LinkedIn now lets you schedule posts for later

LinkedIn is rolling out a new feature that allows users to schedule posts to send at a later time.

The Microsoft-owned social network has seemingly been testing the new feature internally for several months already, according to at least one online report back in August from web developer and app researcher Nima Owji, but it seems that LinkedIn is now readying things for prime time, according to a growing number of reports across social media.

Matt Navarra, a social media consultant and renowned tipster, confirmed yesterday that he was now seeing the post-scheduling feature inside 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 others not, and we have managed to independently confirm the feature on the web.

Those that do have the feature will see a little clock icon beside the "post" button within the message compose box.

LinkedIn's new message-scheduling feature. Image Credits: Romain Dillet/TechCrunch

When the user clicks on the clock icon, they're presented with an option to choose a specific date and half-hourly slot that they want to schedule their post for.

LinkedIn's new message-scheduling feature: Choose your time. Image Credits: Romain Dillet/TechCrunch

Since this article was originally published, a LinkedIn spokesperson has divulged a few more of the details of this launch, confirming that it is limited to the web and Android for now, with iOS coming "soon."

Also, scheduling will initially work with text posts, videos and images up to three months in advance, with plans to extend support to LinkedIn Groups, Pages and other kinds of content.

LinkedIn post-scheduling in action. Image Credits: LinkedIn

Marketers rejoice

While millions of marketers, influencers and "thought leaders" the world over will no doubt rejoice at this new feature, it is worth noting that similar functionality has been available for a while already through third-party platforms such as Hootsuite and Buffer. However, not everyone is happy giving third-party platforms access to their LinkedIn accounts for data-privacy reasons -- plus, native functionality is nearly always more convenient, particularly for those who only want to share a specific piece of content to their LinkedIn followers.

In truth, native post-scheduling has always been a fairly notable absence from such a widely used social network as LinkedIn that claims some 875 million members globally. The likes of Twitter (via TweetDeck) and Facebook have offered scheduling for a while already, not to mention email clients such as Gmail that allow you to send messages while you're fast asleep.

*TechCrunch updated this article with more details provided by LinkedIn, including a GIF of the feature inside the LinkedIn Android app.