Credibility Over Clout: Inside LinkedIn's Vision for Creators

In this episode of Earned, CreatorIQ CMO Brit Starr sits down with Sam Clanon, Director of Product, Create at LinkedIn, live from Dubai during the Billion Follower Summit, to explore how today's platforms can better serve creators, professionals, and businesses alike. Sam reflects on his career shaping content ecosystems at TikTok and Snapchat before stepping into LinkedIn's uniquely complex mandate: designing tools that help people translate content into real economic opportunity—not just attention. At the heart of the conversation is LinkedIn's philosophy of "Create," not "Creator." Sam breaks down the three major forces defining creation on the platform today: people creating content in service of their careers, professional creators building media businesses, and brands behaving as creators in a world where distribution is a prerequisite for growth. Together, Brit and Sam unpack why LinkedIn prioritizes credibility over clout, rewarding perspective, experience, and specificity rather than purely viral engagement. The episode also dives into how LinkedIn thinks about content distribution, the balance between personal and professional expression, and why impressions alone are often the wrong metric. For many creators and founders, Sam argues, success may come down to a single meaningful message—from the right customer, investor, or employer. Brit and Sam discuss the challenges of building for such a wide range of use cases, the importance of avoiding survivorship bias in product decisions, and how better analytics and clearer feedback loops can help creators define what "performance" actually means for them.

In this episode, you'll learn:

1. How LinkedIn is evolving to support diverse creators.

2. The shift from virality to credibility in content strategy.

3. Why personalization drives real professional connections on LinkedIn.

Connect with the Guest:

• Sam's LinkedIn - @samclanon

Connect with Brit Starr & CreatorIQ:

• Brit's LinkedIn - @britmccorquodale

• CreatorIQ LinkedIn - @creatoriq

Follow us on social:

• CreatorIQ YouTube - @CreatorIQOfficial

• CreatorIQ Instagram - @creatoriq

• CreatorIQ TikTok - @creator.iq

CreatorIQ Twitter - @CreatorIQ