If you thought there was no way the TikTok-ification of social media could extend to everyone’s favourite professional space, think again. We’re here to tell you that nobody is safe from the algorithm.

That’s because LinkedIn has announced a slew of new features, including a ‘Discover’ feed, plus some extra context for job seekers, upgrades to how people share content and new features for Groups.

More content discovery, more of the time

First, we’re going to tackle its new ‘Discover’ type feed because it’s the headline change.

Tomer Cohen, Chief Product Offer at LinkedIn

“In addition to surfacing relevant content in Search, you’ll start seeing recommendations for people you might want to follow, or newsletters you might want to subscribe to. Also, we’re starting to test a dedicated space for you to discover trending conversations that align with your interests.”

The LinkedIn feed will now feature things the algorithm has decided you’d like to see, based on your in-app activity, even if you haven’t followed the accounts posting the content.

Trending conversations, mentioned at the end of the quote above, will also include newsletters, videos and events “curated” by the editorial team. It’s basically a TikTok For You Page, but on LinkedIn.

While this could get annoying for users, marketers may find that they can reach new audiences organically – which means that now is a good time to keep creating that high-quality content.

It’s clear that LinkedIn doesn’t want to take a back seat while recommendations sweep across every other social media. And given TikTok’s impressive track record of engagement, could we see LinkedIn chase that rainbow until it finds the golden pot at the end?

Carousel is on its way

Another feature that’s got a lot of love over on more social, social media apps is the carousel.

In fact, it’s so powerful that it’s currently dominating Instagram in terms of engagement metrics, and now marketers have a chance to play with it on LinkedIn.

A Carousel post contains several different photos, bits of text or videos within one singular post.

Tomer Cohen, Chief Product Offer, LinkedIn

“Carousels will empower members to create and share content best suited to educating and engaging their professional audience. It enables you to mix texts, images, and videos to reach your community in a visually engaging, swipeable, and digestible way.”

Being swipeable is key here, as we’ve already discovered that one of the best ways to increase engagement is to force your audience to stop and swipe.

Additionally, brands can add clickable links to Carousels to help drive traffic to a destination of their choice. The feature is currently being tested and should be available in the next few months.

Easier to manage LinkedIn Groups

Groups have become an important part of the LinkedIn experience. Understandably, LinkedIn wants them to flourish and has introduced new admin tools to ensure everyone has a lovely experience.

• You can now send an automated welcome message to new members. Your message could include things like guidelines and how to best contribute to the group.
• Organisers can streamline the acceptance process for new members by utilising the criteria-based acceptance update.

There’s not really a lot of meat on those bones, but it will help admins to manage groups easier, take away some of the pain that goes with it and create better spaces to be. If your brand has a group, any tool that results in a better user experience has got to be good, right?

Meet the team = better job interviews

Finally, LinkedIn has added a ‘meet the team’ page function. The objective of this is to help job applicants get a better feel for who a hiring team is, what they like and what area of expertise they occupy.

So, if you see a job post on LinkedIn, you can navigate to the “meet the team’ section to see who the job poster is as well as the members of the hiring team. Plus, it will show mutual connections between the applicant and hiring team.

Job applicants can then use the information they’ve sleuthed to come to the interview better prepped – and hopefully for everyone – secure a better outcome.