LinkedIn is now offering a new feature on a rolling basis to its users – photo tagging (or mentions as some call it).

I noticed that I had the ability to do it today for the very first time and it was very exciting, making me a true LinkedIn geek.

Tagging people in LinkedIn photos (on both an individual and company level) encourages more engagement with your images and content. It also is the norm on other social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. It helps to to make your content more powerful because posts with images do better than those without and by tagging key individuals in those posts, you’ll have higher engagement on those posts.

When you tag someone in a photo on LinkedIn (to do it, just use the @ sign and type in their name – you can see an example of a completed post on the right), they will receive a notification (in the notification section and/or via email depending on their settings) that you added them and this tagged photo becomes linked with the associated user’s LinkedIn profile. Viewers can click on the connection’s name to navigate to their profile. You can tag up to 30 people per photo (wow!).

Some helpful facts about photo tagging on LinkedIn:

  1. A LinkedIn member doesn’t need to be connected with you as a first degree connection in order tag you or to be photo tagged by you.
  2. As the author, you can remove tags at any time after you create a post.
  3. You can remove tags of yourself on any post at any point.

A word of caution on photo tagging – there can potentially be a “dark side” to it. What I mean by this is that you could potentially be “spammed” by an individual who tags you in a post that is not relevant to you or by someone who does not know you (since you do not need to be connected with someone in order to be tagged in a photo). But as we discussed above, since you have full control over your own photo tags at all times from all kinds of devices, you can remove tags about yourself at any point. Let’s hope this feature on a business platform never gets to the point where it is considered spammy.

Here’s more information on how the photo tagging feature works directly from LinkedIn itself and you can see it work in action in the image in this post that I created on Canva.com, my favorite free/low-cost online graphic design tool for non-designers like me, regarding an upcoming webinar of mine (register!). I personally think the ability to photo tag people is pretty cool and that it’s about time for LinkedIn to catch up with the bells and whistles offered by other social platforms.  

So how could you use LinkedIn photo tagging in your own business development efforts?

  • Photo tagging is an effective way to get individuals to view, share, engage and contribute to your content.
  • You can build stronger relationships with key contacts in your professional network by photo tagging them in your posts.
  • Posts with visuals do much better than those without because they help to capture the attention of your audience and bring content to life. Don’t just take my word on this – lots of statistics back me up here. Now that you can tag individuals in photo posts, your visuals just got even more powerful.
  • Tagging someone in a photo also means that not only will the people who follow you see the post, but it gives the opportunity for the people who follow them to see the post too. It’s mutually beneficial for everyone involved for enhanced visibility.
  • Photo tagging is a helpful tool to use when you host an event and you’d like to thank attendees for coming or speaking at the event. You can tag VIP individuals in the post.
  • Photo tagging is a great way to strengthen one’s brand on LinkedIn. The more you see someone associated with posts (not to mention their likeness), the more you will think of them as a subject-matter expert or leader in their field.

Try it and let me know what you think!