How to Add Interests to LinkedIn — Quick 5-Step Guide

How to add interests to LinkedIn is a common question for professionals who want to shape what LinkedIn shows about their professional preferences and feed. The good news: you don’t type a freeform list — you curate interests by who and what you follow. This article walks you through the exact steps (desktop and mobile), optimization tips, common mistakes to avoid, and how to use interests strategically with AI content automation to grow your personal brand.

Why LinkedIn Interests matter for your personal brand

LinkedIn's platform surfaces your interests on your profile and in the feed. While it’s a small profile section, it plays a role in discoverability, networking, and content relevance:

• Signals for discovery: Interests tell LinkedIn what you care about — helping the algorithm recommend people, posts, and jobs that align with your focus.
• Conversation starter: Recruiters, founders, and buyers often scan interests to find common ground when connecting.
• Content ideas: Your followed hashtags and companies are a live source of topic prompts and trends you can comment on or repurpose.

LinkedIn reports over 900 million members, which means small profile signals like interests help you stand out in a crowded professional network. Want these signals to work for you? Keep reading.

How LinkedIn manages 'Interests' (what you need to know)

First, a short clarification: you can't add a free-text 'interest' label like 'Product-Led Growth' directly to the Interests card. LinkedIn aggregates interests from the entities you follow: companies, schools, groups, influencers, and hashtags. To shape your Interests, you follow or unfollow those entities.

"LinkedIn shows Interests based on the pages, people, and hashtags you follow." — LinkedIn Help Center (link)

What counts as an Interest

• Companies and organizations you follow
• Industry hashtags you follow
• Influencers and thought leaders you follow
• Groups and universities

Step-by-step: How to add interests to LinkedIn (desktop and mobile)

This section gives exact steps to follow entities that will appear in your Interests card and influence your feed.

Desktop (web browser)

1. Open LinkedIn and use the search bar at the top to search a hashtag (for example, #productmanagement) or a company (for example, Salesforce).
2. From the results, click the hashtag or company page.
3. On the page, click the Follow button. For hashtags, click the ••• or Follow link near the header.
4. Repeat for influencers, groups, and universities relevant to your niche.
5. To remove an interest, visit the followed page and click Following to unfollow.

Mobile (LinkedIn app for iOS and Android)

1. Tap the search icon and enter a hashtag, company, or person.
2. Open the entity's page and tap Follow. For hashtags, tap the hashtag and choose Follow.
3. To unfollow, open the followed page and tap Following to toggle it off.

Tip: You can also discover interests from the profiles of people you want to emulate. Visit an influencer’s profile, scroll to who they follow, and follow the same hashtags or companies.

Best practices: What interests to add and how to optimize them

Be intentional. Your Interests are a curated snapshot of your professional focus. Follow these rules:

• Relevance first: Follow hashtags and companies that match your current or aspirational positioning (e.g., #SaaS, #B2Bmarketing, or companies in your target industry).
• Diversity for discovery: Mix high-level industry tags with niche topics to appear in varied streams (e.g., #AI + #ProductLedGrowth).
• Quality over quantity: 20–50 well-chosen follows are more useful than hundreds of random follows.
• Refresh every quarter: As priorities shift, unfollow outdated hashtags and follow new ones to keep signals aligned with your work.
• Use interests to inform content: Your followed hashtags are a ready list of topics to monitor, comment on, and create posts about.

Examples of optimized interest sets

• Founder in enterprise SaaS: #SaaS, #ProductManagement, Enterprise Software, key enterprise vendors
• B2B marketer: #DemandGen, #ContentMarketing, HubSpot, top marketing influencers
• Career switcher into data: #DataScience, #Python, Data Engineering groups, leading employers

Common mistakes and how to fix them

• Random following — Fix: Audit and remove follows that don't align with your brand.
• Over-following trending but irrelevant tags — Fix: Prioritize niches that attract your target audience.
• Ignoring the Interests card — Fix: Treat the Interests section as part of your personal brand; curate it actively.
• Assuming interests update immediately on profile cards — Fix: Allow time (and occasionally reloading your profile) — the card updates as your follow list changes.

Use interests strategically with AI content automation

Your followed hashtags and companies are a continuous source of topical ideas. When you combine curated interests with AI-powered content automation, you turn passive signals into active growth.

• Trend-driven posts: Follow a hashtag, let AI generate daily prompts about that topic, and schedule them across the month.
• Audience-first content: Use the companies you follow to identify client pain points and write targeted posts that speak directly to that audience.
• Consistency at scale: Automate a 30-day content calendar that aligns posts with your followed hashtags and key industry events.

Example workflow with Linkesy:

1. Curate a list of 8–12 hashtags and 6 companies you want to target.
2. Connect LinkedIn to Linkesy and specify your tone and goals.
3. Let Linkesy generate a 30-day posting calendar that weaves in those hashtags and topics, matching your voice and creating images.
4. Review, tweak if needed, and hit publish — or leave it on autopilot.

Try Linkesy free to see a 30-day calendar created from your interests and follow set — less time creating, more time connecting.

Quick checklist before you save your follow list

Where to go next — related resources

• Pillar: LinkedIn Growth and Personal Branding — Strategy, profile optimization, and long-term growth.
• How to Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile — Make your profile work harder for discovery.
• LinkedIn Content Strategy for Professionals — Plan posts that match your Interests and goals.
• AI Content Automation for LinkedIn — Automate content that matches your followed topics.

FAQ

Conclusion — Make Interests work for your career

Interests on LinkedIn are a compact but powerful signal. You can’t type freeform interests, but you can curate the exact topics and organizations that define your professional brand by following hashtags, companies, influencers, and groups. Combine intentional following with AI-powered content automation to turn passive signals into consistent visibility and engagement.

Ready to convert your Interests into a month of authentic posts and images? Try Linkesy free or schedule a demo to see a 30-day calendar generated from the topics you follow.