10 Useful LinkedIn Features To Start Using Right Away

As of 2022, LinkedIn boasts more than 850 million users in over 200 countries. Out of those 850 million users, 49 million utilize LinkedIn to search for jobs every week. LinkedIn has become the social platform for professionals, recruiters, job seekers and more

LinkedIn is good for a lot of things — networking, job searching, professional development. But first, you have to know how to use its features. To help you narrow down which LinkedIn features are best to grow your career, here are ten features we highly recommend. 

LinkedIn Learning has changed the game for professionals looking to upskill or explore their industries further. Launched in 2017, the feature has grown to include more than 18,000 courses and has served more than 14 million users. 

To enhance your LinkedIn profile, there are many certificate options through LinkedIn Learning, both free and paid. Certificates acknowledge your aptitude in a specific area and are displayed on your profile. These certificates quickly tell hiring managers and recruiters that you know your stuff. 

Explore LinkedIn Learning’s free options, or if you have a LinkedIn Pro account, you can access all options available through LinkedIn Learning. 

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You’re scrolling and find an interesting post. You go to read more but have to tend to an incoming call. Instead of losing that piece of information forever, LinkedIn has a “My items” feature that acts like a bookmarks page. On the left hand of the homepage, you will see a save icon with “My items” next to it. This is where you can collect content to engage with later on.

The “My items” LinkedIn feature allows you to store content you want to explore but don’t yet have the time to go through completely—whether that’s responding to a connection’s post, reading an interesting article or viewing a video. 

To save the content, click on the three dots on the upper right hand corner of a post. The first option is “Save.” 

Click save on all content you want to explore at a later date and find it in one convenient location. 

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In 2020, LinkedIn released its #OpenToWork feature, which puts a banner over your avatar, letting other users know you are looking for opportunities. What’s unique about this feature is you can adjust the banner so it is visible to recruiters only or all LinkedIn members. 

To toggle this feature on and let people know you are looking for opportunities, click the box right below your profile picture. 

After clicking the “Open to work” section, a box will pop up, allowing you to adjust your job preferences. 

It will also create the #OpenToWork banner that displays across your profile picture, letting users know you are looking. 

The pandemic changed a lot for how we live and work, with virtual meetings events becoming a once-in-a-while occasion to an all-the-time occasion. Social media had to quickly pivot and focus on features that aligned with its audience’s new way of working. LinkedIn Live is an example of an existing feature (established in 2019) that saw huge demand as a result of COVID-19, as LinkedIn saw a 158 percent increase in live streams since February 2020. 

Similar to live streaming on Facebook, Instagram, Twitch and other platforms, LinkedIn Live allows users to stream live video to their followers. This can be in the form of a conference, interview, panel or solo monologue. The LinkedIn feature has become an effective way for users to drive engagement while highlighting their industry knowledge. 

To start streaming on LinkedIn, you will need to review the LinkedIn Live access criteria to determine if you are eligible for streaming. Once your profile aligns with the access criteria, click on “create an event” and toggle “Event format” to “LinkedIn Live.”

LinkedIn gives you the option to schedule the live in advance or go live immediately. From there, it’s up to you to engage your audience. 

LinkedIn allows users to publish their own thought pieces in an article format. This benefits users because LinkedIn articles allow you to showcase your expertise and get found via Google. If you follow some basic SEO principles, your article could show up in Google searches. 

To write an article, start by clicking “Write article” at the top of your feed. 

From there, LinkedIn takes you to its own content management system (CMS). 

This feature helps you create a professional-quality article, giving you formatting options, providing spell check and allowing hashtags and mentions for engagement and discovery. 

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We’ve all been there. You send what you think is a professional message but quickly realize a typo, misspelled name or wrong emoji. Luckily, LinkedIn has an edit feature that can prevent these embarrassing slip-ups. 

There are a few rules, though, when it comes to editing and deleting messages: 

• The user has 60 minutes to edit or delete the message after the message was sent. 
• Users cannot retrieve a deleted message. 
• The other user is notified anytime a message is edited or deleted. 
• Deleted messages can still be reported as inappropriate. 

To edit or delete a message, click on the three dots to the right of the sent message. 

You will then have the option to alter your sent message. 

Show your network you know what you're talking about. 

Under “Resources,” you can find if Creator mode is turned on or off on your profile. 

Creator mode helps get you recognized as a thought leader and also gives you access to LinkedIn features like Live, audio events and more. 

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If you plan to create insightful content often, make sure creator mode is turned on.

LinkedIn’s most anxiety-inducing feature is showing you who looked at your profile. If you are not already familiar with this feature, click on your LinkedIn profile and scroll down to the “Analytics” section. There, you will see your profile views.

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Click on the views and you will see a list of people who viewed your profile in the last 90 days. 

If you don’t want to get caught stalking, you can turn on LinkedIn’s Private Mode., which means other users won’t get notified when you look at their profiles. To learn how to view in Private Mode, go to the ‘Settings’ section, which is located in the “Me” dropdown. 

To control visibility, click on “Profile viewing options.”

From there, you can determine what others see when you look at their profiles. 

As mentioned in the screenshot, if you toggle your profile to “Private mode,” you will not be able to see who viewed your profile. Through LinkedIn Premium, though, you can do both. 

To bypass this option completely, LinkedIn Pro allows all viewing in private mode and shows you all users that have viewed your profile within the past 90 days. Without the account, you can only see the top five viewers. 

This feature helps to prevent the awkward name mispronunciations that sometimes happen during the interview process. Add your name pronunciation by going into LinkedIn’s mobile app (the feature is not available on desktop, unfortunately) and click on your profile. Click the edit graphic on the right side — where you edit your name, headline, etc.—and this screen will pop up:

Click on “Add name pronunciation” and LinkedIn will let you record your pronunciation. 

If fellow LinkedIn users are unfamiliar with your pronunciation, they can click on the button near your avatar and hear it in your own voice. 

Virtual networking is now an ongoing part of our lives. As we learned when COVID sent most of us home in 2020, virtual communication is efficient and effective. Video conferencing is now something we engage in monthly, weekly, and for some, daily. 

In 2020, video meetings were introduced as a LinkedIn feature to keep up with our increasingly digital world. You can conference one-on-one within LinkedIn or connect to third-part applications like Zoom for group video meetings. 

To start a video meeting, head to your inbox and pull up the LinkedIn user you want to virtually connect with. Start a message, but instead of writing text, click the video icon in the upper right hand corner. 

The icon will prompt a pop-up, where you choose between starting a meeting or scheduling one. 

The “Select a different provider” option allows you to connect Zoom or Microsoft Teams to host a video meeting with multiple people. 

Optimize Your LinkedIn profile With Teal 

These LinkedIn features are all great ways to get noticed on the platform. Did you know you can take everything a step further with Teal’s free LinkedIn Review tool? By adding this extension to your browser, Teal’s tool analyzes your LinkedIn profile to ensure it stands out to recruiters. You receive suggestions customized to your experience and what opportunities you are looking for. The tool also helps you appear higher in LinkedIn search results by offering areas of improvement.

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