November: LinkedIn’s Been Busy (Your Big Monthly Roundup)

New buttons, returning favourites, a few sneaky Premium upsells, and one or two changes that could quietly affect how you’re found.

(Hats off to LinkedIn guru John Espirian and his eagle-eyed community for spotting most of these.)

Grab a cuppa. Let’s go.

Bold Is (Sort Of) Back

Want to make a bold impression? To boldly go where no marketer has gone before? I could go on with the bad puns.

Until now, bold text meant third-party tools that create Unicode characters. They look bold, but search engines can’t read them and screen readers struggle.

Lynnaire Johnston spotted a neat workaround. Write your post in Apple Mail or Gmail, bold the words there, then copy and paste it into LinkedIn.

Ta dah! Proper, readable, accessible bold.

It’s hit-and-miss, only works in posts, and italics don’t work at all. But for the odd bit of emphasis? Lovely.

Pinned Comments Are Back!

PINNED COMMENTS!!! Why they were ever removed, I have no idea.

Hit the three dots, choose pin, and your comment sits at the top, whichever way people sort them.

Should you put your link in a pinned first comment? The jury’s out. Just remember, if someone reposts with their thoughts, your pinned comment gets left behind. If the link really matters, keep it in the post.

Introducing… the Super Like

What if you had a like button… but only for people who pay A LOT for the privilege?

There’s a new reaction: a purple circle with a gold star, called Super Like, Recommend, or Award depending on where you look. Free users see it with a Premium badge that nudges them to upgrade.

Algorithm boost? Nobody knows yet. Sneaky Premium upsell? I have my suspicions.

Longer Previews for Text Posts

For the loquacious, the chatty, and those who take forever to get to the point.

Some people are seeing text-only posts show up to seven lines before the “…more” link, up from two or three. If it sticks, your opening lines just got a lot more room to work.

Company Pages: The Good, the Bad, and the Paid

The good: you can now block company pages from commenting on your posts. Annoying brand accounts, begone.

The bad: you can report people falsely claiming to work for you, but only with a verified page, which currently means paying for Premium.

The paid: Tony Restell spotted new Premium page tiers (Essentials, Plus and Pro) landing before January.

Quick-Fire Round

• Comment limit is back to 1,250 characters.
• Slimmer new icons and a reshuffled desktop menu for some.
•  “Frequent viewer” badges in Who viewed your profile (alongside a flood of anonymous views).
• A new creator dashboard with in-stream ads and paid advice sessions.
• Flypost research suggests link posts get around 13% fewer reactions. Pinch of salt advised.

Get Found on Google

The sleeper hit of the month. Tony also noticed LinkedIn posts can be summarised by AI and shown in Google results.

Someone types a question into Google… and finds your post. Another reason to write with substance, not slop (or get someone to do it for you HINT HINT)..

Don’t Give Up on Newsletters

Newsletter open rates vanished for a few weeks, then quietly came back. Confusing? Absolutely.

But long-form LinkedIn content is still indexed by Google. Publish on your own website or email list first, then share it on LinkedIn and beyond. You own it, and you still get the visibility.

So What Does It All Mean?

Some of LinkedIn’s tinkering is brilliant. Some of it is clearly about getting you to pay up.
But the message hasn’t changed. Write real posts. Start real conversations. And make your content worth finding.

The Team Updates

Jem

Jem has been speaking…. A LOT!!

No not like that, she has been doing in person speaking events and has begun really getting into the flow with them (you might have caught her post about it).

It's officially garden centre weather, so a visit was a must, and she’s also done pumpkin flower arranging with Josh, a Wagamama catch-up, and a few trading card shows. 

On the work side, she’s welcomed two new clients, and had great fun on site with a client taking photos and creating videos.

And finally - Jack Jack turned six, I had his nose print made into a ring, and we bought new cushions (Jack approves). 

Keep an eye out for her live in November too, as it ties into my latest content and is well worth catching.

Sarah B

She's had more of Joe's family to visit, mainly because her five-year-old niece wanted to meet Reggie the cat (and have her draw unicorns on demand).

This led to Sarah’s first ever trip to soft play since childhood. Chasing a tiny human/whippet through tiny tunnels that were not built for adults and leaving her bruised and aching. 

Reggie is settling in nicely, though an unneutered male cat is not for the faint-hearted, and between the endless washing and his appointment to get his plums sorted in November, she's counting down the days.

With her 36th birthday next week sparking a mini mid-life crisis, she's channelling it into learning Swedish and seeing Käärijä live for the third time (the Finnish rapper who absolutely should have won Eurovision). 

She's also been talking to more experts in the conservation world, was thrilled when a lovely LinkedIn friend sent her coffee beans and hot chocolate, and is hoping more people want to work with us so she can one day afford a cat, a dog and a car (hint: work with us).

Sarah A

Sarah has taken the time to remember lost family members this month so it’s been a quiet reflective time.
Aside from this the love of pickleball growing has meant she’s been playing more and more. That has also meant sweet treats to help fuel such intense games.

Freddie

Freddie has been sleep-deprived, adjusting to life with a newborn and a toddler and surviving mostly on coffee and stubbornness.

So it’s been mostly trying to get back into the swing of things i.e. normal life while running on no sleep and keep up the mad pace of marketing.

Summing Up

All in all, it’s been another brilliant month for the Jems, and with LinkedIn changing faster than the weather, we’re keeping a close eye on everything so our clients don’t have to.

If you’d like a hand making sense of it all (and making it work for your business), why not talk to Jem and see what we can do together?