LinkedIn is rolling out a new feature that lets users schedule posts to send later.
The Owned by Microsoft The social network appears to have been testing the new feature for several months now, according to to at least one online report dating back to August, but now appears to be gaining traction, according to a growing number of reports on social media.
Matt Navarrosocial media consultant and celebrity tipster, confirmed yesterday that it now sees the post-schedule feature in the Android app and on the LinkedIn website itself. Internally at TechCrunch, it’s a bit of a mixed bag, with some of us seeing the feature and some not, but for now it looks like it’s limited to the web and Android.
Those who have the feature will see a small clock icon next to the “post” button in the message creation box.
LinkedIn’s new message scheduling feature Image credits: Romain Dillet / TechCrunch
When the user clicks on the clock icon, they are given the option to select a specific date and half-hour interval for which they want to schedule their post.
LinkedIn’s new message scheduling feature: Choose your time Image credits: Romain Dillet / TechCrunch
Marketers rejoice
While millions of marketers, influencers, and “thought leaders” around the world will no doubt be excited about this new feature, it’s worth noting that similar functionality has been available for some time through third-party platforms like Hootsuite and Buffer. However, not everyone is happy to give third-party platforms access to their LinkedIn accounts for data privacy reasons – and native functionality is almost always more convenient, especially for those who only want to share a specific some of the content of your LinkedIn followers.
In truth, native post-planning has always been a rather conspicuous absence from such a widely used social network as LinkedIn, which claims about 875 million members worldwide. Twitter likes (through TweetDeck) and Facebook have suggested planning for some time already, not to mention email clients such as Gmail that allow you to send messages while you are fast asleep.
TechCrunch reached out to LinkedIn for more information on the new scheduling feature, including when everyone can expect to have access. We will update here when or if we get a response.