Over the summer LinkedIn introduced three cool, new updates and tools you should incorporate into your LinkedIn strategy. Each of these will help enhance your visibility and business development efforts:

1 – Pinning a comment to your post

You can now pin a comment to your LinkedIn post so that your comment – or whichever one you choose – will appear as the top comment most visible to everyone.

Use this to promote something related to your brand and business, such as a sign-up to your email list, a link to your website or blog or an upcoming webinar. If you are referring to a specific piece of content in your post, use the pinning feature to add a link to it.

2 – Adding an external link to your posts

Adding an external link to a LinkedIn post gives you the ability to promote your business and brand. You can use these links to provide additional information and direct readers to other resources. This is my favorite new lead magnet tool.

Here’s how to add outbound/external links to posts on LinkedIn:

• Add a photo or video to your post.
• In the Pptions before you post (where you see tagging and alt text options), you’ll now see a symbol for adding a link. Insert your URL and then choose what you want your display text to be.
• The link appears right on the image itself (see how I did it here linking to my email sign-up list).
• You can move around where the link goes and change the size of it. Note that you can only add the links right now from your mobile device, but you can see them on your desktop.

This new LinkedIn feature underscores the importance of adding an image or video to each of your posts.

If you are referring to a specific piece of content in your post, add a link to it here. The same would go for an upcoming webinar, podcast, media mention, article, client alert or anything else to which you want to drive traffic.

If you are not sure what to add as a link, a simple redirect to your website or blog would be a great example of what you could do or how about your email sign-up list?

Note that you can add external links on both your personal LinkedIn page and your company page. If you don’t have the ability to do it yet, keep checking as it often takes LinkedIn a bit to roll out new features to everyone.

3 – The instant repost feature

LinkedIn’s new instant repost feature provides a simple way to help amplify a post to your LinkedIn audience.

I’m not a huge fan of this new LinkedIn feature because if you click the button to instantly repost a post, it does just that – repost that post without your insights. You won’t be able to add your own commentary to a post, which defeats the purpose of sharing content on LinkedIn that helps to build your brand and business.

Engagement on these posts will also be lower than if you had added your own introduction to the post, but if you’re in a pinch you can use this to repost an update from your company page, a colleague or someone else in your network.

Final Thoughts

Remember that outbound links are at the very top of your sales funnel. Without them, you’re not driving as much traffic as you could to the content that you want people to see – the content that can help build your brand and generate leads and awareness (blog posts, webinars, podcasts, articles and your email sign up), so use them to promote your content assets.

What do you think of these LinkedIn updates?

You can learn more about them in this YouTube video.

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Stefanie Marrone advises law firms of all sizes, professional service firms, B2B companies, recruiters and individuals on the full range of marketing and business development consulting services designed to enhance revenue, retain current clients and achieve greater brand recognition. She also serves as outsourced chief marketing officer/marketing department for small and mid-size law firms.

Over her 20-year legal marketing career, she has worked at and with a broad range of big law, mid-size and small firms, which has given her a valuable perspective of the legal industry. Connect on LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, sign up for her email list and follow her latest writing on JD Supra.