Feature
The Gist
- Unique audience. LinkedIn attracts professionals and organizations focused on career and brand growth.
- Verification options. Users can verify their identity, work email and workplace using three distinct methods.
- Trust enhancement. LinkedIn verification assists brands, marketers and influencers in building trust with their target audiences.
Behind only Facebook and Instagram, LinkedIn is the third most-used social media platform by marketers. And it brings a unique audience to the table, primarily a group of professionals and organizations focused on career and brand growth.
Not long after the news of Twitter’s verification overhaul, LinkedIn announced its own verification process — three ways users can verify their identity, workplace and work email.
Related Article: Deciding on the Best Social Media Platforms for Customer Connection
LinkedIn Verification: How to Get Started
LinkedIn’s new verification system allows users to verify their identity, work email address and workplace, building on updates announced in October 2022 to promote sitewide security.
Right now, the LinkedIn verification process is free and can be completed in one of three ways:
- Identity verification with CLEAR. Those in the US with a government-issued ID and phone number can use CLEAR, a third-party identity verification service.
- Work email verification. Employees at one of the 4,000 plus participating companies can provide their work email address and confirm the code sent to that email.
- Workplace verification with Microsoft Entra. Employees at participating companies can use the Entra Verified ID platform to confirm their employment.
You can confirm your identity with one or all three of the methods listed above, if available to you. Once verification is complete, it will be visible on your profile. You can remove verification at any time in your settings.
The Why Behind LinkedIn Verification
According to Oscar Rodriguez, vice president of product management at LinkedIn, the professional networking site saw an increase in fraud over the last year.
“Over the last few months,” he wrote in June of 2022, “we’ve seen a rise in fraudulent activity happening across the Internet, including here on LinkedIn, and heard questions on how we are working to prevent it.”
Through the use of expert teams coupled with artificial intelligence, LinkedIn detects (and removes) 96% of fake accounts and 99.1% of spam and scams, claimed Rodriguez. However, he cautioned users to report suspicious activity and any account asking for personal information.
In April 2022, Rodriguez announced new LinkedIn verification features that will allow users to feel confident that the people they talk to on the platform are “authentic.”
“I am eager to share that as part of our ongoing commitment to keeping LinkedIn a trusted professional community, we are rolling out new features and systems to help you make more informed decisions about members that you are interacting with and enhancing our automated systems that keep inauthentic profiles and activity off our platform,” he wrote.
According to press officials at LinkedIn, the company plans to continue to explore new ways to verify and expand the availability of verification to members. More updates to the new verification process, as well as other platform features, will follow in 2023.
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Is LinkedIn Verification Important for Brands, Marketers and Influencers?
People are less trusting today than they once were.
Gallup found that only 7% of Americans have a “great deal” of trust and confidence in the media. And that distrust extends to social media, with the majority of those polled by The Washington Post claiming they do not trust Facebook, TikTok, Instagram and similar sites much or at all.
Further, 87% of executives think consumers have a high level of trust in their businesses — but only 30% of consumers say they do.
And people have a right to be distrusting — many corporations seek profit above all else, fraud incidents increased 30% over the past year and it's easier now than ever to create deepfake content online that makes it hard to determine what is real and what is not.
One way brands, marketers and influencers can combat this issue and gain the much-needed trust of consumers is through identity verification.
LinkedIn’s verification process is designed in a way that should prevent imposters from getting through the cracks. A verified LinkedIn profile tells users that they can trust what you say (or write) because you’re an experienced professional with the credentials to back it up.
Right now, it’s too soon to predict how people will react to LinkedIn verification. The longer the process is available, the more users will be able to test and search for weaknesses. (Despite Twitter saying no impersonation can occur with Twitter Blue, for instance, one user was able to gain a verification checkmark by impersonating a US senator.)
Verification is not the end-all-be-all of a successful online strategy. There are other ways to build trust and authority with your audience. However, it’s safe to say verifying your LinkedIn profile will not hurt your marketing efforts and could be a useful tool for those looking to cultivate a following on the platform.
