Public Relations Blog

Social Media 101: What’s New with LinkedIn?

What’s New with LinkedIn?

Back in 2016, we wrote a blog post about LinkedIn as an invaluable author tool. The site, at the time, was transitioning from a more formal platform to the hybrid social network for professionals everywhere that it is today.

According to Encyclopedia Britannica, LinkedIn was founded in 2002, then launched in 2003 by Reid Hoffman, Allan Blue, Konstantin Guericke, Eric Ly, and Jean-Luc Vaillant. It began as a digital job posting. Each user’s profile served as an accessible resume for job recruiters to scout, and for users to connect with potential jobs of interest. So, aside from some cosmetic changes to the website layout, what’s new with LinkedIn?

LinkedIn hashtags were just launched in 2018, keeping with the theme of a casual social network atmosphere on the evolving platform. Now, when creating a LinkedIn profile, you are prompted to follow hashtags that might interest you. Here’s why these hashtags are important to you as an author.

They’re informational. By following any given hashtag, you sign up to be constantly updated on what LinkedIn users are posting pertaining to the hashtag’s subject. For example, if you are a fiction writer, you should follow #fictionwriting. This hashtag is now assimilated to your news feed. If fiction writing isn’t your cup of tea, you can always search for your topic under “Discover More” in the “Followed Hashtags” section of your home page. Discover what is happening in your specialized area across the platform!

They establish a presence. As we’ve discussed in other blog posts, hashtags are an aggregation of posts that pertain to a common interest. By adding a hashtag to your post, you are adding it to a collection of content that contains the same hashtag. Going off of the example above, if you hashtag a post about your newest novel #fictionwriting, users just like you will find your content when searching the term on LinkedIn. Bam! You’ve successfully made you and your book known to a key audience!

You can create your own. Here is where you can have a little fun and be creative. Have you found that no hashtag on LinkedIn quite fits what you want to post about? If so, you can just make one of your own. It’s as simple as putting together a short, and if possible, catchy phrase that relates to your subject with a # in front of it (but still keeping with work appropriateness as LinkedIn is still largely a professional platform). You might find that other people were looking for one like yours and begin to use it themselves.

Hashtags are used universally in the world of social media. Take what you’ve learned from this #SocialMedia101 and use it anywhere! If you have questions about other hashtag-using platforms, like Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram, don’t fear -we wrote blogs about those, too.