LinkedIn is a vital platform for brands, business professionals and entrepreneurs to connect, network and showcase their expertise. With more than 930 members and a targeted audience of business professionals, it’s no surprise that 96 percent of B2B marketers use LinkedIn for organic social marketing. To help meet the evolving needs of its members, LinkedIn is constantly improving the site’s user functions and customer experience with new features and updates. Knowing how to take advantage of these features can be a game-changer for brands looking to reach their audiences in new and engaging ways.
Eight New LinkedIn Features and Updates B2B Marketers Need to Know
Since LinkedIn is constantly evolving, savvy marketers need to stay on top of changes and understand how to best implement them. Here are eight newly introduced features and updates along with tips on how to leverage them for better engagement with target audiences.
1. Lead Gen Forms are now directly integrated with LinkedIn ads and posts.
With this tool, marketers can gather information about who is downloading their content or accessing their offers on LinkedIn. These forms appear within the paid ads and can even automatically populate with the user’s information, reducing barriers of entry for your audiences. This form of gated content helps to generate high-quality leads and offers an important means of starting a conversation with a prospect focused on their needs and challenges. It also improves the visibility of your campaign’s ROI.
2. LinkedIn culled inactive and restricted company page followers.
LinkedIn routinely removes inactive and restricted accounts to keep the platform clean and running smoothly. In mid-2023, you may have noticed a dip in your company page’s follower count as inactive accounts were removed and cleared. While it may be disappointing to see that number decline, it is more important to have a clearer view of how many people are actively following your business and content. From there, you can more accurately determine ways to strategically engage with them.
3. Enhance your profile with a product as a skill.
LinkedIn allows users to add specific skills to their profiles which, in turn, can be endorsed by other LinkedIn users. This has been a valuable feature for demonstrating expertise in a variety of areas. LinkedIn recently introduced the ability to add your company’s products as skills, offering new avenues to showcase them to your network. Each product must first be established on your organization’s LinkedIn Product Page.
4. Use a custom button to interact with your network.
Custom buttons are a premium feature that allows users to offer a custom call to action to their profile or company page. These buttons appear in prime profile real estate, right next to the “connect” and “message” features beside the profile photo. The buttons can link to any URL, improving targeted lead generation from LinkedIn. For now, available as preset options, it’s possible to ask company page visitors to do any of the following:
- Contact Us
- Learn More
- Register
- Sign Up
- Visit Website
Individual profiles, on the other hand, have the option to display the following:
- Book an Appointment
- Visit my Website
- View my Portfolio
- Visit my Store
- View my Blog
5. Users can develop and share multiple newsletters under one account.
LinkedIn newsletters have taken off as a powerful marketing tool for brands that create regular newsletters, allowing them to share them in front of new audiences. Creating and distributing multiple newsletters can give brands the opportunity to segment their outreach to specific audiences or industries.
6. Improved search by “content type.”
LinkedIn has improved its search filters for content including videos, job posts, live videos, images, newsletters, articles and documents. This means defining your content in multiple mediums is more valuable than ever since prospects can specify their search preferences. When uploading contenting to the platform, consider the medium your target markets are seeking when they need to solve a challenge or issue related to your expertise.
7. LinkedIn introduced an editor for uploaded media.
This includes adding tags and alt text, which can improve the searchability of your content within LinkedIn and across other search engines. Users can now edit images and video, including cropping and resizing images or adding captions to audio. The new editor also allows for the easy upload of a thumbnail photo, which can drastically change the audience’s first impression of a video, grabbing their attention and giving them a reason to click and interact.
8. Individuals can message a company page.
This feature means that brands can interact directly with users, just like on platforms like Facebook, Twitter/X and Instagram. This allows brands to offer customer service or guide users to additional information or resources outside of LinkedIn. When direct messages are incorporated into company pages, it’s important that a social media manager or other responsible party responds to users in a way that’s timely, accurate and brand-aligned.
Keep Learning, Keep Growing
LinkedIn remains a powerful platform for businesses and professionals looking to connect with other individuals and brands. As a result of its popularity, 77 percent of content marketers say LinkedIn produces the best organic results. This is largely because the platform continues to improve based on the behavior and feedback of its users. Just as marketers need to stay current with new tools and features of all communication channels, they also need to continually update their own toolkit. From the rise of ChatGPT to the complexity of SEO, there is never a shortage of new things to learn. The most essential skill in marketing is, in fact, the most simple—a commitment to ongoing learning.
