LinkedIn Growth5 min read
Ring the Bell on LinkedIn: Meaning and What It Does
The bell on a LinkedIn profile lets you subscribe to a member's posts and get notified when they publish. Here is what ringing the bell does, and what it does not.
By Animesh Kudake, Co-founder, Apna Project
The short version
- Ringing the bell on LinkedIn means subscribing to a member's content, so you get a notification each time they post. You have to follow or connect with them first before the bell appears.
- The bell has two states. A filled dark bell notifies you of all new posts from that person; a lighter, outlined bell notifies you only of their top posts.
- The person is not told when you ring their bell, and they cannot see who their subscribers are or how many they have. It is a private action on your side.
- Ringing your own audience's bell does nothing for you. The value is for the reader who wants to catch a specific person's posts, not for the creator's reach.
- The bell sends notifications; it does not boost how often that person shows up in your feed. Those are two different systems, and confusing them leads people to expect reach the bell was never designed to give.
What the bell does not do
This is where people get tripped up, so we want to be plain about it. The bell controls notifications. It does not control your feed.
Ringing someone's bell does not make their posts appear more often in your main feed, and it does not boost how far their content travels to other people. Notifications and feed ranking are two separate systems. The bell reliably pings you when a subscribed person posts; whether that post then shows up organically in your scroll is decided by the LinkedIn algorithm, which weighs things like relevance and early engagement, not your subscription.
That distinction matters for creators too. Some people encourage their audience to "ring the bell" expecting it to lift their reach. It will not. It helps loyal readers catch their posts, which is worthwhile, but it is a retention tool, not a distribution hack. If reach is the goal, the work still happens in the feed and in comment sections, which is the whole premise behind growing on LinkedIn without posting.
Is it private? Yes
A common worry: will the person know I rang their bell? No. LinkedIn does not notify members when someone subscribes to their content. On top of that, members cannot see who their subscribers are, nor even the total count.
So subscribing is a one-way, private action. You can quietly follow the posts of a competitor, a former manager, or someone whose work you admire but have never spoken to, with zero social friction. Nobody gets a "you have a new subscriber" alert.
That privacy is part of why the bell is a good research tool. You can build a small, silent list of people worth learning from without turning it into a public relationship.
It also means the bell is safe to use liberally without worrying about signaling anything. There is no "seen" receipt, no notification, no public list. Compare that to liking or commenting on every post from someone you are studying, which is very visible and can read as trying too hard. The bell gives you the same front-row access with none of the exposure, which is exactly what you want when you are quietly learning from a competitor or a leader in your space.
When ringing the bell is actually worth it
The bell earns its place in a narrow but real set of situations.
Use the filled bell for the few people whose posts you genuinely do not want to miss: a mentor, a sharp operator in your niche, someone whose comment sections are always worth joining. Because notifications arrive the moment they post, the bell is one of the best ways to reach a post early, and early engagement is where the useful conversations, and the visibility, tend to happen.
Use the outlined bell as a middle ground for people you like but do not need to track constantly. And skip it entirely for accounts you only mildly follow, or your notifications tab turns into noise.
If you are auditing your own presence rather than someone else's, the bell is not the metric to watch. Followers and who is actually subscribed to you are invisible by design, so focus on what you can see, like your follower count in the app, covered in how to see followers on LinkedIn, and on earning the kind of consistent, useful posting that makes people want to ring your bell in the first place. That reputation, not the bell itself, is what separates the accounts people subscribe to from the ones they scroll past, and it is the same thing a Top Voice badge is meant to signal.
Frequently asked questions
What does ringing the bell on LinkedIn mean?
It means subscribing to another member's content. When you tap the bell icon on someone's profile, LinkedIn sends you a notification each time that person publishes a new post. You must already follow or be connected to them for the bell to be available on their profile.
Does someone know if you ring their bell on LinkedIn?
No. LinkedIn does not notify a member when you subscribe to their content, and members cannot see who their subscribers are or the total number of subscribers they have. Ringing the bell is a private action visible only to you, so you can subscribe without any awkwardness.
What is the difference between the dark bell and the outlined bell?
The two states control how much you get notified. A filled dark grey bell means you will be notified about all new posts from that member. A white bell with a grey outline means you will only be notified about their top posts, which is the lighter-touch option.
Does ringing the bell boost that person's reach?
Not directly. The bell is a notification tool, not a feed-ranking lever. It pings you when someone posts, but it does not change how the algorithm decides to show their content in the main feed. Subscribing helps you catch posts you would otherwise miss; it does not inflate the creator's distribution.
Written by the team building Commenti on real LinkedIn growth data. Found an error? Tell us and we’ll fix it. Accuracy beats winning.
Co-founder, Apna Project
Co-founder at Apna Project, where he helps founders and agencies turn ideas into products. Writes here on LinkedIn growth and what actually earns attention in a comment section. Commenti is the LinkedIn comment automation tool by Ampliflow.
You open someone's LinkedIn profile and notice a small bell icon next to their photo. Tap it and you have "rung the bell". So what does ringing the bell on LinkedIn actually mean, and is it worth doing?
The short version: the bell is a subscribe button. Ringing it tells LinkedIn to notify you when that person posts. It is one of the platform's quieter features, and it is genuinely useful once you know what it does and, just as importantly, what it does not do.
What ringing the bell on LinkedIn means
Per LinkedIn's own Help documentation, the bell icon lets you subscribe to another member's content. Once you subscribe, you receive a notification in your Notifications tab each time that member publishes something new.
There is one prerequisite. The bell only appears after you already follow or connect with the person. LinkedIn puts the icon to the right of their profile photo, so if you do not see it, check that you are following them first. If you are unsure whether you should follow or connect in the first place, we untangle that in follow vs connect on LinkedIn.
So "ring the bell" is just a friendly name for "subscribe to this person's posts". The metaphor comes from the same bell-icon convention other platforms use for notifications.
The two bell states, and what each one sends
The bell is not a simple on-or-off switch. It has two levels, and the icon changes to show which one you picked.
Tapping the bell cycles through these states, and you can turn it off entirely by toggling it back. Nothing about this is permanent, so it is safe to experiment.