Today, LinkedIn announced a bunch of new updates aimed at improving accessibility and enhancing user Service Listings, including real-time captions for live audio events, improved search for seen posts, and a custom URL display option for Creator profiles. The main update is the one about real-time captions for LinkedIn audio events.

Captioning Live

As LinkedIn puts it:

“Up until now, when members joined an audio event on LinkedIn, they could only listen to it. By adding real-time captions, we are making audio events more accessible and inclusive for members with hearing impairments.”

Based on this, users will now have the option to read along with what’s being said, improving accessibility, while simultaneously providing more ways for all users to tune into live audio discussions where and when possible.

Launched back in January, LinkedIn’s audio events were released in hopes of latching onto the Clubhouse boom. Since then, these rooms have become a valuable addition to LinkedIn’s connection process. Surprisingly, audio meet-ups like this fit in more on LinkedIn than on most other apps, seeing as how the platform’s professional focus may make them more topical and relevant. Moreso, people will progressively look for ways to catch up with those in their industry amid the Work From Home (WFH) shift.

Discovery of LinkedIn’s audio events remains challenging, however. If the process can somehow be enhanced and more users are promptly alerted to new rooms and events as they happen, it could end up being an even more valuable element of the LinkedIn experience. Leaning into this aspect, LinkedIn will also be launching a four-week interactive series of real-time conversations to help LinkedIn members ‘build the kind of skills that can help them advance their careers’. This could be a good way to raise awareness of LinkedIn’s live events, while also showcasing LinkedIn Learning instructors.

For now, you can look up ‘LinkedIn Learning Live’ to discover upcoming events, while also using the ‘Events’ filter to find specific upcoming live discussions. Meanwhile, it was also mentioned that LinkedIn is making it easier to find posts that you’ve already seen, which may not sound like a major improvement, but will definitely help with the recall and retrieval of particularly interesting past content.

LinkedIn also mentioned improvements to its Services listings, with service providers now able to share enhanced reviews with their respective communities. LinkedIn has allowed Service providers to display customer reviews since August of last year, which this update further improves on. This could be hugely beneficial for those looking to use LinkedIn to attract business leads. It could be well worth considering, especially with LinkedIn itself stating that since March of 2020, it has been seeing 3.5x the growth in people looking up and requesting services in the app, especially in categories like business and executive coaching, design, and software development.

The Wrap

In closing, LinkedIn also announced that it’ll soon enable all users to add a link atop their profiles, redirecting profile visitors to their company website. At first, the options will only be available to those using their ‘Creator’ modes, but will then be rolled out to all users.

These are some handy additions. Though some may be minor at best, overall, the range of updates gives us a tad bit more quality-of-life improvements that make the LinkedIn experience all the more pleasant. If studied extensively and used correctly, then all these tiny additions can significantly impact your process and performance.

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Sources

https://bit.ly/3l3xWvu