We’re going to dive into a few of the many LinkedIn features that will help you get the most out of marketing yourself and your business.

With 610 million members and the world’s largest professional networking platform, LinkedIn is more than just a digital rolodex. It’s an essential part of every business strategy.

What You Need To Know About LinkedIn Features

LinkedIn encompasses a variety of different features that can help you build professional authority in your field. LinkedIn improves as a channel for B2B lead generation and as a hunting ground for new career opportunities as LinkedIn features are added, optimized and tweaked.

1. Native Video

LinkedIn native video is one of the most popular LinkedIn features. Since 2017, video has become the dominant content type on LinkedIn.

Moreover, LinkedIn video brings in high levels of engagement and gives brands the opportunity to tell their story in an authentic and easy way.

LinkedIn video allows you to add an element of visual storytelling and a personal touch to your business while always remaining professional.

2. LinkedIn Pages

Next in our list of LinkedIn Features is LinkedIn Pages which is also known as Company Pages. They are a great place to share your work, your company’s values, and build a community.

LinkedIn Pages were designed to help business owners and organizations grow their business and build lasting connections with their audience.

Many new features for LinkedIn Pages have been added including:

Content Suggestions

A big challenge for admins is knowing what type of content will add value for their community. Content Suggestions are a new feature that shows topics and content that’s trending. With these insights, admins can now curate and create content that is just right for their target audience.

Share Documents

While images, text and native video have always been available to post, documents haven’t been. Admins are able to share documents like PowerPoint presentations, Word Documents and PDFs to tell more authentic and compelling brand stories.

It is important to utilize this LinkedIn features ability to help you gain a highly visible social media presence because it’s also discovered on search engines and LinkedIn search.

3. Voice Messaging

Have you ever typed out a message and thought about how much easier it’d be to say it out loud instead? Apparently the LinkedIn Team has, too, because they have introduced now one of my favorite LinkedIn features; voice messaging.

Being able to hear your connections voice instead of trying to interpret tones over text makes it so much easier to get know one another and build and nurture those important relationships.

Voice messages show that you are being genuine and authentic with your approach, and helps you to stand out. Think about it, how many voice messages have you gotten today?

It doesn’t matter if you’re in the middle of your work day, cleaning the house or need to give an in-depth explanation; voice messages allow you to effectively communicate more easily and quickly with your first level connections.

Above all, they allow you to network and build relationships with a personalized approach.

4. Advanced Search

Advanced Search is one of the most powerful LinkedIn features due to it’s highly nuanced abilities. LinkedIn’s advanced search options are more efficient than ever before.

With advanced search, you’re able to narrow down your fields by current companies, past companies, industries, location, profile languages, nonprofit interests, and more.

You can look for 1st, 2nd and 3rd level connections and it can take your efforts to a whole new level when this LinkedIn feature is mastered.

It’s a great way to gather data on people in a structured format. Instead of combining everything into a general keyword query, you can specify query terms for specific fields.

If you upgrade to LinkedIn Premium you’ll be able to unlock additional features such as “function”, and “years of experience”.

Further, clicking on “structuring your search” is another great way to sharpen your focus by structuring complex queries with search operators.

You can access advanced search by clicking the link next to the search bar on the LinkedIn homepage. You can also find many of the advanced search tools by clicking “Refine Search” on any LinkedIn search results page.

This LinkedIn feature has certainly simplified search for members by giving them the ability to find the right connections quickly and efficiently.

5. LinkedIn Learning

Undoubtedly one of the most informative LinkedIn features there is, is LinkedIn Learning.

LinkedIn Learning is an online learning platform enabling individuals and organizations to achieve their objectives and aspirations.

This LinkedIn features goal is to help you discover and develop the skills you need through a personalized and data-driven learning experience.

You can develop your skills, get recommendations for courses based on your interests and add completed courses to your LinkedIn profile using LinkedIn Learning.

As an organization or individual, training and education are a critical part of your professional journey. The primary idea behind this LinkedIn feature is to help users boost their knowledge and enhance their professional profiles.

6. Document Sharing

LinkedIn’s document sharing feature lets you upload documents to posts from your home page, company page or group.

You have the option to share a PDF, Word Document or PowerPoint Presentation.

You can cover a lot of information in an engaging way with a document.

How Can You Engage People With This LinkedIn Feature?

• Start with an eye-catching, clear cover slide
• Ask questions and give your community an easy way to respond
• Use visuals to get your followers more engaged
• Keep it short. Keep documents to 8-25 pages

Sharing your expertise through a document can help you generate new opportunities for your business by showing what you know in a unique and creative way that serves your community.

7. LinkedIn Articles

Despite video coming to the forefront of how people share content on LinkedIn, text posts still perform very well. Beyond that, articles shared on LinkedIn can help in the way of getting indexed within search engines like Google.

LinkedIn is always looking for new ways for members to be able to contribute their professional insights. The publishing platform allows members to publish articles about their expertise and interests.

Articles allow you to further establish your professional identity by expressing your opinions and sharing your experiences.

What Are This LinkedIn Feature’s Benefits?

• Members that aren’t in your network can follow you from your article, and as a result, your next article will be surfaced in their feeds.
• Your article becomes part of your profile and it’s displayed on the Articles section of your profile.
• Your article may be searchable both on and off LinkedIn, depending on your profile settings. Having your public profile visibility set to “everyone” will distribute your articles publicly.

Writing quality LinkedIn articles will both strengthen your brand and add more dimension to your profile.

The Benefits Of Using LinkedIn Features For Your Business

Each LinkedIn feature serves a unique purpose but similarly, all share something in common.

The benefits of using these LinkedIn features will enable you to:

• Build your personal brand
• Target your ideal customer
• Share your expertise
• Gain awareness
• Generate more leads

Above all, using the LinkedIn features that the platform has created for us will allow you to share all of your knowledge, expertise, lessons and insights in a way that will show just how awesome you really are.

Conclusion

In conclusion, LinkedIn should not be viewed as an afterthought.

LinkedIn should be viewed as an essential tool with a wide array of underutilized LinkedIn features.

Get your ideas, articles, videos, recommendations, posts, and questions out to the people on the world’s most popular professional networking platform.

We only covered a few out of the many LinkedIn features. However, there is still a ton to explore and learn. Have fun!