LinkedIn Tips: 5 New Things To Know

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Following a quiet summer, LinkedIn ramped up activity this fall and rolled out a handful of new features and product redesigns.

Last month, the social network revamped its "Who's Viewed Your Profile" section with enhanced analytics to improve your network, profile, and job opportunities. It also launched new ways to manage your skills, endorsements, and recommendations.

Among those announcements are a handful of other lesser-known changes, including the ability to add certifications to your profile; blogging and Pulse app redesigns; a new tool to develop an infographic based on your work history; and LinkedIn WeChat integration.

Here's the lowdown on what's new.

[Ready to take your LinkedIn success to the next level? Read LinkedIn Tips: 10 Smart New Moves.]

1. LinkedIn Certifications adds credentials to your profile.
LinkedIn added a new section to profiles last week called Certifications, which lets you showcase professional certificates you've earned over the years. The company said that people who include certifications receive six times more views of their profile.

"It's more important than ever to make sure you stand out professionally in today's workforce, and our data suggests that adding certifications to your profile helps you attract opportunity," Dan Shapero, product manager at LinkedIn, said in a blog post. "With Add to Profile, professionals will get recognized and discovered based on the certifications that they've earned and knowledge gained."

You can add certifications to your profile in the Edit Profile view on LinkedIn. Find the option below the "Recommended for you" heading on the right side of the page. LinkedIn will ask for the certification name, certification authority, license number, and certification URL. You can also add dates.

2. LinkedIn redesigns its publishing platform.
LinkedIn launched its Influencers platform in 2012 for big-name businesspeople to share their career insights. It later extended this blogging platform to all users. In October, the company launched its first redesign of the feature.

The updated design lets you upload a cover photo, which the social network says makes readers 14 times more likely to click it. It also features updated formatting tools, such as a more prominent space for your headline, new subhead options, and a quicker way to upload photos and videos. LinkedIn also says that its updated WYSIWYG editor gives users a nearly identical idea of how posts will look when they're published.

3. "Professional Journey" visualizes your work history.
SlideShare, which LinkedIn acquired in 2012 for $119 million, added a feature last month that takes your LinkedIn profile information and turns it into an infographic that you can upload to SlideShare and share with other networks.

"SlideShare's new Professional Journey offers... a dynamic interactive look back at all that you've accomplished -- from your skills to where you were educated, from your years of experience to the types of positions you've held," LinkedIn senior project manager Arpit Dhariwal said in

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