LinkedIn Decides to ‘Lean Into’ Visual Content With New Tools

LinkedIn has introduced new tools for people looking to share photos and videos on its platform.

That might seem like a strange announcement from a company dedicated to helping people share a semi-public version of their resume, form professional relationships, and look for jobs. But it turns out LinkedIn users have started to share more photos and videos on the platform.

The company says(Opens in a new window) it’s seen a 20% year-over-year increase to “people adding visual content in their posts on LinkedIn.” So now it’s rolling out new features “to make it even easier to create visual content that helps you stand out and inspire your professional community.” (Emphasis theirs.)

The first of those features: clickable links in photos and videos. These links are displayed as buttons that LinkedIn users can resize and reposition to fit the composition of their “visual content,” thereby giving viewers one-click access to a “website, an upcoming event, recent newsletter, or other resources.”

LinkedIn has also created a variety of templates people can use to “easily create visually engaging content” by adorning their posts with their choice from “dozens of customizable backgrounds and fonts.” (Which is similar to the custom backgrounds Facebook allows people to use with posts on that platform.)

Both of those features are supposed to roll out “over the coming weeks.”

LinkedIn is also testing another feature, “carousels,” that it describes as “a new content format that allows you to mix images and videos to help your community learn in a digestible way.” The company says it’ll be “experimenting with carousels to see how members engage with it over the coming months.”