How to make LinkedIn a better platform for creators

LinkedIn is already the go-to platform for knowledge creators, but its creator ecosystem still feels unfinished (if not accidental).

Only 1% of users post weekly compared to 69% on Instagram. The algorithm is underdeveloped, the tools are limited, and creators are clearly secondary to recruiters and advertisers.

The irony is that everything that makes LinkedIn valuable, from the insights and discussions to the professional knowledge, comes from creators. Yet almost nothing about the product suggests a deliberate focus on supporting them.

If LinkedIn wants to grow its core recruitment and sales business, it needs to expand and energize its user base. That starts with making LinkedIn a true home for creators:

That begins by embracing Creator Mode, not as a $49 per month Premium feature but as a genuine creator platform designed to help people share ideas, build trust, and finally grow (& monetize) their audience.

If I was the Head of Product at LinkedIn, here are the 5 features I’d launch to make LinkedIn a true creator platform:

No matter how well you design an algorithm, creators will eventually find ways to game it.

LinkedIn’s algorithm currently rewards engagement in the same way Instagram’s once did. The result is a flood of engagement farming: “comment for access” posts promising guides or insights in exchange for replies. It’s now the fastest way to grow reach on LinkedIn, but it comes at the cost of authentic conversation.

At the same time, creators have learned that comments boost visibility regardless of quality. That’s led to a surge of AI-generated replies: generic, automated praise designed to appear in every thread. The feed starts to look active, but it’s a mirage - high activity, low value, and fewer opportunities for real creators to break through.

Why this matters from a product perspective: Artificial engagement suppresses genuine interaction. It limits visibility for creators who are actually building communities and erodes trust in the conversations that make LinkedIn valuable in the first place.

If LinkedIn wants to build a true creator ecosystem, the algorithm should actively penalize manufactured engagement and amplify real, meaningful interactions.

Beyond tracking impressions, LinkedIn analytics is sub-par when it comes to insights that help you optimize your approach.

You currently get high-level profile analytics including impressions, engagement and follower count.

However, the way analytics are set up to monitor progress rather than provide insight. You can find out individual post-performance but it is very hard to compare posts and there is very little to help creator iterate and improve their content strategy.

So here’s how I would improve it:

This upgrade has some major benefits to the creator experience:

I’d also apply this approach to impressions and engagement on Comments - where currently there is no way of seeing which drove the most engagement or how much reach commenting gets you overall.

If this is something they want to promote and encourage, they need to give creators a way to track it.

Like most content platforms, LinkedIn favors video content in the feed. 

It briefly introduced a Tiktok-style video tab into the app (although this has since been sunsetted) and introduced LinkedIn Live as a way of encouraging more video content on the platform.

What they’ve missed though, is that one of the major benefits of long-form video is its evergreen nature and the fact that it needs to be discoverable. And on LinkedIn it is incredibly difficult to find a video that a creator has created in the past:

If you were to redesign it to make video a viable content channel for creators, here’s how I would do it:

Step 1: Add in basic channel functionality 

Use these to break up the ‘Video activity’ section to improve discoverability and searchability.

Step 2 & 3: Introduce an optional “Feature Videos” section to the profile + allow users to ‘subscribe‘ to videos

The old saying is ‘show me the incentive and I’ll show you the outcome’.

On LinkedIn if you want to attract creators and get them to keep their audience on-platform, you need to give them a way to monetize through the platform.

The majority of creators on LinkedIn are considered ‘knowledge creators’ and (excluding ads) they typically monetize through Digital Products, Courses and Communities.

LinkedIn already has an established e-learning infrastructure through LinkedIn Learning (LL), although all the content is curated and (seems to be) centrally organized.

They need to let creators build and sell educational content directly through

Here’s why this is a no-brainer: unlocking creators like this would give LinkedIn four major wins:

As creators search for ways to deepen engagement and diversify their reach, they are increasingly looking towards launching hosted communities - often using platforms like Discord, Circle or Slack etc.

LinkedIn already has a semi-robust ‘groups’ feature, which effectively acts like a facebook page with members and a feed.

It has all the core components of leading community tools (members, feeds, posts, threads, reactions) and all it lacks at the moment is channels and integrations with platforms like Zapier (so creators can hook it up to the rest of their setup).

Communities would give LinkedIn creators a better way to reach their audience, open up a way to monetise directly on LinkedIn, and be a massive value-add to their LinkedIn subscription.

So to conclude, LinkedIn already has all the foundations of the perfect platform for knowledge creators - a professional audience, high trust, and built-in distribution.

What it lacks is product intention.

By rebuilding Creator Mode, improving analytics, fixing video, opening monetization, and transforming groups into communities, LinkedIn could finally create a real home for creators.

Because every insight, conversation, and connection on LinkedIn starts with a creator, and this is what allows the rest of their monetisation machine to flourish.

The sooner LinkedIn builds for creators, the faster the rest of the ecosystem grows.

Cheers,

Jake
Author, Release Notes

PS. If you think I missed anything, please respond to this and let me know!

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It’s on the more technical side but this gives you a much better understanding than what you hear about on LinkedIn. Enjoy!

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