LinkedIn is building more tools for its growing base of creators. A year after introducing a dedicated “creator mode” profile setting, the company is adding a suite of new analytics and video features meant to help creators boost their following on the platform.
The updates include more detailed analytics for closely tracking the performance of individual posts, as well as account-level stats meant to help creators “understand who’s reading and engaging” with their content. LinkedIn is also adding tools to help creators boost their presence and get more eyes on the content they’re already creating. Users will not have the option to turn on post notifications for creators they follow, and creators who write newsletters for the platform will be able to highlight their writing directly on their profile.
Finally, the company is updating its tool for profile videos, which allow users to record short introductory videos that appear alongside their profile photos. The feature now includes a series of prompts meant to guide creators and others about what to include in the clips. (Importantly, unlike LinkedIn Stories, which the company killed last year, profile videos are not ephemeral.)
Though LinkedIn may not be the platform most associated with the booming creator industry, the company has been steadily ramping up its efforts to bring in creators. In addition to “creator mode” profiles, the company has also been encouraging influential users to create longer-form content with newsletters and, most recently, podcasts. So far, it seems these efforts are gaining some traction on the platform. The company says that more than 5.5 million users have so far enabled “creator mode,” and followers are up 30 percent overall for people using creator mode.
Notably, LinkedIn is still behind many of its peers in launching monetization features for creators. The company announced a $25 million creator fund last year, but so far only a small group of creators have had access to it. But building out more tools to support creators behind the scenes, like better analytics and increasing the visibility of their content, could be important groundwork should the company decide to build additional monetization features.
