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Connect your LinkedIn account

WriteMars publishes to and engages from LinkedIn through a channel you connect with OAuth. A channel is one connected LinkedIn identity, scoped to the workspace you connect it in.

Where to connect​

Open Settings -> Channels from the sidebar. The page header is Channels, and it splits your connections into tabs. The tab you connect under decides what the channel is for:

  • Publishing accounts — used to publish variants; also usable for auto-engagement.
  • Engagement accounts — used only to like, comment, or repost after a post is live. No scheduling.

Each tab shows Connected accounts on the left and Available platforms on the right. Admins and Owners also see an Overview tab.

Connect the channel​

  1. Open Settings -> Channels and pick the tab you want — Publishing accounts to schedule from this channel, or Engagement accounts for likes and comments only.
  2. Under Available platforms, click the Connect your LinkedIn account card.
  3. Read the panel note — Important: Login to your LinkedIn account before connecting to WriteMars. — and sign in to the correct LinkedIn account in your browser first.
  4. Click Connect.
  5. Approve the permissions on LinkedIn. While WriteMars finishes linking, you'll see Connecting LinkedIn / "We are securely linking this LinkedIn profile to your workspace."
  6. You land back on Channels with a green Account connected alert: "You can use this account when publishing or managing engagement from this workspace." The channel now appears under Connected accounts.

If it fails, you'll see a Couldn't connect warning instead — "If it keeps failing, confirm you're signed into the correct account on that network." The OAuth screen uses whichever LinkedIn session is active in your browser, so log the wrong one out (or use another browser profile) and try again.

Connect as personal or company​

If you're an Admin or Owner, the connect panel shows a Connect as choice with two options:

  • My personal account — the channel stays yours unless you share it later.
  • Company account — the channel belongs to the whole workspace: visible to every member, run by all Admins and the Owner, and open to member proposals.
Company account is an ownership setting, not a LinkedIn Company Page

Company account changes who in your workspace can use and manage the channel. It does not connect a LinkedIn Company Page — the connection is always your personal LinkedIn identity. WriteMars requests only the w_member_social publishing scope and never posts to a Company Page.

Members can only connect My personal account. Who can see, use, and change each channel is covered in Sharing and permissions.

Token status and expiry​

LinkedIn access tokens are short-lived and, unlike X, LinkedIn issues no refresh token — the ~60-day access token is the connection. When it expires, WriteMars cannot renew it silently; the channel needs a fresh Connect.

When a token can't be used — expired, revoked, or after repeated auth failures — the channel pauses. Publishing and engagement through it are blocked until it's reconnected. A scheduled publish on a paused channel is never marked failed — WriteMars defers it and retries automatically, noting the deferral in the post's Activity, so it goes out once you reconnect. On a paused channel you'll see:

Paused — the connection keeps failing. Reconnect the account to resume.

Reconnecting​

The ⋯ menu on a channel row has a Disconnect / Reconnect toggle, but that only soft-toggles the channel on and off — it does not fetch a new token. To actually restore a paused or expired LinkedIn channel, re-run the Connect flow for the same account:

  1. Sign in to the same LinkedIn account in your browser.
  2. Open Settings -> Channels, click the Connect your LinkedIn account card, and click Connect.
  3. Approve on LinkedIn.

WriteMars matches on the platform account and updates the stored token in place — no duplicate channel is created, and a successful reconnect clears the auth-failure pause automatically.

Where Admins see channel health​

Admins and Owners get the Overview tab, which lists every channel shared with the workspace and a status badge per row:

  • Healthy — the token is good.
  • Token expiring — expires soon; reconnect ahead of time.
  • Token expired — reconnect to resume.
  • Reconnect needed — auth is failing; re-run Connect.
  • Paused / Disconnected — blocked until resumed or reconnected.

A Needs attention summary card at the top aggregates the channels that need a reconnect, so you can catch a broken LinkedIn connection before a scheduled post fails. Private channels appear here as counts only.