Over 740 million of the world’s population use LinkedIn. It is inarguably the best social media platform for those seeking to build a professional network in the business world. Whether you are a business owner looking for talent to hire, a marketer promoting a company, or a developer looking for projects, LinkedIn is the place. If you are a LinkedIn user or plan to use it, you need to know this latest LinkedIn update.
LinkedIn is specifically famous as a professional network-building platform. However, its potential as a digital marketing tool is often undermined. By continually updating and improving, LinkedIn has emerged as a powerful social media marketing and advertising tool, especially for B2B companies.
If I talk about one of its near-recent updates, LinkedIn now allows its users to run a filtered search. This filtering allows them to find more meaningful results and eventually helps them link with the right people. This is another reason why LinkedIn is great for B2B digital marketing.
To make this professional linking experience more meaningful and worthwhile, LinkedIn keeps on introducing updates. Today, we are going to talk about some such recent updates.
‘Must Know’ Latest LinkedIn Updates
# Search Update
LinkedIn has updated to make its search engine better.
Earlier, when you’d run a search on LinkedIn, it would just simply show people and companies in results. There was practically no useful categorization. However, with the new search updates, it now allows a filtered search.
There are a number of filters allowing you to run specific searches like for jobs, events, courses, etc. For example, if you are looking for a professional course, you can apply the corresponding filter and get specific results accordingly. Apparently, such results would be more useful and save your labor on manual filtering and researching.
This way, LinkedIn users can now have a more meaningful and useful search experience.
# Algorithm Update of Feed and Content
To make the experience of users more meaningful and useful on its Feed, LinkedIn has undergone some algorithm changes. With this, the contents on a feed are ranked based on the level of value they provide to the users. What LinkedIn thinks can be the most valuable content of a particular user will rank high on his/her feed. This creates a personalized feed for separate accounts.
To identify how content should be ranked in your feed, LinkedIn examines your interests, groups, direct interactions, hashtags used, people and pages followed, and so on.
For example, if you are following Jack Dorsey on LinkedIn, it won’t show you much of him but maybe more of your colleagues. And apparently, the latter would be more practically useful for you. This shows that LinkedIn prioritizes personal connections.
This update is naturally to redefine the content marketing patterns on LinkedIn. Thus, if LinkedIn is a part of your social media marketing, it is an important update to be aware of.
# LinkedIn Stories
This feature has to be the coolest of the latest LinkedIn updates. If you use social media at all, this must not be an alien concept.
For those who still don’t know how ‘Stories’ work—it is a temporary social media post that can include a variety of media like images, written text, and videos. Such posts generally disappear automatically after 24 hours. It started out as a feature for individuals to share fun real-time moments. However, it has now emerged as a highly effective social media marketing tool. For many businesses, the social media ‘stories’ feature has worked out really great.
LinkedIn Stories work about the same way as other social media stories. Some of its key features are:
- Stories will stay for 24 hours
- Add media (images, videos, etc.) from the device gallery or capture/record right there
- Other profiles can be mentioned using ‘@’ in their stories
- You can add stickers/text to your stories
- Users can also see who viewed their stories
- Stories can be manually deleted before the completion of 24 hours
- You can also download your own story
With Linkedln now allowing its users to upload temporary posts, the platform’s marketing potential has increased by leaps and bounds. For example, businesses on LinkedIn can use the ‘stories’ feature to give a glimpse into their behind the curtain scenes. This way, they can humanize their brand and interact better with their audience.
# Accessibility updates
There is an increased awareness and sensitivity towards the challenges faced by specially-abled internet users. Hence, there’s an increase in the number of internet platforms upgrading to become more accessible and inclusive.
LinkedIn has updated itself accordingly. As an effort in the direction of inclusivity, LinkedIn is releasing new accessibility features. Such features will make LinkedIn easier to use (or in some cases, usable at all) for people with disabilities.
With new layout updates, there are better text scaling and larger touch targets. Moreover, the increased contrast has amounted to better readability for specially-abled individuals.
# Increased character limit for profile headline
This is another very useful LinkedIn update. Earlier, LinkedIn allowed only up to 120 characters when writing profile headline. However last August, this limit has been extended to 220 characters.
With this new update, the LinkedIn users can express themselves better and leave a better impression. By being able to add more character, you will be able to create a more compelling profile headline and market yourself better.
Wrapping up
LinkedIn is used by over 740 million people worldwide. As the most ideal social media marketing platform for businesses, LinkedIn has been continually growing and improving. Be it for B2B marketing, seeking ideal jobs or creating professional links in the industry, LinkedIn is the place. The recently rolled out LinkedIn updates have made the platform all the more potent. Now you can search better, share and view stories, and do so much more. If you are a LinkedIn user, these are some of the updates you definitely need to know!
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