your website, your speaker video, lead magnet, for want of a better word, that sort of thing. Please, no more posts Featured. That’s my tip.
John Espirian: 00:09:23.470 – 00:09:36.510
Lovely stuff. Thank you, Mic and Karen. And let’s have a few words from a couple of people whose voices are regulars on this show. First of all, Ashley Leeds in the UK and Mark Lee, also in the UK.
Ashley Leeds: 00:09:37.950 – 00:10:02.040
Hello, John. Congratulations on 500 episodes. That is absolutely incredible. It’s Ashley leeds here, the 15-Minute Guy.
I have listened to this podcast for it seems like forever. I am so pleased that you’ve grabbed hold of the reins and making it your own. And I look forward to many more interesting podcast episodes.
You are a legend. Thank you so much. And here’s to many more. You take care and congratulations.
Mark Lee: 00:10:03.560 – 00:10:54.100
Hey John, it’s Mark Lee here. Congratulations on reaching episode 500. I thought I’d mark the occasion by describing a podcast through its own name.
Informed: independent, no-nonsense, factual, observant, relevant, measured, engaging, dependable. Yes, I know there’s no L in Informed these days, but those of us who’ve been listening long enough remember when there was.
500 episodes is quite an achievement. I know Mark Williams started it all for about 465 of them, keeping us Linkedinformed for so many years.
And you, John, we are all grateful to you for picking up the baton, making the podcast your own, and ensuring that we continue to be Informed. So, here’s to the next 500 – don’t know if you’ll make that. But perhaps we’ll let you get to 501 first. Take care. Keep up the great work. Thanks again.
John Espirian: 00:10:55.540 – 00:11:07.190
We will finish off the bumper section of the Postbag with some questions, which is typical for us on this show. I said you’d hear again from Beth, so let’s hand over back to her now.
Beth Kirk: 00:11:08.390 – 00:12:24.990
I wanted to just acknowledge your lovely roundup of the AI slot button. And like you, I’m not seeing content in my own LinkedIn personal feed that I want to flag, but I do see a lot of content like this on company pages.
So, I guess I’m with you in the sense that if you have a nicely curated LinkedIn feed and you’re following lots of other people in your community who also value original written content, you won’t need to use that button. But I do see it as a flag for company page admins who are using AI in order to just create their posts from scratch.
And the other thing I wanted to say, John, was thanks for the update on the SSI going away.
I’ve never really seen this as a particularly valuable tool, like you say, just for beginners, but I just wondered, could we discuss how do we actually. How do other people get a measure of how successful their LinkedIn is working for them and how they’re making progress?
I usually say to my clients to track their stats, so track their profile views and search appearances.
But maybe you’ve got some other expertise to add there or somebody else in our community has, because I think it’s really good to know as an individual that you’re making progress with your LinkedIn when you work really hard on it.
John Espirian: 00:12:26.110 – 00:14:33.730
Yeah, thanks for that feedback and for your question, Beth. I think what I recommend my clients to track is not something you can easily see on a dashboard, frustratingly.
I always tell people that you’ll get the best results out of LinkedIn if you can just jump into conversations and start more of those conversations. And that really equates to getting more involved in comments and getting more involved in the direct messages.
So, I would say to a client, if you haven’t really done this before, start getting involved and then seeing how many comments you get by back as a result of your own commenting strategy.
There’s no dashboard to say, you know, you received 43 comment replies this week, but that’s the kind of number you want to be looking at tracking just to see that your efforts at starting conversations are actually working. And the other number to track then is how many of those public comment exchanges can you then move into the direct messages and continue going there?
Plus, how many conversations can you start as a result of either inviting your target audience to connect with you, or receiving those incoming requests and then starting the conversation there. Again, there’s no dashboard for that sort of thing.
You can do a little bit of analysis of your data archive and try and work things out from there if you’ve got a little bit of skill around data manipulation and using AI, as Mic alluded to earlier.
But if you can try and keep some track of those things, even if you do it manually in the first instance. That gives you some confirmation that people are paying attention to what you’re saying and if you stay consistent with that, will eventually open doors to business. So, tracking your comments and your direct messages, I think is a good addition to looking at things like profile views and search appearances.
OK, here’s another item from listener Bruce Segall. He’s pointed out something that I hadn’t seen before, at least not recently. So, let’s listen to Bruce now.
Bruce Segall: 00:14:34.690 – 00:15:12.110
John, this is Bruce Segall from New York. Wanted to congratulate you and Mark on 500 episodes. I think I started around episode 200 in 2015-ish.
But anyway, I’m also calling to let you know about a new feature, a private connection note that appears to be available to some business users, but not others, that allows you to record in up to 500 characters how you met the person and other details. So, great feature that LinkedIn used to have that now looks like it’s back. Thanks.
John Espirian: 00:15:13.550 – 00:16:14.400
Thanks for that, Bruce. And that is really interesting feedback.
This feature of being able to keep internal notes that only you would see about a particular person was on LinkedIn many years ago. I mean, so long ago that it was before I was personally that interested in LinkedIn best practice. That’s how long that feature has been gone.
Now, I haven’t seen this for myself just yet, other than through a screenshot that Bruce sent me to show that yes, you can add a sort of private connection note for a given person. I don’t know in what circumstances this appears. I’m not sure if you would you need Sales Navigator for this to work.
I’m on the Premium All-in-One feature, so I’ll be looking out for that and certainly testing it if I get it. And where do the notes then get stored? And can you then do a lookup across your whole database of notes?
Not sure about the answers to any of those things, but that is a really interesting feature, certainly one I’ll be looking out for. And if and when I get it, I’ll do a bit more reporting on that one. So, thanks for the feedback.
Keith Grover: 00:16:15.520 – 00:16:53.360
Hi John, it’s Keith. Congratulations on reaching episode 500 and to Mark for passing on the baton to such a worthy successor. But enough of this sycophancy.
My candidate for inclusion is collaborative posts, not to be confused with the late unlamented collaborative articles. And it’s a post by Daisy Wright in Toronto which was collaboration with Kevin D. Turner, hence I saw it.
When I click on the collaborators, I see them. Some have blue links under their name, others don’t. I wonder why? Kevin’s doesn’t work, by the way. Sweta Regmi’s does. I’ll send you the stuff through. Cheers.
John Espirian: 00:16:54.400 – 00:18:52.560
Well, thank you for that one, Keith. So, yes, I’m looking at the screen that you mentioned in your note and when you look at a collaborative post, you can see all of the collaborators.
This is one of many “surfaces” on LinkedIn where you can see more information about a given person. You see their profile photo, you see their name, you see part of their headline, and then you might see some other metadata shown.
And in this case you’re talking about why are blue links sometimes shown. And that will be because a Premium member who has added a custom button to the top of their LinkedIn profile, such as “View my services” and there are a few other kinds of button you can add. If you’ve added one of those, then a link to that service also appears in a mini view like this.
I think Kevin’s is a bit different. He’s got something that says “Get advice from me”.
And I think that’s an experimental new consultation option that Kevin might well be testing, which is probably why you said that link didn’t work when you clicked on it. So, I suppose this is a reminder that if you are paying for LinkedIn, you should use all of the features available to you. There’s no point paying for it and not getting the best out of those things. And that Premium custom button feature that appears on screens like this and also in your posts and other places as well, and in general search results, it’s just a good way to get more clicks through to something that you’re offering on your profile.
So, look out for that feature if you haven’t already used it and you’ve got a gold badge on your LinkedIn Premium profile, go and edit your profile – in the top card, there’s an option there to add a button and then you can choose where you want to point people to find out more about what you’re offering.
OK, I think we’ll finish off with one final voice note contribution. This one comes from another Espresso+ member, Jeremy Freeman, who’s also my co organiser for the UpLift Live conference. Let’s listen to Jeremy now.
Jeremy Freeman: 00:18:53.920 – 00:19:18.070
Hi, John. Huge congratulations on hitting episode 500. What an incredible milestone. Two things I’d love to know.
What has the podcast done for you in terms of visibility, credibility and profitability? And the best piece of business you’ve landed through LinkedIn. Congratulations again, John Buzzing for you.
John Espirian: 00:19:19.190 – 00:23:58.750
Thanks for that contribution, Jeremy, and good questions. Visibility: I think the podcast gets something like about 400 downloads per episode per week.
So, that’s pretty good for keeping my name in people’s heads and, you know, little and often is great. So, if someone is subscribed to the show and they’re listening to 10 or 15 minutes of me every week, that means I’m less likely to be forgotten about, so that’s a good thing. And I think it takes effort to keep a podcast going. So, for credibility purposes, it just shows that I’m not a fly-by-night person.
I mean, I’ve said before multiple times, I can’t really take that much credit for this show because 465 of the episodes came via Mark Williams. So, there’s a bit of inherited credibility there. But nevertheless, I started the show after he gave it over to me and have kept it going.
So, yeah, I guess it shows that I’m kind of committed to the cause. Profitability: I mean, I don’t really do that much in terms of pushy sales on this show, or indeed anywhere else. Has it influenced people’s thinking in coming to me when they might otherwise have gone to someone else? I haven’t really dug too deep in asking that question of clients, but it’s entirely possible, and it’s relatively early days in terms of my public podcasting.
In terms of LinkedIn business, if we were talking in financial terms, actually the best pieces of business I’ve got through LinkedIn was way back when I was still doing technical copywriting work, all of which was under non disclosure agreements, so I could never speak about what those things were.
But people who found me because of my writing on LinkedIn and then hired me to do not just website copywriting projects, but sort of massive technical manuals, those were worth quite substantial sums of money. So, those probably would be my best pieces of business in terms of my presence on LinkedIn.
But in more recent times, you know, my work on LinkedIn has led to clients booking not just online training, but occasionally in-person workshops. Those ones are really interesting because you get a chance to go to a different part of the country and sort of deliver across a whole day. And those ones, relatively speaking, are quite lucrative.
So, certainly open to doing more of that sort of training if anyone’s interested in listening to me talk about what I’ve learned about LinkedIn and what things work and what don’t work based on my experience of working with B2B for gosh, I don’t even want to say how long it is, but certainly well over a decade, yeah, I’m available for that kind of thing.
Anyway, I suppose that the bigger point I’d want to make about that is that actually LinkedIn can work for pretty much everyone. If you got some knowledge about a topic and you’re passionate about it and you show up in a way that makes it clear to other people what you care about and what you know, and then you share information in a helpful way for a long enough period of time, you too could be that person that people approach when they need help with something. And that means that LinkedIn is still an incredibly powerful place for doing business, keeping relationships going, finding new clients, all of that good stuff is still possible on LinkedIn. And crucially, you can do pretty much all of that stuff without paying LinkedIn a penny.
And that’s the thing I keep drilling home to people. Just because you pay for a gold badge, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to get business results out of LinkedIn. You’ve got to do some of the basic stuff first. So, should you ever need any help with that side of things, I’m around. Drop me a line.
OK, I think that’s probably enough for a Postbag-heavy version of this episode 500 of the show.
I did say in response to Jeremy that I don’t do much sales, but I will remind you again that our UpLift Live Nano event, which is in Bristol, is taking place on Thursday, 17 September from 11am to 2pm so it spans lunch.
Get tickets to UpLift Live Nano Bristol on 17 September 2026
You get your lunch paid for you as well and it’s a chance for you to meet people who are active on LinkedIn, ask your questions to me, get your profile reviewed in the room. Should be a really fun mini version of what the UpLift Live conference has been. So, get your tickets, I’ll put a link in the show notes. If you’ve got any questions about the event, please let me know. It’d be lovely to see you in Bristol.
Thanks to everyone who has listened to the show and who’s contributed, especially voice notes for this particular episode. We’ve had more than I’ve ever received for this week and I’d love to keep that vibe going if possible. I love hearing your voice on this show if I can. So, please drop me a line.
Any questions, any feedback, anything else you want to talk about with regards to LinkedIn, let me know and I’ll include it on the next episode. And until then, have a great week and I’ll see you all again soon. Cheers.
