The Highlights of 2022

Welcome to the LinkedInformed Christmas edition!

2022 has been a truly amazing year for LinkedIn, when we have witnessed so many changes. This week I look back at how bad my predictions were for this year and reflect on my 9 favourite updates/improvements of 2022.

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My Predictions for 2022

You can read my full predictions here but as a summary;

1, Multiple Feeds.

Traditionally we have just had one feed which is dominated by posts and engagement from those we follow. I was bold and predicted that by the end of the year we would have the choice of 3 feeds!

Wrong! Although they did change the 'recent sort by' to make it stick when refreshing a page which helped somewhat.

2, Hashtags will finally take off on LinkedIn.

Wrong again although we have seen better use and adoption of hashtags during the year but I can't claim that they have really 'taken off'

3, Services - I predicted that LinkedIn would create a new page specifically for finding services providers and this feature would finally launch properly.

Completely wrong! As far as I can tell, they have done absolutely nothing with the services marketplace! Has this been delayed or shelved completely?

3, Income from Content.

Nope, completely wrong again! LinkedIn have hinted that this will happen but it seems as far away as ever and there has been no visible progress on this over the last 12 months.

4, LinkedIn will start to test a podcast directory.

Almost right but LinkedIn actually launched a podcast channel, not a directory. It seems that this is just a way to promote their own podcasts plus add shows from 3rd parties who are happy to benefit from the association of being a LinkedIn branded podcast and a share of ad revenue - at the expense of having LinkedIn interfere with content! A price I'm not prepared to pay, plus I will never have ads on LinkedInformed. So not what I was hoping for but it's good that they are finally getting up to speed with podcasts.

I also made some other predictions;

• Find nearby will return to the mobile app - nope!
• Automation. LinkedIn will step up their game and those being banned for using 3rd party automation products will multiply. By 2023 most of these providers will be struggling. I think I can claim a victory with this one! The HiQ case seems to have led to further cease & desist notifications being sent to automation providers. Let's hope this is the beginning of the end of automation.
• Groups will become more active as a result of Livestream audio and video events. However the strongest communities will gather around hashtags and popular shows. Completely wrong!
• Create a post (re-share) from a comment will disappear. It's still there...does anyone actually use it?
• Native Analytics (like Shield) will be introduced for content but only for those with Creator mode and a premium account. This has happened, they are very basic so not like Shield at all but I'm claiming a win on this one!
• Recruiter License holders will see the introduction of video interviews and application cover letter videos. Video job postings will also become a thing. Nope - not to my knowledge anyway
• Sales Navigator users will be able to send video and voice messages via InMail and these will have the added bonus of analytics. Shockingly this is still not possible and free DM's are still way better than InMail!

So there you have it, Don't ask me for your lottery numbers that's all I can say!!

My 9 favourite new features of the year

2022 was the year of the creator and many of these features have been introduced exclusively for those who have enabled creator mode. New features are also rolled out so if you don't have any of these yet, you may just be late in the roll-out process.

• Website links in Creator profiles. At last we can show a direct, clickable website link prominent in our profiles. A fantastic feature and I'm glad it's a direct link rather than one that warns of leaving LinkedIn.com but it's very odd that this should be different to any other external link.

• Post scheduling. I don't have it on mobile yet but I've used it several times on desktop and it works seamlessly! I haven't scheduled on LinkedIn for years and I didn't think this would change that...but it has! Next step is to introduce scheduling for articles...hint hint LinkedIn Help ??

• Automatic follow at the point of invitation to connect. I have long since preferred to build followers rather than connections and the concept of having to connect with people just so they could see my content was crazy. Now as well as following being the primary option on my profile, when someone does decide to ask me to connect, I can ignore (reject) safe in the knowledge that they are already a follower. It makes sense to chose your connections carefully whilst building as many followers as possible - this enables that to happen.

• Newsletter subscribe option added to Featured section of profiles. I'm not sure how many people subscribe as a result of this feature but it's nice to have. My one issue is that LinkedIn should let you 'pin' it to a position because every time you add a new featured item, this gets pushed further down the list and is therefore less visible.

• Pin comment to the top of the thread. This isn't a feature I have used but I know a lot of people you do and really appreciate it...LinkedIn seem to have recently removed it and the Help centre are stating that it has been retired due to lack of use! I don't believe this to be true, I suspect they have removed it to work on improvements and it will probably return in the new year sometime. The Help Centre are often misinformed in my experience and I can't see any logic in retiring this popular feature.
• Carousel posts. I don't have this feature yet, the roll-out appears to be exceptionally slow but it looks very promising - a post that can combine images and video and auto scrolls through the pages. Not to be confused with a document post which it seems are now being broadly referred to a carousels...this will get very confusing when the real Carousel posts are widely rolled out...so STOP calling document posts Carousels!!
• Re-posts. LinkedIn seem to have finally conceded that their users just don't want to engage with re-shares so introduced a repost option (and renamed the button repost). Reposts simply place the full post in the feed of followers in exactly the same way as a reaction does. The difference is that it's counted as your post and this might be a reason to avoid using it, especially if your notification bell has been selected many times. The real winners are the original authors of the posts who are seeing increased impressions and engagement when you repost.

• Auto-captions on native video posts. At last! It was always going to be a challenge persuading people to go to extra time and effort and add captions onto their video - the solution had to be to automatically add them and, despite dragging their heels for most of the year, LinkedIn finally implemented this in November. It works well, improves video views and engagement and makes video content accessible to all - a win all round! Hopefully we will see this extended to other languages during 2023.

• Employee Verification by email. I've been calling for this for at least 10 years and finally, it seems to be happening! The feature is by no means complete so LinkedIn still need to do a lot of work on it but it's a very positive move in the right direction. LinkedIn have chosen to implement this through the 'My company' tab which is odd, especially as not all companies have that feature and most critically, the verification is barely visible in a profile under the 'About this profile' section in the More menu so this needs to be brought to the very front of a profile and ideally as visible as their headline. Telephone number verification seems useless but to make it impossible to claim to work for a company without having verified your work email address is a key factor in preventing fake profiles. I sincerely hope LinkedIn understand how important it is to get this right.

The above are just my favourite changes out of nearly 100 made during the year, if you want to check out the full list, Kevin D. Turner has out together this excellent, comprehensive list;

95+ New LinkedIn Features for 2022

2022 has been the year of the creator when LinkedIn shifted gears and started to recognise that their members who post great content are the main reason why people visit and remain on the site/app. The Creator Accelerator Program has been an interesting initiative but I'm scratching my head to understand how it has benefitted the whole LinkedIn community - I'm increasingly thinking that they have invested in the CAP for their own benefit and that many of the cohort members are there to educate LinkedIn, rather than the other way around!

All that said, 2022 has been a really positive year for members and especially creators. I predicted that when Ryan Roslansky took over as CEO that we would see a shift in emphasis from employees (LinkedIn) to members (us) and 2022 was the year when this really started to show...long may it continue!

Post Of The Week

I had a few nominations this week but had to pick one with a Christmas theme! Well done to Carrie Rose for highlighting this amazing and touching video from Sam Teale

It's not just a high quality video with an important message, it's also just brilliant content - highly relevant and relatable to many people which are key factors in making a post engagement-worthy on LinkedIn. Unfortunately Sam chose to post the video on his company page and re-share it from his personal account which somewhat limited it's visibility so well done to Carrie for taking the initiative to upload it as a native video from her personal account, thus allowing it to be seen by so many more LinkedIn users.

So that's all from me for 2022.

Have an amazing Christmas break, spending precious time with your family and loved ones. I will be back in January with my wish-list for features in 2023 (I've learnt my lesson - no more predictions!).

Happy Christmas ??