Have you looked at your LinkedIn homepage recently?

Do you read most of the status updates from your network?

Are you keeping your network alive for business opportunities, by sending messages to a few of your connections each week?

Do you comment or “like” updates on most days?

Or do you ignore status updates because they look like a disaster area filled with irrelevant information?

If some status updates look like an info-explosion hit your homepage (while reducing opportunities to engage with your connections), keep reading.

Your LinkedIn homepage is like mission control

LinkedIn’s homepage is the “heart” of your network. Your LinkedIn homepage is the best (and easiest) way to stay engaged with your connections, with the added bonus of networking for business.

But when a homepage becomes cluttered with status updates that aren’t meaningful or relevant, you’ll likely tune out your network—weakening your networking power.

Tweets on a LinkedIn homepage can create a disaster area

LinkedIn’s Twitter integration means a homepage has the potential to explode into a disaster area of irrelevant information—weakening your networking and engagement potential.

Some updates from Twitter look like a foreign language. Tweets are often filled with symbols like # (hashtags) and @ (at replies), or messages like “Just added myself to the Twitter directory under . . .”

Do these updates seem irrelevant to you? Preventing them from appearing on your homepage is simple.

Hide updates that aren’t relevant or meaningful

Hiding status updates from certain connections helps reduce the clutter and noise on your homepage. Reducing the clutter means your homepage is easier to read—which increases your potential to engage with your connections.

Hiding updates seems counterintuitive

Why hide updates from those people you’re connected to? After all, don’t you want to stay up to date with your network?

Yes, but when you hide certain connections whose updates you’d rather not see, your homepage becomes more relevant and meaningful. The clutter is reduced, which means no more glazing over information that appears distracting (and doing nothing about it).

Increasing relevant updates on your homepage means you increase your motivation to engage with your network by commenting, “liking” or sending a message.

How do you hide updates from a connection?

The capability to hide updates is super-easy to miss; LinkedIn barely makes the feature visible to its users.

Here’s how to hide status updates:

1. Go to your homepage.
2. Hover your mouse over a connection. (Don’t click anything; just hover.)
3. On the far right side of that connection, in light gray, is the word “Hide.”
4. Click “Hide” and you’re done.

From now on, you won’t see updates from that connection.

But won’t you break a connection by hiding their update?

No. Your connection remains intact as a first-degree connection. All you’re doing is preventing the status updates from appearing on your homepage.

What if you change your mind?

After hiding someone’s updates, you may want to see that person’s updates again in the future. It’s easy to see which updates are hidden and to reactivate those updates.

Here’s how to reactivate a hidden update:

1. Go to your homepage.
2. Look for “Hidden,” directly above the connections update, on the top right.
3. Click “Hidden.” A new box opens up.
4. Click “Hidden” within the box.
5. You’ll see the updates you’re hiding from your connections.
6. Click “Show Updates” and you’re back in business.

I know what you’re thinking

“Won’t I miss important updates from my connections if I hide their updates?”

Yes, you will.

It’s a bit of a catch-22.

Once you hide a connection on your LinkedIn homepage, you won’t see that person’s updates. Hiding status updates isn’t a perfect system. While it does help clean up a homepage, you do risk missing updates.

On the other hand, if you do keep certain connection updates hidden, you can always go a connection’s profile and manually review past updates. Decide then if you want to show their updates once again on your homepage.

Summary

Over time, a LinkedIn homepage can become distracting, filled with irrelevant updates.

Hiding updates that come from certain connections can help reduce the amount of “noise” on your homepage, allowing you to focus on networking with those connections you choose to single out.

Now over to you

How do you use LinkedIn’s homepage?

Do you use the “Hide” feature?

If so, how do you decide when to use it?

We’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences. Drop us a comment below.

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Download our free special report, “The Top Five LinkedIn Ways To Network To Get Work,” to learn more about increasing business opportunities through LinkedIn.

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Tags: business opportunities, linkedin, networking, networking power, online social networking, Social media, web 2.0, world wide web

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 11th, 2011 at 2:42 pm by Thomas Clifford and is filed under Marketing, Social media, Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.