What do your LinkedIn connections see when you browse their profiles?

What do your LinkedIn connections see when you browse their profiles?

We will start this short post with yet another question:
-What do you want them to see?

There are currently three options in the settings menu of LinkedIn concerning this feature. Each one of them is suited for different purposes, so let start with the first one:

1. Your full name and headline
- Choose this If you want to grow your LinkedIn Network and get more profile insights

If you have this option checked and then visit Joe`s LinkedIn profile, then Joe will get a notification that you viewed his profile with your full name and current job position included in it along with your profile picture.
This setting can prove the best one if you want to grow your LinkedIn network. Consider it this way, when Joe sees that you have viewed his profile, there is a great chance that he will also view yours and maybe dedicate a minute or two to the content you have provided on it. This leads to the possibility of connecting and furthermore establishing a relationship that may someday grow in some sort of business opportunity.

Another plus of this setting is that it enables you to have full access of your LinkedIn profile statistics available in the “Who’s viewed your profile” section of your LinkedIn Home Page. There you can track how many people have viewed your profile on a weekly basis and also see how many times you have come up in the LinkedIn search results.

2. Anonymous profile characteristics such as industry and title
- Choose this if you only want to provide a hint as to which industry you work in

This time what Joe will get as a notification is “Someone in the marketing function in the Finance Industry” viewed your profile. This option is almost as limiting as the next one, since having it set won’t let you access your profile statistics we mentioned earlier.

3. You will be totally anonymous
- Choose this one if you prefer to anonymously browse LinkedIn profiles

With this option set, when you view Joe`s LinkedIn Profile, he will see nothing in terms of your name or the industry you work in.
This setting would be applicable for you if you intended to study certain LinkedIn members and the content of their profiles prior to approaching them by sending a connection request.

Let`s say you want to grow your LinkedIn network but grow it only with fellow marketing professionals with specific interests related to social media. This will require quite some browsing and checking the interests of a number of LinkedIn profiles, which does not mean you will be sending invitation requests to all of them since all will not fulfill the criteria you have set (them having interest in social media).

Having the “anonymous” option checked you will prevent for all of these profiles you have browsed to be informed that you did that, because let’s admit it , viewing someone`s profile and stopping at that could say something like “ I saw what you do and what you`re interested in, and i do not want to connect with you” , and that`s not that much social , isn`t it ?

If you have any opinions on the subject we will be more than happy to discuss at our LinkedIn group Social Media Mk. Also , follow us at our company page to stay updated with the trends in the industry.