• by Colin Kirkland , Yesterday

Attempting to attract more creators to its business-centric social platform, LinkedIn has announced its first native Creator Marketplace, which the Microsoft-owned company has designed to help brands find and work with relevant creators.

According to a recent report conducted by YouGov, 82% of business-to-business (B2B) marketers agree that utilizing creators increases brands’ credibility with consumers.

LinkedIn’s Creator Marketplace invites marketers to find vetted creators by topic and content expertise, then assess their profile for a specific audience, performance, and overall fit.

Within the new Marketplace, marketers can discover both organic and sponsored content already featuring their brand, with the option to amplify the pre-made content with LinkedIn's “Thought Leader Ads” feature.

Creator contact information is also visible in the Marketplace, which marketers can use to connect directly over potential promotions and collaborations.

LinkedIn is also building off its “BrandLink” feature, which allows brands to run in-stream ads ahead of the relevant video content posted by LinkedIn’s top creators and publishers.

Now, through the Marketplace, marketers can extend campaigns with premium publisher and creator video content by placing promotional messaging beside content within a curated creator-made video inventory.

According to LinkedIn’s announcement, creators who opt-in to share their information with brands via the Marketplace “retain control over how they collaborate.”

Creators can hand-pick and feature their favorite original content, choose how brands reach them, and approve how their sponsored content is used by a brand.

In addition to its Creator Marketplace, LinkedIn has also announced the launch of “BrandWorks,” a team of experts across brand, creative, content, and events that have been selected to provide B2B marketers with “hands-on strategy and support” surrounding in-app campaigns.

Currently in alpha, Creator Marketplace is only available to select brands and creators in North American and with English-only content, whereas BrandWorks is now available globally for select managed customers.