LinkedIn Makes You An Internet Star ****Important Settings Alert**** | Power Formula LinkedIn Blog

What a hectic time of year. My calendar for December is just packed with family events, organization and association holiday parties, year-end planning and budget meetings, and kids’ concerts.

Even with so much going on, most of us are still trying to finish the year strong as it relates to our businesses and get in position for having a bigger year in 2012.

To help you prepare for a successful new year, I have four new LinkedIn training videos. Each video is action-packed and engaging, with practical tips and examples. These are not PowerPoint presentations or filled with webinar-style screen shots. They are high-quality videos of live training sessions taught by yours truly, and each concentrates on a specialized area of LinkedIn usage. They also come with all the applicable handouts that truthfully are worth the investment themselves. The new titles to choose from are:

LinkedIn for the Sales Professional: Advanced Strategies & Techniques

LinkedIn for the Human Resources Professional: A Step-by-Step Guide

LinkedIn for the CEO: What Questions Should You Be Asking?

LinkedIn for Non-Profits: The Top 10 Strategies to Grow Your Organization

Of course, you can still order my always popular bestsellers:

LinkedIn Speed Training for Beginners

Intermediate LinkedIn Power Formula Training

These videos are great for group training sessions. Who do you know wants to learn LinkedIn this holiday season?

As I jump into this week’s tip, I have to tell you that the idea for this one came from several of my faithful readers who said I better get this information out to the rest of you, and, by golly, they were right. This is a Red Alert: Better read this and act right away.

This summer, sometime in the dark of night, LinkedIn added a couple new settings and opted you in, and it has caused quite a stir in some corners of the user group. I don’t believe there was any ill intent. I think they were just trying to make us all internet advertising stars (wink wink). jay leno

But I’ll let you be the judge of that.

LinkedIn added the following settings and opted in all users:

Manage Social Advertising

LinkedIn may sometimes pair an advertiser’s message with social content from LinkedIn’s network in order to make the ad more relevant.

When LinkedIn members recommend people and services, follow companies, or take other actions, their name/photo may show up in related ads shown to you.

Conversely, when you take these actions on LinkedIn, your name/photo may show up in related ads shown to LinkedIn members. By providing social context, we make it easy for our members to learn about products and services that the LinkedIn network is interacting with.

LinkedIn may use my name/photo in social advertising.

Partner Advertising

LinkedIn works with partner websites to show advertisements to LinkedIn members on their sites. This collection of partner sites is called the LinkedIn Audience Network. Advertisements shown to you on the LinkedIn Audience Network are selected based on non-personally identifiable information.

For example, advertisers are allowed to target their products and services based on broad categories such as Industry, Job Function, and Seniority. Your personal information is not shared with or sold to any 3rd party. LinkedIn is committed to clarity, consistency, and member control in all matters related to privacy and data.

LinkedIn may show me ads on its partner websites.

I am not going to tell you what to do, but if you decide you do not want to be an internet star and prefer to opt out, simply go to the top right of your LinkedIn account and hover over your name. Then select Settings. To get to these settings, select the Account tab (left side of screen), and under Privacy Controls you will see Manage Social Advertising and Manage Partner Advertising. After you click these headings, you can then uncheck the box to opt out of participation.

I find it interesting that they call these privacy controls, and yet they opted us into having less privacy. Like I said, you be the judge.

For your additional reading enjoyment, the following articles present both sides of the argument.

LinkedIn Blog Post: “Privacy, Advertising, Putting Member First”

NY Times: “LinkedIn’s Social-Ads Misstep”

Forbes: “LinkedIn Social Advertising-Privacy Blunder or Missed Revenue Share Opportunity”

LA Times: “LinkedIn Social Ads Stop Displaying Users Name, Photos”