Why your LinkedIn ‘About’ section is going to become even more important

LinkedIn has just announced a change to the way your LinkedIn profile 'about' section is going to appear.

It's going to be moving up closer to the top of your profile, starting in March 2024. LinkedIn announced this in an email sent on the 1st of February to the roughly 18 million members who currently have what's called 'Creator Mode' switched on for their LinkedIn profiles.

The email also revealed further changes to the way profiles are presented, with the tools available in creator mode being made available gradually to all members.

Here's the text of the email in full:

"Two years ago we launched creator mode so members could unlock access to more sharing tools, analytics, and set up their profile to show their audience what they post about on LinkedIn. Since then, more than 18 million people have turned on the setting and we love seeing how it has helped our members take their content to the next level.

‌We've also gotten great feedback from this community — and we're eager to bring the best of creator mode to more of LinkedIn's members. In the coming months we'll be opening up creator tool access to all members, investing in the tools you've told us work best, and removing the need to toggle creator mode on & off.‌

What does this mean for you? You will still have access to the same tools and analytics, however, we are removing the creator mode on/off switch in the Resources section of your profile.

‌Here is what you should expect to see in the coming months:

• February 2024 
  • Profile hashtags will be removed to simplify the introduction section of your profile.
• March 2024
  • The creator mode on/off switch will be removed from the Resources section of your profile.
  • Your About section will move to the top of your profile so that people can easily grasp your professional story.
  • You will have the option to choose Follow or Connect as the main CTA on your profile— your CTA will remain Follow unless you update it.

Remember, even with these changes, you will still have access to the tools and analytics you had with creator mode. Thank you for being a part of our community— we can’t wait to see what you share next on LinkedIn."

Hashtags being deprecated on your LinkedIn profile and removed from the top of your profile

LinkedIn have made several changes to the way hashtags are handled across its site, and they are now clearly signalling that using them is going to be less effective in future. It seems clear that they will still be supported (so you can click through to follow a particular hashtag) but they are not going to appear at the top of creator profiles to signal the types of topic an individual talks about.

About section moving up to the top of the profile, Featured section moving down

With Creator Mode at present, your 'Featured' section, the carousel where you can add media and links to resources you want to highlight, appears above the about section, which is displayed below your activity stream. This will change from March, and my assumption is that the Featured section will swap positions with the About section.

Have your headline and about section written by an expert — LinkedIn Keyhole Surgery

What does this mean - what do I have to do?

This change will take place automatically, so you don't need to take any direct action. However, it's probably a good time to assess your about section carefully to make sure it's providing the key information about you. If you need help with this, you can reference my blog article here - How to write your LinkedIn About section which has a lot of advice and guidance on what to include and how to structure it.

You will be able to choose if the 'Follow' or 'Connect' button appears at the top of your Profile

You have always been able to choose between having a 'Follow' or 'Connect' button, but 'Follow' became the only option as a default for everyone with Creator Mode switched on. This will be changing, so that you can still have the benefits of 'Creator Mode' but choose to have 'Connect' as the default action button appearing at the top of your profile.

Everyone is a Creator now

LinkedIn has clearly been able to gather a lot of data during the two years that Creator Mode has been available, and the results must be good as they are in effect rolling out the benefits to every LinkedIn member in the future. This means that you can expect to see more articles and newsletters appearing, and it's likely that Linkedin will be taking steps to encourage even more content sharing.

So now more than ever, it's worth thinking about how you are going to approach an effective strategy for sharing your ideas on LinkedIn.