Are you ringing in LinkedIn bells? We know the phrase, Ding Dong! Avon Calling! Read more for bell trivia, music copyright tips, & coffins. Yes you read that correctly!

Now, notification bells are popping up on social media platforms like Clubhouse, but LinkedIn just added a bell also, so are you ringing LinkedIn bells?

If you are a first-degree connection with someone on LinkedIn, you can click at the top right part of their profile and change the bell from white to gray (to receive notifications). If you change your mind, you can click it again, turning it back to white (to turn off notifications).

If you do click the bell, this will signify that you want to receive a notification whenever this person publishes something new and you want to see their content in your feed. It is as simple as that.

If you don’t have the bell yet, you don’t have the feature rolled out as one of the 800+ million subscribers! I seem to have access on my desktop and mobile from the spot-checking I did on a few profiles after first seeing the post by Mark Williams about this new feature. 

This new bell feature may be available to me because I have Creator Mode turned on, or perhaps the person I want to follow has Creator Mode turned on. We don’t know what we don’t know yet as LinkedIn has not told us!

We also don’t yet know how we see who has clicked on our bell and the analytics, so maybe LinkedIn will roll out that info to us. LinkedIn has not updated their knowledge base articles yet, as nothing comes up in help when you enter the keyword “bell.”

The bell feature is also available for LinkedIn groups and there are three choices: all new posts, highlights, or no new posts.

Are you ringing LinkedIn bells?🔔

Because there is not much more to report about the new LinkedIn bell other than the “one-click” noted above, I thought I would share some bell trivia, just for fun, starting with a couple of stories about my personal connection to bells.

MY CONNECTION TO BELLS AND OTHER NOTEWORTHY FINDINGS

I live in the Philadelphia suburbs. We have the famous Liberty Bell, which makes no sounds, but symbolizes so much more with its inscription “Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land Unto All the Inhabitants Thereof.” Read more about its history here. 

Growing up in Chester County, PA, I lived on the Valley Forge Mountain during high school. After college, I got married in the Washington Memorial Chapel in the Valley Forge Park that houses the Bell Tower and Carillon with 58 bronze bells.

As I was on the trail of researching bells and music about bells, I ran across an article on copyright jail, most definitely worth the read. Gillian Whitney wrote about Serving Time in Copyright Jail: Using Music in Your Videos, which you should not miss. 

That article led me to a conversation with Jim Woolfe of Five Notes Media in the UK. He is a producer of electronic music within Creative Commons, which means anyone can copy, use, or distribute work used in a non-commercial way. Jim noted that individuals could repurpose his music and do remixes. 

You can download clips from his website to use in your video, podcast, or social media posts. He gladly accepts donations for his Centre Point charity, which helps homeless young people have a future. You will find that link at the bottom of the page when you click on “Search for Music.” 

If you have a need, Jim creates exclusive theme music for businesses, should they want to hire him.

My mother was a music educator for almost 38 years, so music and songs filled my life. I am sharing some of the bell songs below that stand out in my memories. Also, I am sharing other bell-related trivia. 

Hopefully, some of these songs will bring a smile to your face, and maybe you will get the tunes stuck in your head as I did. 

FAMOUS SONGS

• Silver Bells composed by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans
• Carol of the Bells with music by Mykola Leontovych and lyrics by Peter J. Wilhousky
• Jingle Bell Rock composed by Joseph Carleton Beal and James Ross Boothe
• I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day by poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• Jingle Bells by James Lord Pierpont
• I’m Getting Married in the Morning. Ding Dong the Bells are Going to Chime from My Fair Lady
• Ding Dong the Witch is Dead from the Wizard of Oz
• Tubular Bells album by Mike Oldfield used for the opening theme of The Exorcist
• Ring My Bell by Anita Ward
• Bell Bottom Blues by Eric Clapton and Bobby Whitlock

FAMOUS BOOKS

• For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
• The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo (Quasimodo became deaf from the noise of the bells)
• The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

FAMOUS PEOPLE

• Classical Conditioning – the sound of a bell triggered Pavlov’s Dogs 
• Inventor of the telephone – Alexander Graham Bell
• Beauties from the South are known as Southern Belles (from the French word meaning beautiful)
• Tinker Bell (aka Tink or Miss Bell) is the sassy fairy in the Disney movie Peter Pan, released in 1953
• Angelina Jolie was diagnosed in 2016 with Bell’s Palsy, but George Clooney, Sylvester Stallone, Pierce Brosnan, and Katie Holmes also have this facial paralysis.

FAMOUS EXPRESSIONS

• People who are crazy or eccentric have “bats in their belfry.”
• That rings a bell is an idiom that reminds us that we just remembered something.
• Saved by the bell means rescued at the last minute from a challenging situation, including a notion that people potentially could have been buried alive if they were comatose. Read about the importance of bells in safety coffins. 
• As clear as a bell means that the receiver well understood the message delivered by the sender.

IN CASE YOU DIDN’T KNOW

• In a Catholic Mass, when the bell rings, Catholics are being alerted to the calling down of the Holy Spirit when the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ, which is called transubstantiation.
• The first American alarm clock was created in Concord, NH, in 1787 by Levi Hutchins.
• The most critical bell that could ever ring is a smoke alarm, so regularly change your batteries to protect your family. Donate to your local fire department, which is there for you 24/7/365. Sadly, I lost everything in my life to fire in 2005, and you can read more about my lessons learned here!

If you want notifications about career education events or posts or articles I write, ring the bell on my LinkedIn profile if you are a first-level connection. If we are not connected, make a connection request to be a first-level connection and introduce yourself, stating you read this article

NEXT STEPS

• Subscribe to my newsletter on LinkedIn for bright ideas to manage your career.
• Join as a member at https://greatcareers.org/membership of the #1 business networking association on the Philadelphia Business Journal’s Book of Lists. 
• Register on links on the events page for these upcoming online events noted below.