LinkedIn Creator Mode: What Happened to It

LinkedIn retired creator mode in 2024. You cannot turn it on any more because the toggle no longer exists. Most of what it used to unlock — newsletters, LinkedIn Live eligibility, a Follow button in place of Connect — was folded into regular profiles, and the parts that were dropped (notably the profile topic hashtags) were not replaced.

If you have arrived here from an old tutorial telling you to go to "Resources" and flip a switch, the tutorial is not wrong so much as expired. The good news is that you do not need the switch to do anything it used to do.

What creator mode did, and where it went

Based on LinkedIn's own announcements and help pages. Eligibility rules for Live and newsletters change from time to time, so check LinkedIn's help centre for the current criteria.

Why LinkedIn dropped it

Creator mode was a switch that said "I intend to post". It changed a handful of profile settings at once and unlocked some features. Over time, LinkedIn made most of those features available to everyone, which left creator mode as a toggle that mostly toggled itself.

The more interesting lesson is the one about topic hashtags. Creator mode let you list up to five topics on your profile, and a lot of people spent a lot of time agonising over them. They were removed with very little fuss, which tells you roughly how much they were contributing to anyone's reach. (Our hashtags guide makes a similar argument about hashtags in posts.)

How to get the creator mode setup without creator mode

1. Step 1

   Make Follow your primary button

   In Settings → Visibility, look for the option to make Follow the primary action on your profile. Visitors then see Follow instead of Connect, which lets people subscribe to your posts without you having to accept a request.

2. Step 2

   Rewrite your headline for readers, not recruiters

   If you publish, your headline appears under every post and comment. Lead with what you write about or who you help. See our guide to LinkedIn headline examples.

3. Step 3

   Use the Featured section

   Pin your best post, a newsletter, or a talk. It is the closest thing to a portfolio LinkedIn offers, and it sits high on your profile.

4. Step 4

   Start a newsletter if you are eligible

   Look for the newsletter option when you start an article. If it is not there, LinkedIn's eligibility criteria are not yet met — usually a matter of followers and recent posting activity.

Follow or Connect: which should be your primary button?

Choose Follow if you publish regularly and get a steady trickle of connection requests from people you do not know. Followers see your posts; they do not get access to your connections list or your inbox, and you do not have to triage a queue of strangers.

Keep Connect if LinkedIn is mostly a professional address book for you — people you have actually worked with — or if you are job hunting and want recruiters to reach you directly. Either way, people can still do both; the setting only changes which button appears first.

Publishing-ready profile checklist

• Follow set as the primary profile button (if you post regularly)
• Headline says what you write about in the first ~60 characters
• Featured section pins one or two of your best pieces
• About section opens with who you help, not your career history
• Profile photo and banner sized correctly and not cropped
• Custom profile URL set and shared without tracking parameters

Does any of this affect reach?

Not directly. LinkedIn has never published a reach formula, and there is no evidence that creator mode itself boosted distribution — it changed what visitors could do on your profile, not how often your posts appeared. Anyone telling you otherwise is guessing, often with great confidence.

What does affect how your posts land is the boring stuff: a first line worth stopping for, readable formatting, and a cutoff point that does not hide the point. Check those with the See More Preview before you post, and you will have done more for your reach than any toggle did.