A lot of fundraising people I know are on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn can be a good tool for your career.
It can help you show your fundraising successes in their best light.
If you look at my LinkedIn profile, you can also see how I’ve highlighted speaking and publications. I’ve used LinkedIn for years. And I’ve even shown people how to use it better in my webinars, presentations, and in my book, The Wild Woman’s Guide to Social Media.
Lately on LinkedIn there have been some significant changes that have negatively impacted our ability to use the site for careers and networking.
- There’s the irrelevant “endorsements” section. I personally know some people on LinkedIn that have been endorsed for “Arson” and “Gambling” and “Hooray.”
- There’s the fact that they took away LinkedIn answers, and told people to ask questions in Groups instead. People don’t engage as much with groups as they did with answers.
- There’s the fact that they give you “updates” that you should be talking more on LinkedIn and connecting with people more often on LinkedIn. What if you don’t want to? They don’t care.
- There’s the fact that they will keep asking you for multiple email addresses, then, once you enter your email, mine your address book without your permission if you are logged into your email and LinkedIn at the same time. This is how I have gotten LinkedIn reminding me, repeatedly, to connect to a friend who committed suicide in 2011. It has been disturbing and awful and I’ve told them about it and they don’t care.
- There’s the fact that they decided to make the website a Facebook knock-off with their “Influencers” and “allowing” people to write articles on LinkedIn Pulse, for free. It’s terrible. I don’t need another place to read news and I certainly don’t need the news LinkedIn thinks I need crammed down my throat. Which brings me to the horror that is LinkedIn Pulse.
You can get rid of LinkedIn Pulse and all LinkedIn Ads
If you’re on LinkedIn, looking for work or trying to keep in touch with your nonprofit job contacts, you are getting these irrelevant and utterly boring linkbait LinkedIn Pulse updates. It used to be called LinkedIn Today. But now, it’s called LinkedIn Pulse, and you have even more useless content taking up space on your dashboard.
As of today, I found out that now LinkedIn Pulse is being not just irrelevant and boring, but actively offensive.
Once recent post from “Bruce Kasanoff” an “influencer” on LinkedIn Pulse said, “Jennifer Lawrence Confuses Me” talks about how if Jennifer Lawrence doesn’t want her nude photos on the internet, then “why does she do a photoshoot where she’s half naked?”
There’s so much wrong with this that I’m not even going to begin to comment.
Nope.
If you, like me, think that Jennifer Lawrence’s nudity is an offensive topic to post on a career site, then you’ll welcome the chance to get rid of these stupid updates with LinkedIn Pulse. Or LinkedIn News.
However, if you go to LinkedIn help, they say: “LinkedIn Pulse cannot be removed from the homepage.” Oh yes it can.
Here’s how you remove it.
Step one. Install Stylish on your browser.
The easiest way to use user styles is to use Stylish for Firefox or Stylish for Chrome. It’s all free, by the way.
Step two. Go to http://userstyles.org
Step three. Type in “LinkedIn Pulse remove” or “LinkedIn News remove” in the search bar on the left.
Step four. Install “Remove LinkedIn Annoyances”
Reload LinkedIn.
Voila! No more LinkedIn Pulse!
BONUS: You can also use AdblockerUltimate for Google Chrome and get WAY fewer ads. AND you can also install Adblock for Youtube and never have to hear Youtube ads again.
Now, LinkedIn may eventually find a way around this particular block, but if you go back to Stylish Add-ons, chances are, someone will find a way to block their ads and LinkedIn pulse again. So don’t give up. There are plenty of ingenious people out there ready and willing to help you avoid all of the crap on LinkedIn these days. And then you can get back to seeing only what you want to see.
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If you want to learn more about Mazarine Treyz, and how she can help you with your career, feel free to go here.
