What’s happening at ‘Chai time’? Tell us with LinkedIn Stories

We’ve all been working from home for more than 6 months now and for most of us, the lines between our personal and professional lives have blurred. While we are still getting used to working-from-home and are struggling with the balancing act, one thing is clear -- our professional life now is interrupted by everyday life moments. Whether it is your child or your pet joining your Zoom call, comfortable, casualwear becoming the acceptable work attire, and hilariously for me, it has also been nudging in with my two boys to get the best spot in the house for my video calls!   

As a professional network, we hope to play an even more critical and relevant role right now, and the community is at the heart of everything we do at LinkedIn. It has been humbling to see our members turn to the platform to help each other, to stay connected with their teams, to find a new opportunity, to hone professional skills, or just to stay in the know. We are seeing record levels of engagement -- from March 2019 to March 2020, we have seen a 60% year-over-year increase in content creation on LinkedIn, and we’ve seen a 55% year-over-year increase in conversations among connections on LinkedIn. 

I couldn’t be more excited to announce the launch of LinkedIn Stories in India today, and take you through several member experience enhancements that we have announced globally last week that help you stay more connected and productive.

Introducing LinkedIn Stories 

Starting today, we are launching LinkedIn Stories in India, a new product feature that allows professionals to share everyday life moments from their professional lives with their networks. It allows members to share and see a more casual, authentic, and creative side of each other’s personalities, helps start lightweight conversations, use ‘Stories’ like ice-breakers, and find a fun way to stay connected with industry leaders, peers, ex-colleagues, mentors. Sharing updates from your professional life doesn’t have to be boring or formal - you can share your achievements, celebratory calls with teams, offer career tips, your #WFH hacks, or what you do in your break time to recharge. 

Here are few tips to get started with #LinkedInStories:  

• Be authentic and professional

LinkedIn Stories is an informal way to share your everyday professional moments such as work-from-home setups, daily routines, work motivations, events, team calls, industry news, and insights quickly and with ease as it does not stay on a member’s permanent profile. Sharing content that is important to you and valuable to your viewers is a great way to help find those connecting values that support great networks.

• Say it with Stickers! Tell us what you do at ‘Chai Time’ 

LinkedIn Stories allows you to share a more creative expression of who you are, and a way to show off your professional persona. You can use the stickers, hashtags, videos, and text to showcase this side of your professional self! For India, we have created 6 localised stickers that allow you to personalise your story and make it truly local in flavour. Keeping in mind what our members love and enjoy on LinkedIn, we have launched ‘Jugaad’, ‘Chai Time’, ‘Cricket’, ‘India’, ‘Autorickshaw’, and ‘Meditation’ stickers for India that can be used for break-time stories, after-work cricket banter, productivity hacks, and more.

•  Be purposeful with your posting

While Stories is an amazing way to share more frequently, make sure that you post with a purpose to avoid spamming your important connections. Always consider if what you have to share has a key message, benefit, or interest to your audience before sharing. 

Along with the launch of Stories, we’re also announcing several new enhancements to our messaging to the platform, starting with the new design, which infuses a warm colour palette, a more simplified and modern look, and provides a more cohesive experience for our members. To keep up with the new remote world of work, our new messaging experience now offers video meeting integration making it easy for members to switch the conversation from chat to face-to-face using Microsoft Teams, Bluejeans by Verizon, or Zoom directly in their LinkedIn message threads.

We hope these new features will help in not only making your professional relationships more personable but also make it easier for you to schedule your next networking call online or even message an ex-colleague to catch up. While we are still socially distant, we don’t have to be socially disconnected. 

So go ahead, share your first story on LinkedIn - you can kickstart by responding to the ‘Question of the Day’: Where are you working today? Give a tour or share a picture.

Read Ryan Roslansky’s blog to know more about LinkedIn’s new look and feel. To know more about Stories and its offerings, read Kiran Prasad’s blog.