LinkedIn has spent the past year trying to foster a creator community among its more than 740 million users.
In April 2021, it started with the basics: adding follow buttons to accounts and letting users make video intros to pin to their profiles. Then, in September, it poured $25 million into a creator accelerator program that’s doling out $15,000 grants and a 10-week coaching/networking program to 100 U.S.-based creators.
Now it’s adding a series of features that put it a bit more on par with (potentially?) competitive platforms like YouTube and Twitter. (We say ‘potentially?’ because LinkedIn doesn’t seem to be targeting the same content creators or content consumers as other social platforms. Back in November, when it hired former TikTok exec Julien Wettstein to serve as its creator community team lead, he described LinkedIn as having a “vision to create economic opportunity for everyone in the workforce—putting creators at the heart of it.”)
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Up top of new features is a YouTube-y subscribe bell that’ll notify followers whenever a creator puts up a new post or video.
Video seems to be a significant part of LinkedIn’s strategy, considering this update wraps in two separate video tools. First, it’s now putting a ring around creators’ user images to indicate who’s uploaded a profile video. On the creator side, it’s decided to dole out prompts to “help inspire [creators] on what to share in their video as well as metrics for how many people viewed their video.”
Another area of content LinkedIn is pushing is newsletters. For now, access to its newsletter feature is limited; it says it’s in the midst of rolling them out to everyone who uses LinkedIn in Creator Mode (more on that here).
With this update, creators who do have access to newsletters will be able to pin their newsletter in the “Featured” section of their profiles so it’s more discoverable, LinkedIn says.
Finally, LinkedIn beefed up backend analytics for creators. People using Creator Mode can now see things like the total number of impressions generated by their profile and content engagement statistics.
LinkedIn says it’s also improved individual post analytics for all users (not just creators), adding things like number of impressions and reshares.
A LinkedIn representative tells Tubefilter these updates are meant to “help creators establish their voice and grow their audience.”
