In late January, LinkedIn introduced new controls which allow users to restrict who can see and comment on their individual posts, permitting content to be shared with select audiences. Changes are also coming which will let users adjust their content preferences in the main feed. With these LinkedIn new features, users can have a more personalized experience and can control who sees what content and what content they see.
With 722 million members, LinkedIn is a great way for businesses to connect to a specific audience. LinkedIn is the most trusted social network in the United States. Whenever a social network changes their settings, it is important for businesses and individuals alike to be aware of the changes so they can ensure that they do not impact them negatively and they know how to navigate them.
You can visit LinkedIn’s Privacy Settings page, to learn more about the LinkedIn new features, or we have broken it down for you below.
Restrict Audiences for Individual Posts
By default, LinkedIn posts are visible by all of a user’s connections and followers, unless they’ve changed visibility settings at the account level. Now, when creating a post, users can specify the audience they want to reach. This gives users the flexibility to share certain posts with everyone and share other posts to specific audiences.
When creating a post, users can choose who will see it by selecting from the following options:
- Anyone: Any web user on or off LinkedIn
- Twitter: Share with anyone and also post to Twitter
- Connections: People you’re directly connected to on LinkedIn
- Group members: Members of a group you belong to
- Events: Attendees of an event you RSVP’d to
The LinkedIn new features don’t appear to allow users to create custom segments amongst their connections yet, like Instagram and Facebook do, which allows users to share to only “Close Friends” or something similar. Because of that limitation, if there’s a selection of people users regularly want to share content with, like close friends or coworkers, there may be value in creating a LinkedIn Group for that specific audience. This would allow the user to quickly select that group when composing a post.
Restrict Comments on Individual Posts
With the LinkedIn new features, users now have the ability to restrict comments on public posts. This did not exist before. When creating a post users can choose if they only want connections to respond or if everyone can respond. There’s also an option to allow no responses.
Comment restrictions are helpful, for businesses and individuals, at times when there’s content you want everyone to see, but desire only to receive feedback from people you know and trust. Individuals who aren’t connections can react to the post by liking or sharing it, but the commenting will be restricted. Comment settings can be changed at any time.
Control and Manage Feed
LinkedIn users now have more control over what they want to see in their main feed with the introduction of feed management tools. By clicking the three-dot menu icon on individual posts, users can indicate to LinkedIn what they want to see more or less of.
These options include:
- Save: Save the post or content
- Share via: Share the post across other platforms and mediums
- Unfollow: Stay connected but stop seeing posts from a specified individual in feed
- Mute: Stop seeing posts from a specified individual in feed
- I don’t want to see this: Let LinkedIn know why you don’t want to see post and LinkedIn will get smarter with future posts you see
- Report this post: Notify LinkedIn that a post is offensive or the account is hacked
- Who can see this post?: See who has visibility to seeing the post
For a full list of settings, visit your LinkedIn Account Settings. You can also learn about these settings and more in their Privacy FAQs.
With the LinkedIn new features giving users a more personalized experience which allows them to control who sees what content and what content they see, businesses need to make sure that they are sharing relevant content with their audience so they aren’t unfollowed, muted, or even worst, reported. Your post should give viewers information that they will want to see and is accurate and concise.
Water Bear Marketing can handle all of your social media marketing needs. Social Media is an important extension of any business today. We believe communicating with your audience on social media may be just as important as your website. One thing is for certain, it is very important to know who is talking about your business and what is being said online. As a business, you need to control your message as much as possible.
We build fully customized programs to help you ensure you are communicating effectively and report on the results. Contact us for a free consultation or to get started today.