LinkedIn Feature Updates for the First Half of 2022

WHOA! We have had an amazing first-half start with new LinkedIn features coming at us fast and furious. Here are some of my favorites so far this year, along with links to insights about some of them.

The MAJOR feature update for 2022 so far was the new profile design.  LOTS of changes to the profile. Here is my newsletter article about this topic - in case you missed it from earlier this year. We all need to stay current on the latest profile changes.

And there are more profile changes…

👉 You can now add skills to your experience section. The benefit is that you can share more insights about the specific skills that are associated with your roles. I also suspect that the recruiter search will be enhanced. My clients seem to like this one. Here is my video post about it!

👉 You will be able to associate a company product listing to your profile's experience section. Super cool. Haven't seen it yet, though. And it will only help a small group of users, but it's still awesome.

👉 A “Career Break” option became available for your experience section. Check out my post

👉 We gained the ability to add images to our Services page. I love this and quickly added a few images. Check it out.

👉 LinkedIn and Microsoft roll out additional industry options - finally! The industry options for the profile have been too limited for too long.

👉 Premium users will get deeper insights into "who's viewed your profile." You can filter by company, industry, and interesting views.

Sales Navigator is always being updated.

👉With the Great Reshuffle, keeping track of our prospect contacts is challenging. Now LinkedIn is showing Navigator users their out-of-date contacts so that sales professionals can change their CRM. Very sweet.

👉Home page refresh. More focus on alerts and priorities. New bookmarked alerts.

👉 Sales Navigator has improved search and CRM integration options.

👉 Look for a better experience when viewing accounts. Find a more holistic view, including the account map, pages, and insights.

👉 Find pronunciation recordings pulled from the profile now on your Navigator Lead pages. 

Company pages are moving in a nice direction.

👉 Company page newsletters are now available. Sweet.

👉 We can invite company followers from the mobile app - not just desktop. Nice.

👉 Employees can now send company page invitations to first-level connections. My corporate clients love this feature.

👉 Service providers: Link your company page to your Services page. I like this one!

👉 Companies can add a lead gen form on their pages. Everyone wants more leads. Let's see if this feature takes off.

👉 You can respond or comment as your page more easily now. But do you want to?

👉 LinkedIn announced Business Manager, which is a centralized platform to manage ads, pages, and people.

👉 Some companies can add product listings to their pages, but not all wanted to use it at inception. But now that it may be connected to a LinkedIn profile, I am wondering if this will change the perception. Maybe we will see greater corporate adoption?

Settings and notifications are changing too

👉 I am hearing that the birthday notifications are being phased out. Will you miss them?

👉 The Settings & Privacy section is being redesigned. I don't have this yet myself.

👉 LinkedIn is testing the ability for us to turn off political content. This is a US 🇺🇸 only test now. We need this.

Messaging and Invitations need some upgrade…. And it’s coming

👉 Here’s my favorite new messaging feature > it’s called calendar integration.  I am quite happy that "Calendly" is now integrated with LinkedIn messaging.

👉 Messaging is ready for an upgrade, and you can expect to be able to prioritize your messages. I really need this feature improvement!  Since I receive so many inbound LinkedIn messages, I hope it will make things more organized.

👉 Did you notice a new connect button on the "People Also Viewed" list of contacts?

Search Updates

👉 You can now search for the followers of creators. That is kind of interesting, but will we use it?

👉 Discover many more search filter options for content searches. For example, search by member or companies. Check out my video post

For LinkedIn Creators

👉 In January, we saw the coolest feature ever........🎧 Audio Events! I am a BETA tester, so maybe you participated in one of my events? Here is my newsletter article about it. And here is my post about my first test run. Thank you to all who joined me for the test OR for subsequent shows.

👉 Audio Event access is now being extended automatically to creators. This feature update makes perfect sense to me. Also…. Look for the live captioning feature for Audio 🎤 Events.

👉 People who invite us to connect will automatically become followers. I believe that I have had this for quite a while, but it was recently announced.

👉 Creators can enjoy more in-depth analytics 📊 of their posts

👉 Creator profiles get a boost. Add a URL to the intro card of your LinkedIn profile. Here is my video post about this new feature. This is another favorite. PLUS, Newsletters are more prominent on our profiles with a new subscribe button near the featured section.

👉 Coming down the road? LinkedIn is apparently building a new feature where we can embed a profile link on websites, blogs, or forward in an email. And…Follow buttons will appear in the main feed. Expect new profile video tools and video trimming on the app.

General Content Updates

👉 Look for the ability to save a post as a draft. Now that would be super handy.

👉 Newly Noticed: LinkedIn informs you that your post is successful and then suggests you post your content directly into a group. I am worried about this feature becoming a problem for groups.

👉 Like to laugh? Now you can select a laughing emoji as a reaction to a post. Here it is.

👉 Analytics 📊 for group posts are being upgraded.

👉 I am now hearing that carousel posts will be added/improved. I remember being able to do a carousel or slide-type post very easily in the early LinkedIn days, but not lately……so we do need an upgrade. Let's see.

👉 Share or repost? LinkedIn is experimenting with the option to repost versus a share. The repost feature includes the reactions and comments of the original creator, while the share feature does not. (Also, the reshare includes your optional comment) Right now, I am thinking about this like a retweet. Yup, I like this.

👉Start a new post directly from your profile. Save time!

Hiring and Career

👉 LinkedIn is testing a "Post a Job for Free" button on the top navigation bar and emphasizing their hiring banner option. Nice.

👉 Are you upskilling? I found the new "future of skills" feature very interesting. Check out where your industry is heading on skills >>>>>> Learn about it here in my video post

👉 LinkedIn Recruiter is always evolving, Look for the improved “Recommended Matches” and newer inbox with tags and notes. Experience streamlined workflow with the updated job wrapping capability.

Please tell me which one is YOUR favorite new feature so far in 2022? Did I miss your favorite? I can’t wait to read your comments below.

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