LinkedIn Updates and Changes | Notable trends of 2023 | Events and more

In this month’s newsletter:

?? New LinkedIn features

?? Opinion – The most notable LinkedIn trends of 2023

?? Our most popular recent posts?

?? Recent and upcoming events

Latest LinkedIn New Features and Updates

?? Analytics move, again

A few months ago, access to our analytics was added to just above our banners (below). This has now disappeared and access is again via the dashboard.

?? Education added to Catch up (My Network)

The My network tab is renaming the Celebrations section Catch up. Those with the new format now have an additional filter, Education, which has been added to Birthdays, Work anniversaries and Job changes. This seems likely to be connected with the Education section on your profile so any changes you make there, create an alert here.

?? Expansion of Who’s Viewed Your Profile’s subsection, Interesting Viewers

Previously only able to be toggled on or off, Interesting viewers now has 4 filters:

• Can help you find a job
• Works at a company you follow
• Influencer on LinkedIn
• Senior Leader in your industry

The value looks to be in narrowing down potential customers, candidates and connections you might want to communicate directly with.

?? Tabs added to company pages on LinkedIn Career Solutions accounts

These pages have new tabs (Life and What We Do) that help differentiate them from the competition. There are several options worth exploring for this type of account holder.

?? Reactions added to Activity section

When the Activity section was overhauled early in the year, Reactions was one of the new tabs added. It quickly disappeared to be replaced by Comments but is now making a comeback.

?? Create article of newsletter template

A Duplicate as draft button has been added to Articles and Newsletters which eliminates the need to format each new edition from scratch. This will be quite a time saver for those who have a consistent layout, especially for newsletters.

???Post time stamps being moved

The age of posts is moving from the top of posts?(below) down to beneath them. This is inconvenient if you like to read and engage with more recent posts.

???Skill Assessments phased out

Both the assessments and badges from completed Skill Assessments are being removed from profiles along with associated data.

???Changes to post languages

For those who have set their language settings to German, Spanish, French or Portuguese, posts in their feed will be auto translated into their selected language. If you see posts in another language in your feed you can use the See translation feature to read it in your selected language.

?? Newsletter metrics added to Analytics

See how many new newsletter subscribers and newsletter article views you have.

???Adding link to comments displays preview

When adding a link in a comment the preview now displays. This is an excellent addition as links are not truncated in comments as they are in posts and long ones look ugly. The link text can also be removed while leaving the preview in place.

???Editing tags / @ mentions removed

When tagging we’ve always been able to remove all the text in the tagee’s name except their first name by backspacing. This was especially useful in comments where the full name is decidedly less than friendly and (from a communications perspective) bordering on the rude. We can no longer do this although it appears you can while writing. When the tag is published, the entire name displays even if it's a very long one!

??? Restrictions on personalised invite messages from free accounts now worldwide

An earlier trial by LinkedIn to limit the number of connection invites you could send with a message from a free account, that looked to have been halted on the back of widespread outrage, has become official and rolled out internationally. Around 10 a month seems to be the most common limit.

???ID Verification now available in 50 countries

The UK and Europe join a long list of countries and regions where profile verification can be obtained, mainly via Persona.

???Connection year added to birthdays

In the My Network tab under Celebrations, Birthdays now shows when you connected to those in the list.

???Company page hashtags?removed

Until now, the hashtags you chose had appeared in a news feed on the Home Page. From there, the Page could comment on posts that used the followed hashtags. No longer, it appears as hashtags are being removed from pages.

?? ? ?? ? ?? ?

Notable trends of 2023

With more than 160 new features or changes to LinkedIn in the past 12 months, the platform is changing before our very eyes.

So when reporting on them as we do each fortnight (and often in between), it can be hard to keep sight of the bigger picture and notice overall trends.

As a result, we've taken a step back and cast our eyes over the entire year and come up with 7 notable trends to help us better understand what's going and where LinkedIn may go next.

1. The widespread introduction of AI to LinkedIn caught many by surprise. Mainly available only to paying members at present, AI makes it possible to cut corners in a number of areas and is being widely used to create content, write comments and messages, and rewrite sections of profiles. Some of the features announced have not yet been widely rolled out while others, like Design, did not appear to make it past beta testing.
2. AI has also been used to generate hundreds of collaborative articles to which members are invited to contribute comments. When sufficient articles under one topic have been contributed to (5 in my case), LinkedIn places a Top Voice badge prominently on your profile intro. Currently this badge confers a high level of kudos however as the ease with which it is possible to acquire these becomes more widely known, this is likely to diminish. Effectively, LinkedIn is using our expertise and experience to train its AI via collaborative articles.
3. The organic reach of content plummeted in the latter part of the year as LinkedIn tweaked the algorithm to encourage more focus on engagement and less on views. This followed an earlier dip and may indicate that the glory days of viral posting are over. Good engagement early on in a post's life along with commenting on others' posts around the time you post seem to help lift view numbers. But overall, it looks as if different strategies for becoming visible to your target audience will be required in 2024.
4. The post formats that seem to have performed best are documents and polls. Videos are also well received as they cannot yet be faked by AI so are therefore seen as authentic. These are ideal for helping your audience get to know you better and are becoming less a nice-to-have on profiles and more a must-have. With the demise of profile videos this month, creating a short video for your Featured section is an excellent way to introduce yourself to your profile visitors.
5. Events have become more popular with both hosts and attendees. Audio events are still hampered by the lack of a replay function and in-event comments. There have been whispers about a new event format that combines the best of both lives and audio but so far this hasn't eventuated. We expect to see more events happening in 2024 as marketing teams realise the benefits.
6. Company pages have come on in leaps and bounds with many new features available including a Featured section, messaging and higher monthly follower invite allowances. The Product page which allows recommendations, featured clients and media, could be a trend to watch in 2024 as LinkedIn allows more Company pages to set them up. (See our Recent posts section below for a rundown on these.)
7. LinkedIn is moving members toward a pay-to-play model with some speed. Not only has it made many new features only available to Premium members, it has severely restricted the number of personalised connection invites that can be sent from free accounts. This seems to go against its fundamental ethos of empowering members to connect with each other and was deservedly greeted with widespread outrage.

While predicting what LinkedIn will do in future is next to impossible, it seems clear that new strategies will be needed in 2024 if we are to maintain a strong presence and reach our target audiences.

?? ? ?? ? ?? ?

Our recent most popular posts

Leadership in 2024 will not be about hiding in the shadows.

One of LinkedIn’s major points of difference is the ability to connect with business professionals worldwide and forge strong relationships.

Why LinkedIn Product pages might be good for your business

The Home feed or Notifications? How do you stay up to date on LinkedIn?

Your Comments on Posts are Valuable! And NOT for the Reason You May Think!

?? ? ?? ? ?? ?

Link?Ability Events

Dec 21 – LinkedIn with Lynnaire Audio Event: The best of LinkedIn in 2023

Featuring 4 of our LinkedIn friends from the United States: Gillian Whitney , Marc W. Halpert , JoAnne Funch and ???Dan Dominguez, MBA ??? .

Dec 23 – LinkedIn Mastery, a weekly audio event hosted by Roy Kowarski, Martin Stark, Leanne Calderwood, CMP ?, ILIA FRANCIS and Lynnaire Johnston . The topic of the day this week is LinkedIn content for the holidays – Why you should still post.

You may have missed…

LinkedIn Live – How to get free mainstream media coverage using LinkedIn with ??Jules Brooke

Our LinkedIn events will resume on January 18.

?? ? ?? ? ?? ?

Looking to Up Your LinkedIn Game? Here are 5 ways we can help:

? Best-in-class profile makeovers

? Team training and upskilling on use of LinkedIn

? 1-2-1 LinkedIn mentoring

? Our tailored LinkedIn marketing programme that helps you become the go-to expert in your field

? Our Link?Ability site free for 7 days at linkability.biz

Talk to us about what interests you most. DM Lynnaire Johnston or email me at [email protected]

?? ? ?? ? ?? ?

How to get in touch with me

Connect with me at https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/lynnairejohnston/

Email Lynnaire: [email protected]