What Happened to LinkedIn Creator Mode.

The short answer

LinkedIn said it would remove the creator mode switch in March 2024 and keep the tools for members who already had them: newsletters, LinkedIn Live, Audio Events, creator analytics and the Follow link. What is left is one setting, Make follow primary, and a founder should choose it on purpose.

What LinkedIn changed

LinkedIn set the changes out on a help centre page titled Updates to Creator Mode. The on and off toggle in the Resources section of the profile was expected to go in March 2024. Profile hashtags, the topics you could display as hashtags on your profile, were due to go from February 2024.

The About section was moving to the top of the profile, so people can grasp your professional story first. And for anyone who had creator mode switched on, the Connect button was set to change to Follow, with your follower count shown in the profile introduction. LinkedIn added that the primary action would remain Follow unless you updated it.

That last change is the one that still matters. In founder social on LinkedIn, a profile’s main button may still be one set by a switch flipped years ago.

What you kept

LinkedIn was clear that removing the switch did not remove the tools. If you had them with creator mode on, you still have them:

• LinkedIn Live, Audio Events and Newsletter, if you meet the access criteria.
• Analytics and tools, reached by selecting the Post impressions count on the left pane of your feed.
• Creator analytics, covering combined post analytics and audience analytics, from the Analytics section of your profile.
• Your Follow link, a personal link you can share on a website or in an email, now under Contact info in your introduction.
• Eligibility to be featured as a suggested creator to follow.

So the features people went looking for creator mode to get are not hidden behind anything new. They are still there, minus the label.

Why people still search for it

Creator mode was a switch, so advice from the time it existed told you to flip it. People still read that advice, open their settings, and find nothing.

The honest answer is that there is nothing to find. The decision creator mode used to bundle up has been reduced to one choice: which button a stranger sees first when they land on your profile. That choice is still worth making on purpose rather than leaving it as it is.

If you are building a founder presence from scratch, the button is a small part of a bigger plan. We set out the rest in our piece on building a founder-led social strategy.

Follow and Connect do different jobs

The two buttons ask a visitor for different things.

• Connect asks you to accept the visitor into your network, and they wait on your answer.
• Follow asks for nothing from you. The visitor gets your posts and articles without needing you to accept anything.

Your first-degree connections follow your posts automatically. So every connection is also a follower, but not every follower is a connection.

When Follow should be your primary button

Follow suits a founder whose LinkedIn is a publishing channel. If you post regularly and the point is reach, Follow lowers the cost of saying yes. A visitor can start reading you in one click, without asking you to vet them.

It also keeps your network useful. A connection list padded with strangers who only wanted your posts makes it harder to find the people you actually work with.

Pick Follow if most of these are true:

• You post at least weekly and plan to keep doing so.
• Most people landing on your profile found you through a post.
• You get more connection requests than you can sensibly review.

When Connect should be your primary button

Connect suits a founder whose LinkedIn is a relationship tool rather than a stage. If you rarely post and use the platform for hiring, partnerships or sales conversations, Connect says the right thing: this is a person to talk to. Pick Connect if you are not yet posting on a rhythm, or if the people who visit your profile mostly arrive from a meeting, an email or an introduction.

If you are not sure which of those you are, that is usually a sign the profile and the posting plan have not been designed together. That is the kind of gap our platform optimisation work is built to close: the profile, the cadence and what each visitor is asked to do, set up to match.

How to change the primary button

The setting lives in Settings & Privacy. On desktop:

1. Click the Me icon at the top of your LinkedIn homepage.
2. Select Settings & Privacy.
3. Select Visibility on the left pane.
4. Under Visibility of your LinkedIn activity, click Followers.
5. Under Make follow primary, turn the toggle on to show Follow, or off to show Connect.

The mobile app follows the same path from your profile picture. LinkedIn says changes can take up to 24 hours to show.

The setting next to it, and why to leave it alone

On the same screen sits Who can follow you, with two options: Everyone on LinkedIn, or Your connections.

For a founder who posts, Everyone on LinkedIn is almost always the right answer. LinkedIn notes that choosing Your connections removes followers outside your network, sets your follower number equal to your connection count, and takes the Follow button off your posts and articles. It also says Everyone on LinkedIn is what allows your posts to be shared off LinkedIn.

Switching to Your connections to tidy things up quietly undoes an audience you may have spent years building.

The custom button is a different feature

Some founders confuse the primary button with the custom button. They are separate.

The custom button links to a URL you choose, with labels such as Visit my website, Book an appointment or View my newsletter. LinkedIn describes it as a Premium feature available to a select group of Premium Business, Sales Navigator and Recruiter Lite subscribers, and adding one replaces any services shown on your profile. LinkedIn’s creator mode update says the link you could once add to your profile introduction is now added through this custom button.

How we think about the profile

The button is not a growth lever on its own. It is a signal of what the profile is for, and a profile only works when that signal matches what the person is doing on the platform.

The real mistake is mismatch, not picking the wrong option. A founder posting daily with Connect as the main button makes every new reader ask permission. A founder who has not posted in six months with Follow as the main button invites people to follow an empty feed.

So we treat the profile as part of the system behind the posts, the same way we treat a content calendar or an approval step. Decide what the profile is for, then set the button, the About section and the Featured section to say the same thing.

What good looks like

A founder profile that has been set up deliberately usually has:

• A primary button chosen against a stated purpose, publishing or relationships, and reviewed when that purpose changes.
• Who can follow you set to Everyone on LinkedIn.
• An About section that opens with the professional story, since LinkedIn said it would move to the top.
• The Follow link in use wherever the founder already has an audience, such as an email signature.
• A posting rhythm that justifies the button, and a way of seeing what it produces. We cover the measures worth tracking in the two LinkedIn numbers worth watching.

Next step

Open your settings today and check which button you have. If it is the one LinkedIn gave you rather than one you chose, decide what your profile is for and set it to match.

If your founder content is going out regularly but the profile is not turning readers into anything, NBK can help find where the system is leaking.