Keren Baruch (PM Director, LinkedIn): How Creators Can Thrive on LinkedIn

Advice from LinkedIn's creator product lead on how to unlock economic opportunity

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Dear subscribers,

What better way to learn how to grow on LinkedIn than from the platform’s creator product lead?

Keren Baruch is Director of Product for LinkedIn’s creator efforts. Since 2021, Keren’s team has launched countless tools to help creators reach LinkedIn’s 900M+ members.

I spoke to Keren about:

1. How LinkedIn’s creator efforts got started

2. How creators can succeed on LinkedIn

3. How creators can get ready for the AI revolution

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How LinkedIn’s creator efforts got started

Welcome Keren! Let’s go back to when you launched LinkedIn’s “Creator Mode” in 2021. Is that when LinkedIn started focusing on creators?

I have fond memories from launching Creator Mode but our strategy to amplify voices started over a decade ago in 2012. That’s when we unveiled LinkedIn’s Influencer Program to help business leaders and creators share insights with our members.

Since then, we’ve introduced many creator tools such as LinkedIn Live and LinkedIn Newsletters. We also built a Community Management team to help our creators feel supported and informed.

LinkedIn’s vision is to create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce. How does the creator team ladder up to this vision?

Our team mission is to help voices be successful and to unlock opportunities for them.

We’re building LinkedIn to be the best platform for creators to:

1. Have high-quality conversations in a relevant and safe professional context. 

2. Find opportunities to network with each other and grow their personal brand.

3. Engage with brands and institutions.

We believe that helping creators share insights also helps to unlock economic opportunity for our 900M+ members.

How do you decide what to build next for creators?

Our roadmap is informed by many factors, including:

1. Creator feedback. We listen to creators through our Community Management team. I’ve also personally spoken to 100+ creators.

2. LinkedIn’s vision. We evaluate products based on their potential to unlock economic opportunity for every member.

What’s the hardest part about building for creators at LinkedIn?

The hardest part is working on features that creators want right now but take time to get right.

For example, in every call that we had, creators expressed a need for more analytics. But there are alot of factors involved in shipping an effective data product. So we had to keep creators waiting while we iterated on our analytics suite.

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How creators can succeed on LinkedIn

Many top creators have told me that they regret not getting started on LinkedIn sooner. What’s your advice for creators who want to grow on the platform?

So glad that you are hearing that from creators - it makes me and my team happy! 

Here’s what I recommend:

1. Make your profile stand out. Update your profile picture, headline, and summary to reflect your content niche. Use our new Activity section to highlight your best content in a visual manner.

2. Get people to follow you: Turn on creator mode and make “follow” the primary action when others view your profile.

3. Post consistently: Post at least once a week to keep your audience engaged. You can schedule posts ahead of time directly on LinkedIn.

4. Mix content types: Don’t be afraid to try different types (e.g., photos, newsletters) to see what content drives the most engagement from your audience.

5. Own a niche topic: Post about what’s authentic to you and where you have expertise. Focus on a niche topic that people care about. For example, consider using hashtags like #performancemanagement vs. a broad term like #management to stand out. We consistently see higher engagement on niche content, so it’s a proven way to get noticed.

The new activity section for LinkedIn profiles

Those are great tips. Can you share some examples of creators who have succceeded on LinkedIn? I would especially love to learn about creators outside of tech.

Sure! Here are a few creators who have found success on LinkedIn:

• Janice Gassam Asare is the author of the Pink Elephant newsletter. She has 55k+ followers and talks about DEI and anti-racism.

• Ellie Middleton shares insights on neurodiversity and inclusivity in the workplace as an autistic/ADHD professional. She grew to 100K+ followers in just 9 months.

• Liz Fosslien shares visual sketches focused on wellbeing and mental health in the workplace. She's seen incredible engagement, speaking opportunities, and rapid growth on her Etsy shop from her LinkedIn content.

• Jerry Won is the Founder & CEO of Just Like Media, an Asian American storytelling company. He landed his first 5-figure speaking engagement from LinkedIn and hosted VP Kamala Harris on his Dear Asian Americans podcast.

Ellie Middleton grew to 230K+ followers in record time

That’s incredible! What types of content perform well on LinkedIn? I notice that the shelf life of a LinkedIn post is much longer than on a platform like Twitter.

Successful content on LinkedIn usually comes from professionals who reach the audience they care about and generate high quality conversations. 

While members can get broad reach on LinkedIn, the real power is in the comments, feedback and engagement they receive from their professional community. 

We also always encourage voices to experiment with different content formats in knowledge sharing to find what resonates best with their audience, whether it’s video, text, or newsletters. Check out our content best practices to learn more. 

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How creators can get ready for the AI revolution

Let’s close with AI. You write a personal newsletter called The Bolt and I loved reading your recent posts about large language models. How do you think AI will transform a creator’s workflow?

Our CPO Tomer Cohen said it well in a recent post: 

“One of the most powerful ways to think of AI is as your co-pilot, your incredibly capable assistant, constantly at your side to help you excel at your task at hand and in your career.” 

I’m really excited about what generative AI can do to both amplify existing creators and help more people become creators. AI can help you create better content faster, but remember that sharing your own unique voice and perspective still matters.

It’s scary to think that content written by humans might become the exception instead of the norm. What’s your advice for creators who are worried about this new reality? How can folks avoid getting left behind?

Talking to creators, I know how time-consuming it can be to create quality content. 

I’m excited about AI helping more people share their knowledge with their community regardless of their writing talent or language of origin.

As PMs, it's important that we build AI tools in a responsible way. I’m proud of LinkedIn’s Responsible AI Principles to help us make progress towards our vision to create economy opportunity for every member.

Thanks so much Keren! If you enjoyed this chat, please follow Keren on LinkedIn and check out her newsletter.