LinkedIn is expanding its live audio feature and making audio hosting available to all creators in an effort to drive engagement. After introducing live audio events in January, those using the platform’s Creator Mode can now take advantage of the update to host live audio events if they agree to adhere to “community policies of being a trustworthy, safe, and professional provider of content.” Although the live audio event hosting is currently limited to creators, all LinkedIn users can participate in the live chats. LinkedIn creators can now schedule audio events and promote upcoming discussions. In addition, LinkedIn’s upcoming Business Manager will help enterprise clients manage multiple assets.

LinkedIn says “more than 10 million people are using the site’s creator mode, nearly double the 5.5 million who were using it in March,” according to Engadget, noting that “video-centric live events are also in the works, though LinkedIn hasn’t given an update on when that will launch.”

Fast Company writes that “after six months of beta-testing, LinkedIn’s audio events gives users the ability to schedule and host discussions, interviews, and other conversations — not dissimilar to apps and tools such as Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces.”

The changes come as LinkedIn, which built its reputation around a businesslike image, seeks to broaden its creative appeal (as audio and video prove serious business).

“The company is tweaking the way creator profiles and their content appear in search results and in the LinkedIn feed in order to make it easier for people to find and follow them,” Engadget writes, explaining the Microsoft-owned social platform “also plans to make creator profiles embeddable to outside websites so creators can more easily promote their LinkedIn content on other platforms.”

Scheduled to debut later this month, the shareable “follow” hyperlink will park atop LinkedIn profiles, allowing creators to “automatically gain followers from incoming connection requests, and experience enhanced discovery via LinkedIn homepage feeds and via search,” says Fast Company.

Australia-based one-stop profile linking shop Linktree’s Creator Report “estimates there are 200 million monetized digital content creators worldwide,” Fast Company reports, adding that “as of December 2021, “more than 144,000 LinkedIn members included the word ‘creator’ in their job titles — representing a 48 percent increase from pre-pandemic 2019.”

“The job market has responded in kind — in the first four months of 2022, LinkedIn has seen more than 65,000 job listings with the word ‘creator’ in the title, three times the number of creator job posts over the same period in 2021.”

In addition to the live audio updates, LinkedIn also announced the creation of a new centralized platform called Business Manager designed to help large enterprises and agencies manage multiple assets. According to Search Engine Land, Business Manager offers the following:

• View and manage teams, ad accounts, pages, and business partners from the central dashboard.
• Easier management and control of admin tasks such as permissions and billing.
• The ability to share and update Matched Audiences across ad accounts.

For details, visit LinkedIn’s Business Manager announcement.