The Social Media-ification of LinkedIn

By: Jamie Izaks, President at All Points Public Relations

In the last few years, the rise of the work-from-home culture has shifted how companies and people navigate work-life balance. Bringing work into the home has led to blurred lines and increased the casual and personalization or “social media-ification” of LinkedIn.

Once a purely professional space focused on networking and job listings, LinkedIn has now evolved into a storytelling platform with a strong social media component. Its transformation can be observed across various aspects of its use: 

1. How individual users share personal content
2. How businesses are adapting strategies to reach a broader audience
3. How LinkedIn’s features and functionalities have changed to support this new, more social environment

1. The Personal Side of LinkedIn

For younger generations, like Generation Z (Gen Z), maintaining a social media presence on platforms such as Instagram and TikTok is more than just a pastime; it’s a strategic effort to build a personal brand. Often, they treat their LinkedIn profiles the same, like a storefront, showcasing themselves to potential employers as a brand would showcase a product to consumers. When Gen Z shares personal content, it is with the intent of reinforcing their carefully constructed brand identity.

Some Generation X and Millennials who have been utilizing LinkedIn before its conceptual shift, are adopting similar trends, now approaching the platform more like an extension of Facebook, sharing posts about their everyday lives and experiences. Whether these posts relate to their jobs or work-life balance, they tend to be more personal and include pictures and anecdotes from their lives. This offers an intimate glimpse into their world.

LinkedIn capitalized on that desire and crafted a longform version, introducing personal articles to the platform. Across all generations, users enjoy this medium to present themselves as multi-dimensional individuals rather than just job titles by providing deeper insights into their thoughts and opinions on various professional topics. Comments on posts across the platform have followed suit— interactions are no longer limited to professional feedback but include more personalized and conversational responses, sparking genuine discussions. This increased emotional investment and authenticity in interactions contribute significantly to LinkedIn’s evolving dynamic.

While there are different ways in which each generation interacts with this change in content, the overarching trend is clear: LinkedIn is becoming a more personal and engaging platform, blurring the lines between professional and social interactions. This is also bleeding into the ways in which brands interact with LinkedIn.

2. Building Relatable Brands

Brands are starting to follow the lead of individual users on LinkedIn, adapting to the platform’s evolving dynamics. With people spending more time on the site, treating it like other social media platforms rather than strictly for work purposes, the nature of business content has shifted. Companies now focus on longer, storytelling-driven content to engage users, incorporating more design elements, motion graphics, and videos to capture the attention of the casual scroller.

Moreover, businesses are targeting a consumer audience, promoting their products to LinkedIn users rather than solely posting job opportunities. This shift is evident in the increased interaction through comments, shares, and likes, as well as the rise of business communications such as newsletters that users can subscribe to. By engaging directly with users in this way, companies can build stronger, more personal connections with their audience.

Plus, business-to-business focused companies have evolved on LinkedIn as well. Adopting the language, tone, and colorful graphics of consumer advertisements has led to a new form of brand success on LinkedIn. This eye-catching strategy puts a twist on the tried-and-true tactics of consumer marketing for professional industries such as software sales or franchise development.

In a time when the morals and people within a company matter, the incorporation of fun consumer-focused posts helps to endear a brand to these consumers who are looking for relatability and humanity. This extends to when these companies are looking to hire as potential applicants browse their LinkedIn content to understand their culture. It is a strategic move to look desirable on all fronts.

3. How LinkedIn Has Embraced its Social Media-ification

With the platform updates we’ve seen in the past few years, LinkedIn’s goal has been clear: keep users engaged and on the platform for longer periods. LinkedIn has implemented social media tactics to accomplish this through increasing “scrollability”, opportunities for personal engagement and conversations, and even games.

Shorter attention spans are now commonplace. Social media platforms understand that their key quality is the never-ending ability to scroll, sucking users into the loop of information and entertainment it provides. While storytelling and longer posts are commonplace on LinkedIn, the added detail of a “…more” button shortens posts, allowing users to more easily move to the next thing that will grab their attention. In May 2024, they released three daily puzzle games reminiscent of the popular New York Times games. The game’s notification system reminds users to open LinkedIn every day— prompting many to stay and scroll— as well as join the conversation with other players.

LinkedIn has revamped its algorithm to prioritize content that generates more engagement, similar to how other social media platforms operate. This means that posts with high levels of interaction are more likely to be pushed to a user’s feed and reach a wider audience, encouraging users to create content that resonates with their connections.

Recognizing the growing importance of diverse formats in capturing user attention, in addition to personal articles and business newsletters, LinkedIn has invested in video content and live streaming capabilities. The introduction of LinkedIn Stories, akin to Instagram Stories, allows users to share short, ephemeral content that can highlight their day-to-day activities or professional insights in a casual and engaging way— in many ways, the content plays as if a user is talking to their connections face-to-face. 

By embracing these social media features, LinkedIn has effectively blurred the lines between professional networking and social interaction, creating a platform that is both informative and engaging. Each of these three elements— personal users, business promotion, and LinkedIn itself— have and continue to inform each other to build the social media-ified version of LinkedIn that we use today. 

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Jamie Izaks is the President of All Points Public Relations, a franchise-focused integrated PR agency based on the Chicagoland area, www.allpointspr.com.