LinkedIn’s content experience continues to evolve with the launch of LinkedIn Channels, a content discovery feature that lets people stay up-to-date with the industry-related topics that matter most to them.
Channels offers more than 20 broader topic areas including Your Career, Economy, Social Impact, Innovation and Higher Education, among others. Once you follow a channel, you’ll automatically get updates directly in your home page feed on LinkedIn’s desktop site.
The new feature is part of a revamp of LinkedIn Today, which also has a new look that’s designed to more prominently feature the site’s influencer blog network. If you’re interested in following an influencer, you can access tabs at the top of the page to take a look at the complete network and see top influencer posts of the day.
What’s more? Your tailored news page now features an image-centric design that more closely mirrors the profile layout. Plus, your email digests will incorporate additional content, too, including top influencer posts, trending professional news and Slideshare content.
You probably already know we are big fans of LinkedIn, both for personal use and for our clients. And we like the direction they’ve been headed with recent changes, dating back to the acquisition of Slideshare. The introduction of Channels and the overall modification of the site’s content experience is a clear signal that LinkedIn is paying attention to how people use the site—and that they’ve realized that content is becoming an increasingly important part of the platform. More importantly, it’s clear that LinkedIn wants to give users reasons to come back to and interact with the site as much as possible. That’s pretty smart.
After all, LinkedIn isn’t just a place to build your professional network—it’s also an ideal source of industry-related information, and LinkedIn is making it even easier to stay up with the topics that are important to you and your clients.
What’s your take? Have you used Channels? And do you think changes like this are effective steps in improving the overall LinkedIn experience?
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