Keeping up with new features on LinkedIn is almost a fulltime occupation these days, but it’s one we really enjoy because it helps us and all our clients to maximise what the platform can do. So, we’re happy to streamline the process for those who don’t have the time to stay up to date with all the new developments.

Now that we’re into a new year, it’s time to take stock of LinkedIn’s innovations in 2022 and focus on those that stood out.

Here are our top 10 recommendations for LinkedIn’s new features introduced last year . . .

1.    One of our favourite new profile features is Assign Skills. This allows you to assign skills to the Experience and Education sections of your profile. Each one you assign displays in the relevant role area. You can choose these direct from your Skills section or add them manually yourself from the Experience or Education sections.

If you want to add one that’s not currently listed in your Skills, you can do this. It will  then automatically appear in the Skills section provided you haven’t reached your limit. Adding this to your profile will probably help you appear in more search results.

2.    Adding a live link to your profile introduction. If you have Content creator mode switched on you can now add a link or link display text which gives you 30 characters to explain where the link takes your profile visitors.

Good choices are your website, your newsletter, your company page, or an events page if you have one. However, what you choose here will be dictated by why you are on LinkedIn and what you’re trying to achieve.

3.    About this profile. LinkedIn is rolling out this new safety feature to help protect us from fake profiles.

It tells you:

🔹  When the person joined LinkedIn

🔹  When they last updated their profile photo and contact details

🔹  Whether they have a ‘verified’ phone number. Still coming for most of us is a verified email address

The idea is that if a profile has been only newly created, has no verified information, or contact information, there’s a strong possibility it’s fake. You can take a look at this section when being invited to connect to help you decide whether or not this will be a good person for you to connect with. With the proliferation of fake profiles we all need to take more care about who we connect with.

4.    The best new feature in posts is reposting. When you repost a post, all that displays is the post itself. This allows LinkedIn users to quickly and easily share content between profiles and pages. So, if you create a strong post on your profile that you want to include on your page where it might have more longevity, you can repost it there. And vice versa.

If you have a company page post that you think deserves a wider audience, you can repost it on your profile for your larger network to see. We do the same with our clients’ posts and it’s especially useful if they are not creating unique content for their page but want it to appear active. Of course, unique content is always best.

5.    The second new feature for posting to be recommended is pinning a comment to the top of the thread.

This is a great way to ensure your own comment stays at the top if you add a link, an update or have something more to say. An excellent way to use it is to add your resources, links and what you do, etc.

However, you can’t pin your comment if it’s the only one. The recent algorithm report said that if you are the first to comment on your own post, it reduces reach by 20% and  given we all saw a drop in our views last year, that’s not helpful.

Of course, you don’t have to pin your own comment. It’s a nice gesture to sometimes pin other people’s, especially those who are generous engagers on your posts or who have written something you want everyone to see.

Note: This was discontinued shortly after it started being rolled out. However, word is that it will return this year with improvements.

6.    Auto video captions. These were a game changer as the lack of captions had been one of the barriers to many people wanting to post videos. We previously resolved this by using a paid service. Now, we don’t have to because LinkedIn does it for us. And it’s surprisingly accurate. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t check the captions. Muffled words or accents can lead to incorrect transcriptions, so you definitely should check them.

Less than half of all videos have captions, yet those that do significantly outperform those without in both reach and engagement. So basically, there’s little point in doing a video if you don’t have captions. You’ll get 35% more reach with captions and 25% more engagement. In all, we think this is a great move forward and will make it much easier for anyone to upload native videos direct from their phone if they want to.

7.    Audio Events arrived earlier last year and definitely deserve a place in our top 10. These are steadily gaining in popularity as people realise how easy they are to set up and run. Also, people are realising they can join an audio event while they’re cooking dinner, driving to work or taking a walk.

They’re available to everyone not just content creators, unlike LinkedIn Lives, and captions make it easier to understand what speakers are saying.

The downsides of audio events are that they are not yet available on company pages and have no replay or messaging functions. It’s unlikely they will come to pages until a replay is available but there’s no word on when that will be. 

8.    New features for company pages include newsletters. These arrived about March last year and are great for several reasons:

👉 One, they display front and centre on your page with an invitation to subscribe, which is free advertising in other words.

👉 Second, they have their own page with its own URL so they build up into a nice library and you can use the URL to invite people to subscribe.

👉 Third, they are an excellent opportunity for more organic content especially if you already have a company newsletter which you email to subscribers. It can easily be repurposed for LinkedIn.

👉 Fourth, it’s a great way to reuse your posts and give them another lease of life by including them in your newsletters as links.

👉 Fifth, newsletters behave like articles so you have a hero image, formatting and can add links and images, embed videos and presentations, and tag people which makes them visually interesting and attention-grabbing. We highly recommend them.

9.    If you employ staff, these last two features may be of interest. These are modules you add to your company page.

The first, Workplace, allows you to detail whether you allow remote or hybrid working. This is highly attractive to new employees who often prefer a more flexible approach to their work-life balance post-Covid. If you want to attract new team members and you offer flexible working, this is a good feature to add.

10. The second of these modules is Featured commitments. This where you can talk in detail about the values your company espouses. Again, this is good for attracting talent if, for example, you choose the diversity option.

However, adding this module isn’t as simple as just turning it on. It requires proof, links and other documentation to back up your claim to be following these commitments. It is advisable to research these modules quite thoroughly before you decide to activate them as there are requirements you will need to meet.

Our final LinkAbility webinar of the year featured the top features of 2022 so if you’d like more information about these, please check it out. You’ll find it here.

We look forward to bringing you ongoing updates this year as LinkedIn continues to roll out new features. They tend to arrive thick and fast, so it won’t be long before we have more innovations to share and more opportunities for you to optimise your presence on the platform. 

 🔹 🔺 🔹 🔺

At Link∙Ability we work with clients to help them achieve their professional goals using LinkedIn. Whether you need a profile makeover, team training, content creation and execution or your own personal LinkedIn encyclopaedia, we can help.

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