UPDATES on new LinkedIn Features

This blog is automatically transcribed using AI and might have typos or grammar errors. It’s not the robot’s fault.

LinkedIn is on a roll, rolling out new features and updates faster than 🍦ice cream disappears🍦 in my household😆.

I'm doing a roundup of the latest new features and updates so you can stay in the know!

I just got access to the new InMail box and I'll be sharing it LIVE along with a few other fun new features. I'm also being joined by the FAINtastic ANNE SMALL and together we will be reviewing NEW features and our FAVORITE features.

See below the show’s transcription:

Mary Fain Brandt 0:48

Hello, hello, happy Tuesday everyone, this is going to be such a fascinating episode today. I can't believe it's season two episode 30 of 15 minutes of Fain, get it. I'm the Fain, Mary Fain Brandt. And you can find me here every Tuesday at 12pm with 15 minutes of wisdom experience, LinkedIn updates, just something fun and informative. But today, we're talking all about the new LinkedIn features. LinkedIn is rolling out features faster than ice cream disappears in my household. And let me tell you, it's September and it's going to be 110 degrees today. So you know that I've got ice cream stopped up in my freezer, we're doing a roundup of new features, and LinkedIn updates so that you can stay in the know, first, tell me where you're watching from, I love to know where my audience is from, I've created a worldwide audience, as has my special guest today and small, who is another LinkedIn strategist, that will be joining me in just a moment, I've got access to some of these features like the new InMail box on LinkedIn. So I'm going to be showing some of these features live to you that I have, so you can see what we're talking about. Then some of them we're just gonna have to talk about cuz I don't have access yet. And if you're like, Mary, I don't have access to these, what's going on? How do I get access, sometimes you just have to wait, they roll things out, still very slowly over on LinkedIn. Let's see. If you like the look and feel of the show you guys, that Streamyard they make it so easy to go live, I literally hit a button up here that says "go live", and when that says "end broadcast", we're going to bring your comments on the screen. And if you like the look and feel of having an intro video and outro video, guess, you know, background banners, you can do so much here. I'm gonna drop my links to anything that I mentioned in the show in just a moment. And I'd encourage you to go and check them out. Well right now. Let's bring an up on the virtual stage and say hello.

Anne 3:06

Hello

Mary Fain Brandt 3:07

Hello. Hello. Can you hear me?

Anne 3:10

I can hear you just find my dad. I unmute myself. So I wanted to make sure. How are you everybody

Mary Fain Brandt 3:18

How are you from Texas? I'm so glad that you said yes to coming on the show. And I always like to tell people like how I know my guests. I don't just like take a dart, throw a bull's eye or do a roulette wheel on Facebook or LinkedIn or Instagram say her or him. Right. I actually know each of my guests. And so and you and I met online on LinkedIn. I think it was through a live show, right?

Anne 3:49

An audio event Fanny Dunnigan was co hosting. So I jumped in.

Mary Fain Brandt 3:53

That's right. That's right that Oh, was that the don't don't procrastination or imposter syndrome.

Anne 4:03

All it is, is I got in there. And I was just being me and says something really silly. And you laugh for like 30 seconds. And we're like, wow, you have some personality.

Mary Fain Brandt 4:13

Yeah. And from that we just started having conversations on LinkedIn and supported each other in our posts and introduced people to each other. And then we've jumped on a zoom call and then look, we're doing a show together because that's how it works. You guys you connect and cultivate, and I like to say is my three same methods. So you connect, cultivate and convert, convert to opportunities, and that's what we did here.

Anne 4:40

Yes, ma'am. Yeah.

Mary Fain Brandt 4:43

And I'm glad you got the memo that we're going with a pink kind of, you know, pink.

Anne 4:48

Oh, I didn't get the memo. Look at that. Oh, my friend Jennifer Henderson shouting out from New York. I'm originally from New York, Mary. I don't know. I know that.

Mary Fain Brandt 4:56

I did not know that. So we have Lisa. We both know Lisa, Hi, Lisa, how's the weather over in Vermont? Is it hot this time? Or is it still? You know, nice. I never know. We've got Dolores joining us. I see Shelly Mitch over on Facebook because we are streaming to Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn. So thank you. Did I see Barcelona as in? Where does that Spain?

Anne 5:22

Natasha came. She's in Spain.

Mary Fain Brandt 5:24

I have friends over

Anne 5:27

Natasha let us know. I think it's really late.

Mary Fain Brandt 5:30

Yeah, I have friends over in Spain visiting. Well, they're doing a European tour for two months. I mean, if you're gonna go jump upon, jump over and go for a few months, right. Okay. Well, you guys, we've got 15 minutes. Let's dive right in. If you have any of these new features, when we go over them, you know what, give us a thumbs up or a heart. As I said at the beginning of this, we don't all get the features rolled out at once Anne and I were talking right before the show. And she's like, Oh, I have that one. Nope, don't have that one. And there's some that neither of us have. But you know, we're gonna share them anyway. Right.

Anne 6:11

But what I want the most is the one I'm waiting for. Isn't that the way it always is?

Mary Fain Brandt 6:16

Yeah I remember I was waiting for audio event for quite some time. And I was like, When am I going to get it? I need it. I need it. Okay, so I'm gonna go ahead, and I'm gonna bring this up. There we go. Let's make sure Yep, I'm on the right one. So this is an upcoming event I have. And I just posted today that we just got another raffle prize. Now this newish feature that I'm sharing is called pin a comment, pin a post. So this one I commented in the LinkedIn event, and then I can go right here. And look, I can hit pin the comment, and then it'll take it up to the top. Now it is at the top right now, because I just did it today. But then what you can do is you can unpin it, if you have another comment that you need to have at the top. Like if I added some world known speaker, right to this event, I would want to pin that comment at the top. So everybody sees it. Because if you have a bunch of comments, things can get lost. Right? Right Anne, they can get lost down there.

Anne 7:26

Absolutely. Or we know with the algorithm not to post the link to say an event in the main post. What a great spot. But to pin it right in the comments on top. You can register right here. Yeah, right underneath in there, you can pin it.

Mary Fain Brandt 7:41

Yeah, I really like some of these new features that LinkedIn is rolling out. You can also when you create a comment, you can actually turn that into a post now I haven't used that one. Because I feel like well, that takes away from the person's posts that they created. So I haven't used that one. Have you seen that one Anne?

Anne 8:01

Yes, and I have used it I tried to I'm not I don't see sharing usually as as much a benefit as engaging on somebody's post and bringing more people to it. However, there is a time where I will take something an excerpt from something excellent that my network is not seeing. And take out that column and start a new post with it. So people know about it. It's similar to sharing and it has like a lead in that you don't have to actually write is there for you.

Mary Fain Brandt 8:29

I like that that's a good way to utilize that feature. So I might, I'm gonna have to remember that one. This is why we have conversations, folks. Even though we both do the same thing. Sometimes having a different perspective on a feature or tool can really help you grasp how to use it best. So Lisa says, Wait, let me go over here. Lisa says love this feature, right? I liked the pin a comment post or pin a comment feature I think it's a it's a great feature and we've got Debbie joining us country life in Texas Debbie she must be one of yours right from Texas. She's someone you know?

Anne 9:09

friends here and Debbie leaves awesome tips for LinkedIn. We're all doing different things on LinkedIn that just work together like a community. It's so cool.

Mary Fain Brandt 9:17

I yeah, I believe in working collaborating together. So let's go over we have pin the post. I'm going to go over this one. So this is the new LinkedIn in mail in mailbox or inbox. So it's a step in the right direction you guys but I don't think it's quite done LinkedIn. Hopefully if you're listening, you're not quite done cleaning up our message box right.

Anne 9:44

So tag LinkedIn help in the comments. I've done that before and they jumped right in and fix something but LinkedIn help.

Mary Fain Brandt 9:50

Lisa, paging Lisa. So what you have now so in in the inbox that you have currently You don't have to like folders, right? You only have one. Just that just inbox all your inmail messages go to one place. So in this, which I really just got last week, right, I was waiting and waiting and waiting for it. So focused, right? Focus. I believe what this means is this is people that these messages are important. Right? Like, look amas right there. Bez is right there. I mean, these are people that I'm communicating with, right. So the other box and I want to say hi, our buddy Gabe. We both know Gabe, Gabe is amazing

Anne 10:38

The tornadoes here. Tornado, that's his nickname was the streaming tornado game. It's in the comments, you'll see it.

Mary Fain Brandt 10:46

Okay. So this other box right here. So these are people and we were reviewing this earlier, we were trying to decide if this is people, I haven't messaged back. But as we scroll down, we found people that I'm like, Well, I know that person we've had, you know, messaging back and forth. But it was from last year. So maybe that's why it moved over to other. I have to be honest, if you look at these, you can probably, you know, create your signature offer. This looks like spam. This looks like a spam folder. In my honest opinion. I'd like to know does anyone watching have this feature yet? Gabe, do you have it? Crystal, you're not finding a way to comment on the desktop version of the live event? Well, thanks Crystal, Crystal is another LinkedIn expert. Someone that I value. We're in a mastermind group together. You know, usually when we're having trouble on LinkedIn, what does that mean Anne? It means that the hamsters are in the wheel making some changes.

Anne 11:52

It does usually mean that and sometimes there's just a glitch and give watching the A che robot. It was like funny videos. She did one on the couches, like a week ago, where you'll be typing something up. And I know you do you type yours up outside of LinkedIn for this very reason. But you'll get this whole thing put together, put it on and then like it's gone. The apps gone. Yeah, the road is gone.

Mary Fain Brandt 12:12

Yeah. So back to this inbox. This is a new feature is rolling out very slowly. The other what I find that the other is my spam messages. Because 90% of these, you can tell I haven't even replied, and I'm keeping them here to use as what not to do to show my clients. How not to be spammy on LinkedIn, don't just throw up in someone's inbox with a sales pitch. Right. So that's a new feature. I think it's a step in the right direction. I don't think that it is. I don't think it's the end all be all, but it is a step in the right direction. Okay, so we talked about the new inbox, the pin a post. And now, Gabe says I do have the feature, and I've had it for a while and you absolutely love it. You have the inbox feature. That's amazing. So and this, you've used this next feature, the link in the image?

Anne 13:14

Yes, I want to talk about like I asked you, I want to say hi, because we just had a friend of mine tune in from Nigeria. How exciting. Is it to have people from all over the world? There? Yes. Yes. How cool? How cool. Okay, so you have it on your screen, so I can just explain it, guys. Okay, I said that I didn't get my the one I really wanted. That's not true. Because this is my favorite. The pin a comment would be second. That's the one I don't have. Yeah, okay, this is my favorite. So I do this a lot. If I have events, or my clients have events where she has that tag right on there, what you can do now is say you do have an event, you can put the link down, when you're first putting the post up and you're putting your picture up, it's giving you an option. And by the way, if you guys have questions for us, when this is over, we're going to look back at the comments. There'll be a replay, so feel free to put your questions down here. But you put the link in there, and then you put the text that you want to say that one says follow LinkedIn for creators. If it's an event sign up here, the person actually just clicks that button and boom, they're in for tickets. You wrote an article, maybe you wrote three sentence blurb about it, you're not going to write up a two page article and put it on LinkedIn and expect people to read it right there. Well read more right here and just put it short and sweet and they let you size it very, so you can let you size it as you want and move it into a corner so it's more aesthetically pleasing.

Mary Fain Brandt 14:48

Oh, that's amazing that LinkedIn lets you size it. Yeah. So okay, so for events, this would be a great thing for us to use like for LinkedIn local to actually put like sign up here, grab your ticket here.

Anne 15:04

Yeah, it's fantastic for that. And also YouTube, let's say you know how we'll use clips because we're not going to put our 15 Minute YouTube video on here. Okay, well, to see the full video, subscribe to subscribe to your YouTube channel, and just let them click it because you don't have to put you know, especially if you don't have 100 people following on YouTube yet, and you got a million letters after your YouTube name

Mary Fain Brandt 15:26

Mic drop

Anne 15:27

All you got is click here to subscribe to my YouTube channel.

Mary Fain Brandt 15:31

I love that because we do a lot of micro content with our videos. So like I was doing like Mic drop. That's definitely a mic drop moment. Thank you Anne.

Anne 15:41

Couldn't tell him the little back there.

Mary Fain Brandt 15:42

It's my mic. I'm dropping the mic. It's a mic drop moment, I need a like a sound effect or something that we could play. I love that. That's a great idea. Okay, so we have two more new features that we want to discuss. Because we want to keep this short, sweet and to the point. Let me see if I can find it. Okay, so one, templates, but neither of us have them. We don't have the template. So here's how I'm going to explain it. Templates, think of Canva, but very vague and boring. So I think that the templates are really for non creatives. Like if you're creating a post, it's like a background. And they weren't fascinating or amazing to me. But for someone who's a non creative that wants some kind of background behind their text. I think that's what people would use them for.

Anne 16:38

When you we were talking about earlier, I think you nailed it for anybody on Facebook, it reminds me if what Facebook did, were the templates where you could put pictures in or you know, you can pick a color in the back. Yeah, that's what it reminds me of.

Mary Fain Brandt 16:52

Okay, so we have a question from Crystal any feedback on how LinkedIn is treating using the image links? Since they don't like us sharing links directly? That is a great question. I haven't done any studies on it. And I haven't heard anything Crystal. And have you heard anything in your community? If I mean, if LinkedIn is rolling it out?

Anne 17:13

Well, all I can tell you so far is every time that I've used that link for my clients events, we have not had anything negative happened since it started. So we've had a lot of active enrollments, which I would not yet say after testing for another 60-90 days. That is definitely because people are clicking directly on it. However, I will say it hasn't done anything bad. We haven't had less as a result of using it.

Mary Fain Brandt 17:39

Okay, first of all, says, I have the templates on my Android mobile, and they're as lame as Facebook. So there you go up a feature that I don't care if I ever get right. Now Dolores has a question Are these features, I think you want to say for every are these features everyone would get or only premium? Well, Dolores everyone would get them. But they roll them out at different times. So I feel like when you're more active on LinkedIn, Oh, I feel like when you're more active on LinkedIn, that you get features a little quicker, that could just be in my head. But I really do feel that.

Anne 18:20

You know a lot of people asked me about that with the premium. If you're going to use Sales Navigator and other things need discuss premium. That's one thing, but as far as the features are really is how often use LinkedIn and make sure you have creator mode turned on guys.

Mary Fain Brandt 18:34

Yes. And that was one thing that we didn't go over. So we're gonna go over time, because we do have two more things that we want to share with you. Crystal said, are you able to use tracking links in the images? You can put any link in there that you want? Right?

Anne 18:49

Right. But to track it, you have to use an outside source right now it's not analytically letting you track it inside of LinkedIn. They're out our outside sources if she wants to know that.

Mary Fain Brandt 18:59

Okay, so crystal, yeah, you can tell who's the LinkedIn strategist over here, Crystal, if we could create custom background branded backgrounds, that would be awesome. Well, guess who requested that feature? Our friend, Beth Granger has already submitted that crystal. So now it's just, you know, to sit here and wait, I'm not gonna say it's going to happen this year. Maybe it'll happen. Maybe not. Thank you for all the feedback and questions. Okay. We wanted to share the live link. We talked about that. So let me go over to my profile, get that queued up. And we are going to show you because Anne has this feature and Anne uses it. Let's get this queued up

Anne 19:39

What's great about this is because you can change it all the time to promote different things.

Mary Fain Brandt 19:43

Yes. And so first, I had book a consultation call, well, blah, everybody uses that. So that I was like, Oh, my PDF, right? Grab my checklist and book a call, right? If you have an event, I could put just the LinkedIn local event and then when you click on that, for me, I changed it. And I put this so people can choose what they want. You know, grab, you know, consultation call scheduled time, grab one of my PDFs. I'm playing with it. And that's what I love. You guys have want you to remember that go in and play with this. Once you set it, don't forget it. Remember that you should go in and change things. Play with your banner play with your headline play with that live link. Just I mean, let's bring up Anne, because Anne is my buddy here. My partner in crime.

Anne 20:38

My real life is on my business page.

Mary Fain Brandt 20:40

That's a cue. You have the little phone. That's cute. And so it goes directly to the virtual coffee. So do you see

Anne 20:48

Process of launching something new? That's why I wouldn't mess with mine yet. But Mary, this live link also works our business pages and that people can sign up directly right there.

Mary Fain Brandt 20:59

Do you have your one on your business page? Yes.

Anne 21:02

So this one only by grace and go in there, you can see that you can sign right here work for for what directly? And I can't see your screen? Well, but it's there.

Anne 21:17

We can go back into the comments. And I can talk to anybody. But as far as that live link, make sure you're using it in your business page and make sure you have your lead gen form signed up because yes, like your event, like if you're doing a workshop, Mary, people can sign up right there.

Mary Fain Brandt 21:32

Yeah, I love it. I'm going to take that off. Man, this has been so much fun. I have one more thing to share with you guys. So this was new. And I know Anne that you're really into company pages, I know that you're getting, you know, you're building your brand over there. So let me show and I shared this with Anne. And she's like, Oh, interesting. Again, just because we both do the same thing doesn't mean we get the same information from LinkedIn and our networks, right? And that's why we collaborate together so we can make sure that we're in the know, and help you guys stay in the know with all this awesome stuff. So let me bring up this message. Okay, so this is an email you guys that I got from LinkedIn, Mary fain Brandt, coaching, and consulting posted 18 times in the past four weeks, this is talking about my company page, right? And then it says, What's next, this is what I want you guys. Oops, this is what I want you guys to read. LinkedIn will choose three top posts from pages that have completed their four week Street to be featured in this email. Would I like to be featured in an email from LinkedIn? Absolutely. So they're asking that you you know, post consistently and and I know you love company pages, they've really been working on bringing those back to life.

Anne 22:58

Yeah, it's it's it's a whole nother ballgame. That's a whole nother show, in itself, what's going on with the new features on the LinkedIn? Hi, Fanny, with the LinkedIn pages that we could talk about another time, guys, because there are new features that have rolled out since that topic has come up.

Mary Fain Brandt 23:14

Yeah, so there's a lot of different features. And again, I like to only do 15-20 minutes, I want this to be a quick drop in where you can get news, updates on LinkedIn and tools that we use. So I just want to say thank you for everyone dropping by. Thank you Anne for your time, you're amazing. I want everyone to go connect with an and support her. And if you're watching the replay, here's what you do hashtag replay, then type your question or comment and and we'll go and and I will go back in and have a conversation with you answer your question, share our thoughts. So Crystal, I think we answered all your questions, but anyone else Dolores, I think we got yours. Jennifer, if there's anyone else that has a question or a thought please drop it in, we will go back in and check out the replays. And I will drop in on LinkedIn in just a moment. All the tools that we're using here like the Streamyard and etc. I have that all ready to go. So I'll drop that in in just a minute. But we've already exceeded our time. So Anne you have been amazing.

Anne 24:23

Thank you.

Mary Fain Brandt 24:25

I'll see everybody online. And we'll be back. I'll be back next Tuesday. If there's a topic or something that you would like me to discuss a LinkedIn feature, how to do your profile, your headline, whatever it is, drop that in the comments, and I'll make sure that we do that in an upcoming show. So thank you, everyone. Have a wonderful afternoon.

Anne 24:48

Thanks, guys.

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