LinkedIn New Features and Updates – April '24 edition
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By the end of Q1 of 2024, there had been another huge swathe of new LinkedIn features and changes – more than 70, in fact. We update these in this newsletter at the start of each month.
Changes to Profiles
?? From the ‘I didn’t know that’ file …
Media uploads on your profile are limited to 50 per location. That's each role, Featured, Volunteering, Education, Projects etc.
?? Workaround for Public profile indexing block
Kevin D. Turner has been reporting for months that LinkedIn has made the majority of our Public profiles unable to be properly viewed outside the platform by hiding key information. The aim was limit x-ray searches and drive people towards LinkedIn Recruiter and Sales Navigator.
But genius that he is, he’s come up with a clever workaround which you can see on his profile. This uses your first Volunteering role as your ‘search engine indexing statement’ which effectively means you can then be found more easily on Google. Tip: use lots of key words in the text you include for this.
?? You probably never even missed this …
The date you connected with someone can again be viewed in the Contact info section of their profile. This can be useful when you want to reconnect with someone and it would help to say how long you’ve been connected.
?? Allow 2nd degree connections to see your email address
In our settings we can elect who we want to make our primary email (that shows in your Contact info section) visible to. We’ve been able to choose only ourselves, 1st degree connections and anyone on LinkedIn but now there’s the option of adding 2nd degree connections in addition to 1sts.
?? Change to personal dashboard
At present in the left rail of our profiles in the Home screen, we see our number of profile viewers and post impressions. This is changing to number of connections and outstanding invitations.
?? Choose who can follow you
My understanding always was that anyone could follow you on LinkedIn. Now, we can decide whether we want those who are not connected to us to be allowed to follow us.
In the Settings / Visibility/ Followers area, you can choose whether to allow everyone on LinkedIn to follow you or just your connections.
Choosing "Everyone on LinkedIn" lets people outside your network follow your public updates. But if you switch from "Everyone on LinkedIn" to "Your connections" you'll lose any out-of-network followers you have now.
?? Make Follow button primary
In the same section of Settings is the button where you decide whether to have Connect or Follow displaying on your profile.
I you switch the button to Make Follow primary’ that’s what visitors to your profile will see. If you have creator mode turned on, turning this off also turns creator mode off (and vice-versa).
These options are available in Settings & Privacy, click Visibility, then last option Followers. https://www.dhirubhai.net/mypreferences/d/followed
Changes to Posting and Newsfeed
?? Gaming coming to LinkedIn?
Several sources are reporting that LinkedIn is testing gaming with the aim of boosting the time people spend here. Apparently puzzle-based games will ‘add fun, stimulate conversations among users and deepen relationships’. The games even have names: Queens, Inference, Crossclimb and Blueprint.
?? Testing underway of new video viewing option
Posts of people beta testing a TikTok style video format are starting to appear after becoming progressively available to iPhone users since early in the year. Those who have this see a Video tab next to the Home button at the bottom of their screens and the Post button moving to the top of the screen, right of Search.
Kevin Turner says this tab is native video driven, meaning no 3rd party app is required. Mark Williams reports that it's a mobile feature unlikely to come to desktop.
Here’s one of the posts talking about it which includes a video of the new format.
?? Shortened tags are back
Some time back LinkedIn stopped allowing us to shorten tags to just the person’s first name. This made comments look very odd and vaguely impolite. Now, the decision has been reversed and we can shorten tags (names) again by backspacing. Eureka! Now, if we could just have pinned comments back too…
AI applied to ‘Celebrate an occasion’ posts
Apart from the announcement of job changes, 'Celebrate an occasion' posts have long been unloved because they fail to get much organic reach. Now, if you start a post using words the algorithm thinks could be relevant to one of these post options, it brings up a prompt in blue next to the emoji icon. This gives you a choice between Give kudos, Project launch, Welcome to the Team, Work Anniversary, New Position, New Educational Milestone and New Certification. The aim of course is greater reach. We’ll see.
?? More Collaborative article changes
? Sponsored Collaborative articles
With some misgivings we noticed on a recent visit to the Collaborative articles area that companies can now sponsor them. There’s a disclaimer that says sponsorship does not imply endorsement (presumably of the article and contributions) which is heartening but does it imply contributors endorse the sponsor? I sincerely hope not!
? Search for Collaborative articles directly from the Search bar.
They are listed as a Content type when searching for posts. If you’re looking for suitable ones to contribute to, also use the 'Date posted' filter to bring up the most recent ones as the fewer contributions that have already been made, the more visibility for you. But just be careful to choose ones for the categories you are aiming to get a badge for as there doesn’t seem to be much benefit in a scattergun approach.
This new feature seems to be at the expense of Articles and newsletters, the category for which has now disappeared.
? An ‘Unhelpful ??’ option ?has been added to Collaborative articles so readers who find a contribution irrelevant, random, or not valuable, can mark it as unhelpful.
The feedback is private and won’t be shown publicly. If you accidentally mark a comment as unhelpful, you can undo it immediately. If you refresh the page, you’ll no longer see the contribution that you marked as unhelpful but it’s not clear if it’s been taken down for everyone.
?? More AI post ideas
Coming soon to Analytics for Premium users is ‘Ideas for your next post’ which pulls together your previous posts and the engagement received, your profile and listed skills, your network and their posts and engagement, plus ‘Trending topics’ to come up with 3 suggestions for your next post.?
Company Pages
?? Company pages messaging upgrades
Many pages have had the message function for around a year now, but it’s now being made available to all pages. However, you can’t display both the Message and Custom buttons at once anymore. You need to decide which is most important.
It still seems that if you’re not a follower of a page you can’t message it. But there’s no stand down time between following and being able to message.
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In the second change, it will soon be possible to message FROM company pages, not something available until now. And, this will possible at scale, according to Kevin Turner, through API integration with The Bird CRM, Brandwatch, Hootsuite, Oktopost, Sprinklr and Zoho. It’s not known whether messaging will be only to page followers or possible to the wider membership. Either way, the implications for pages is huge.
?? Custom button on pages hidden
Since custom buttons were available for LinkedIn company pages we’ve been able to display them in the page intro section. We’ve been able to choose between Learn more, Contact us, Register, Sign up, Visit website, View Services, Visit portfolio and Visit store. However, now LinkedIn is moving this Custom button into the More dropdown menu where it will effectively be hidden from view.
The workaround suggested by John Espirian is to switch off the Message button which then allows the Custom button to display (see image below). If your page receives few messages as most do, this trade off – while not ideal – isn’t as bad as some.
?? Your data downloadable by pages you interact with
A recent change allows company page admins to download data about their page that may include info from your profile and your interactions with the page such as commenting on a post. Fortunately, this is turned off by default. Should you want to allow pages to download info about you the setting is in Settings & Privacy / Visibility / Page owners exporting your data.
?? Image link edit for page posts
This has been reported as new but some lucky people have had this some while. Either way, it's worth knowing about.
When you type or copy a link into a post, it brings through the image from the link and displays that at the bottom of your post unless you choose to add an image or video.
This change allows you to swap the image attached to the link with one from your files – even a gif if you want – without losing the link itself.
Default link image:
Changed link image:
Changes to Search
?? 2 steps removed from People search menu
When doing a people search it is now 2 steps easier to chose the level of connection you’re looking for. Options for 1st, 2nd and 3rd are now displayed on the top line. Previously, using the pop up menu was needed.
?? Find LinkedIn-approved news sources
It seems that a new News search filter is headed our way but Marjolein Hoekstra has provided a useful workaround:
You’ll see newsletters from Business Insider, HBR, Tech in Asia and much more.
[Sources: this information comes from a variety of sources, primarily Kevin D. Turner ’s newsletter but also Social Media Today, LLC , direct from LinkedIn, our own observations and other LinkedIn members.]
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Apr 6 – LinkedIn Social Serving & Lead Generation: Video Content Tips
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April 18 – LinkedIn Profile Masterclass: Important Updates You Need to Know.
In the past 12 months there have been so many changes to LinkedIn profiles that it’s hard to keep up. In this masterclass we alert you to those that are important if you want to stand out in an increasingly competitive market for jobs, business opportunities and clients.
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3 个月STATEMENTS
I help business owners, SME’s, start ups and entrepreneurs, like myself find insurance solutions to met their needs and to ensure they are covered for what they think they are.
4 个月Hi, has Manage Following from a business page been dropped? I can still follow from personal but can't see how to follow from a business!
Art Director / Illustrator
7 个月Can someone please show me how to add "visit my portfolio" to my intro section? "Custom Button" is not an option in my "More" drop down menu and it's no longer under "edit contact info".
Empathetic Microsoft 365 mentor. Ex-Microsoft. IT tinkerer, problem solver and dedicated project team player. Decent sense of humor. I tried perfectionism. Tribes: Digital Fitness and professional LinkedIn communities.
8 个月?? Thank you for always being so courteous and diligent about giving proper credit to your followers and friends, Lynnaire. You blow me away with your eye for detail.
Brand to Land: Eliminating Personal Blanding? with the Sharpest Tools & Strategies for Your Professional Success. Branding ? LinkedIn Profile Optimization ? Trainer ? Career Coach ? Speaker ? ? Verified Profile
8 个月The ability to edit Mentions (both 1st and Last Name) has been missing from [in] in 2024 Lynnaire "Link?Ability" Johnston and sometimes a bit wonky on Mobile but it wasn't anything [In] did. It was an issue caused by an onslaught of security updates on most browsers. The way it used to work is the whole Mention was always there, but LinkedIn coded them, based on our actions, to visually hide part of the full mention name. You can see how this coded obfuscation could be used in a malicious way to get someone to click on a link that wasn't fully exposed. [In] had to scramble to find a new way to make the old way work again in a secure way. The Mobile apps are their own browsers and didn't have a diversion security issue, so they never stopped the coding process. Thank you for the Mention and got a cool one for you tomorrow. United [In] Knowledge We All #KeepRockingLinkedIn! Kevin On a Mission to Eliminate Organizational & Personal Blanding?