What is LinkedIn creator mode, and should I be using it?

What is LinkedIn creator mode, and should I be using it?

By Ready For Social | May 20, 2022

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What is LinkedIn creator mode, and should I be using it?

LinkedIn is the best platform to establish yourself as a thought leader in the business world. Being a thought leader gives you credibility with potential customers and increases your social selling capabilities.

LinkedIn’s creator mode is a great tool to help you accomplish that goal. Maybe you’re already using it. If you aren’t familiar with creator mode, or if you know a bit about it, but would like to learn more, keep reading. We’ll discuss the ins and outs of creator mode and help you decide whether it’s an option that would be beneficial to you.

What is LinkedIn creator mode?

Creator mode is a profile setting on your LinkedIn dashboard that gives you access to additional tools and features that help you create content and grow your audience base.

When you turn on creator mode:

• The Connect button on your profile will change to Follow. Your profile introduction will display
1 the number of followers you have.

• You’ll have the ability to display the topics you post about in your profile introduction as hashtags,
1 making it easier for other LinkedIn members to find your content and follow you.

• Your Featured and Activity sections will be seen first on your profile, highlighting your original
1 content. To further highlight your content, the Activity section on your profile will no longer include
1 your likes, comments and other activities (Don’t worry! They will still be available when you click
1 on See all activity).

• You become eligible to be featured as a suggested creator to follow, another method that guides
1 potential followers to you and your content across LinkedIn.

• You can get access to creator tools such as LinkedIn Live Video and LinkedIn Newsletter if you meet
1 the access criteria.

What’s the difference between connections and followers?

Connections are members who connected on LinkedIn because they know and trust each other, much like Facebook friends. You and your connections can see each other’s shares and updates on your LinkedIn homepages and send messages to each other.

Your followers, however, can see your posts and articles without being connected to you. You can reach a larger audience by allowing others to follow your activity and read your LinkedIn content. LinkedIn shows your connections by default. Once you reach 500 connections, the number will no longer grow and always display 500+, no matter if you have 510 or more than 10,000.

When you turn on creator mode, your follower count will be displayed. It has no limit and will show the exact number of followers you have. Having many followers is a way to gain even more followers and influence more people. It shows potential followers that your content is worthy of their time.

People can still choose to connect with you on LinkedIn if you have creator mode turned on. They would just need to click the three dots to the right of your follow button and pull down to the connect option. Another option is to keep your connect button in creator mode rather than using a follow button if you prefer.

Gain even more engagement with a newsletter

Using creator mode gives you access to LinkedIn’s newsletter tool. Your account must meet these three criteria:

• An audience base of more than 150 followers and/or connections.

• Recent shares on LinkedIn of any type of original content (e.g., creating posts with text, images or
1 videos, publishing articles, etc.).

• A history of abiding by LinkedIn’s professional community policies and a good standing record
1 on LinkedIn.

Newsletters are another great tool to help build your reputation as a thought leader. You can use them to write about professional topics on a regular basis. LinkedIn makes it easy to invite all your connections or followers to subscribe when you create a newsletter. Your subscribers will be notified about new articles you publish, facilitating regular engagement with your audience.

With a LinkedIn newsletter, you can engage with your followers from the minute you publish. You’ll have instant access to their feedback and comments, and you can gauge how your content is doing with analytics.

All LinkedIn members can discover, read and share LinkedIn newsletters and become subscribers. As a newsletter author, you can see each subscriber’s name, profile photo, job title, and headline as they appear on their LinkedIn profile.

Should I be using creator mode?

Creator mode was designed to reward those who share content by helping them to grow their following and increase engagement.

If you share content regularly, it should be beneficial for you to turn on creator mode. The good thing is it’s easy to determine whether creator mode is helpful to you. Turn it on, use the features, then check your analytics after about a month. Compare them to your analytics before you switched to creator mode to see if your numbers are improving. If you don’t enjoy the creator tools, and it doesn’t increase your engagement or help your social selling efforts, then maybe creator mode is not for you.

Have you tried creator mode? Are you pleased with it? What do you like and dislike about it? Share your comments with us in the comments section. If you have additional questions, please contact me. I’d be glad to help!

Photos by Greg Bulla on Unsplash; Souvik Banerjee on Unsplash; LinkedIn Sales Solutions on Unsplash