Someone tells you to turn on creator mode. You go looking for the toggle and it isn't there. Then you read three articles that still describe it as if it existed. Meanwhile the real question never gets answered: of all the profile features LinkedIn hands you, which ones actually bring a stranger closer to a conversation, and which ones just eat an afternoon?
This article sorts them. Setup time on one side, what changes on the other.
What happened to LinkedIn creator mode
LinkedIn retired the creator mode toggle in 2024. The features it used to gate were rolled out to every profile by default. So if you are still hunting for the switch, stop — you already have most of what it unlocked.
What the old linkedin creator mode bundle contained, roughly: a Follow button shown before Connect, up to five featured hashtags describing your topics, link fields at the top of your profile, access to newsletters and LinkedIn Live, and a feed-style ordering of your profile that pushed your activity higher.
Most of that is now simply part of the product. The only part that still requires a decision from you is which of these you maintain. A newsletter you abandon after two issues is worse than no newsletter. Five topic tags that describe nothing are five wasted lines. The setup is free; the upkeep is not.
So treat the remnants of linkedin creator mode as a menu, not a checklist.
The follow button, and what it actually changes
The follow button is the piece people obsess over and understand least.
Here is the mechanism. A connection is mutual — you both see each other's posts, you can both message each other, and it counts against your connection cap. A follow is one-directional — they see your posts, you owe them nothing, and there is no cap. Every connection is automatically a follower. Not every follower is a connection.
You can set Follow as the primary button on your profile through your profile settings. Visitors then see Follow first and have to go into the menu to send a connection request.
When that helps: you publish regularly, you get profile visits from people you will never work with, and your connection list is filling up with spectators. Making Follow primary filters them into an audience rather than a contact list. Your feed stays cleaner. Your connections stay relevant for search and for outreach.
When that hurts: you publish rarely and you rely on new connections to have conversations. Making Follow primary adds friction exactly where you need none. Someone reads your profile, feels a flicker of interest, and the obvious button gives them a passive relationship instead of an open message thread.
Most independent consultants with fewer than a few thousand followers should leave Connect primary. The follow button becomes useful when inbound attention outpaces your ability to talk to people — not before. Until then, your headline doing its job as a positioning line moves more needles than which button sits on top.
One detail worth knowing: your follower count is public and your connection count caps visually at 500+. If social proof matters in your market, followers are the number people read.
Newsletters: the feature with real compounding, and a real cost
Of everything in the old linkedin creator mode set, the newsletter is the one with genuine mechanical leverage.
Why. When you publish the first issue, LinkedIn invites your network to subscribe — a notification, not a feed post. Every issue after that sends subscribers a notification and, depending on their settings, an email. You are no longer fully at the mercy of feed distribution. You have a channel that reaches people directly.
That is rare on LinkedIn and it is worth something.
The cost is where people get hurt. A newsletter is a public promise of rhythm. Name it, set a cadence, and you have committed to showing up on that cadence in front of the exact people you want to impress. Two issues and silence reads as abandoned. Readers notice. Prospects notice.
Before you create one, answer three questions honestly:
- Do I have twelve issues in me? Not twelve ideas. Twelve pieces you could write on a bad week.
- Is the cadence survivable? Monthly is a perfectly good newsletter. Weekly is a job. Pick the one you will still be doing in March.
- Does it have one subject? A newsletter about everything you think gets subscribed to by no one in particular. A newsletter about pricing for architecture practices gets subscribed to by architects with pricing problems.
Format note: newsletter articles live on LinkedIn, so they do not carry the distribution penalty people associate with posting an outbound link in a feed post. But long-form on LinkedIn gets skimmed hard. Put the usable thing in the first screen and keep the thing tight.
And reuse it. A newsletter issue is four or five feed posts, a conversation starter, and an answer you can send when a prospect asks what you actually do. That recycling loop is where the hours come back — turning published content into outreach is the difference between a newsletter that costs you time and one that pays for itself.
The rest, ranked by setup time versus payoff
Featured section — ten minutes, high payoff. Pin three things: the post that best explains your point of view, a case write-up or client story, and the link people should click if they want to work with you. This is the closest thing LinkedIn gives you to a call-to-action above the fold. Most profiles leave it empty or fill it with a four-year-old award.
Topic tags (the old creator-mode hashtags) — five minutes, low payoff. They tell LinkedIn roughly what you talk about and they display under your headline. Harmless, mildly useful for context. Do not spend an afternoon on them. Pick terms your clients use, not terms your peers use.
Profile link field — two minutes, decent payoff. A single clickable link under your headline. Send it somewhere that converts a stranger: a booking page, a one-page offer, a diagnostic. Not your homepage.
Creator analytics — ongoing, useful only if you act on it. Impressions are noise. What is worth reading: which posts brought profile views, and which profile views turned into follows or connection requests. That chain is the only one that matters. It also tells you more than likes do, for the same reason how long people stay on a post beats the like count.
LinkedIn Live and audio events — high setup, situational. Only if you already have an audience that shows up. An empty live room is a worse experience than no live room.
Profile video and cover story — medium setup, modest payoff. Works if your service is relationship-heavy and you are good on camera. Skip it otherwise; a bad one costs more credibility than it earns.
What any of this does for getting clients
Nothing, on its own. That is the honest answer.
Followers are not a pipeline. A newsletter with 800 subscribers and no outreach habit produces inbound at a trickle and nothing else. What these features do is make the moment of contact easier — when you message someone, they recognise the name, the profile explains the offer in five seconds, and the featured section proves you have done this before.
So the order is: profile that explains the offer, content that shows the thinking, then outbound conversations with the people you actually want. The features above serve the first two. They do not replace the third.
On the outbound side, if you use a tool to scale it, know what you are agreeing to. LinkedIn's User Agreement does not allow third-party software or browser extensions that automate activity on the platform. BIZLINKED is one of those tools — its Chrome extension runs in your own browser and session and automatically sends connection invitations and messages written by AI, inside limits it sets itself (up to 100 invitations a week, 150 once more than 40% are accepted, business hours only, randomised pauses). Those limits reduce exposure; they do not remove it. Accounts can be restricted at any volume, and using automation means accepting that risk knowingly. Pricing and details are on the site.
Monday morning
Sixty minutes, in this order.
Twenty minutes on the Featured section — three items, one of them a way to contact you. Five minutes on the profile link, pointed at something that books a call. Five minutes on topic tags, in your clients' vocabulary.
Leave the follow button alone unless your profile views clearly outnumber the conversations you can hold.
Then spend the remaining thirty minutes drafting newsletter issue one — and issue two, and the headline of issue three. If you cannot get three outlines down in half an hour, do not launch it. Post the first one as a normal feed post instead and see whether anyone cares. You can always start the newsletter in six weeks with evidence behind you.
