LinkedIn is known amongst B2B professionals as a sleeping giant. Despite its highly engaged member base, functionality and innovation across the platform is often frustratingly slow. That said, this dinosaur of a social network is catching pace. And it’s come just in time to help inform and shape your 2021 B2B social media marketing strategy.
Here Chris Norton, Managing Director of leading insight lead communications agency, Prohibition, shares the top 4 LinkedIn updates that marketers such pay attention to in 2021:
LinkedIn Events
What are LinkedIn Events?
LinkedIn Events aren’t brand new, but you can now do more with them. They work similarly to Facebook event pages, meaning you can market events more effectively on LinkedIn. New functions mean you can invite your connections to attend events you’re hosting, as well as post up to twice a week on your event page. Event attendees are also given reminders 7 days, 3 days and 15 mins before an event starts as a notification and in their inbox, making it easier than ever to keep your event front of mind.
How can I use LinkedIn Events for my business?
The new features let you add in all the info about your event and then link out to an external platform such as Zoom, Webex, or LinkedIn Live if this is enabled. It’s ideal for webinars and virtual meets, and is transforming networking events and opportunities across the channel. There are a host of new features available to help streamline online events, including:
- Collect and download attendee details – businesses are now able to link a registration form to collect contact details of registered attendees and then download the list from the company page
- Grow audience organically – companies can use new organic features to promote their event to the right audience type, this includes personalise event recommendations and sharing options
- Promote events with ads – it is now easier to reach new audiences and optimise the number of attendees with LinkedIn’s Single Image Ads. Good news, as followers are reported to be 61% more likely to convert when they are targeted with both organic and paid content types.
- Retarget event attendees – LinkedIn has also introduced a function that allows businesses to retarget members who have registered for any LinkedIn Events.
What are the benefits of LinkedIn Events?
LinkedIn events provide a new way to engage with a business’ target audience on social media. The function can be utilised for launches and key events, helping to build a bigger peak of interest on social media, whilst new features – such as downloading of lists and retargeting – could be used to engage and build a more sustained level of communications with prospects and targets post-event.
LinkedIn Stories
What are LinkedIn Stories?
LinkedIn launched its version of Stories worldwide at the end of October. It works in a similar way to Instagram and Facebook stories, and like these, is only available in app, not on desktop.
How can I use LinkedIn Stories for my business?
LinkedIn Stories contain the usual features we see across other social networking sites, such as tagging people and stickers, meaning you can engage with and create more diverse content with business page followers. However, the new feature doesn’t have location tagging enabled and has a question of the day featured but this is set daily by LinkedIn and can’t be changed. Something we think will develop over the months ahead.
What are the benefits of LinkedIn Stories?
LinkedIn stories don’t seem to be hugely popular with organisations just yet, but there is a whole host of potential for forward thinking B2B brands. Whilst functionality is limited in that you can’t advertise using stories or include swipe up links, stories do offer a great opportunity to document and share moments, behind the scenes, or exciting live content, until functionality improves.
LinkedIn My Company
What is LinkedIn My Company?
A new tab on LinkedIn company pages is launching this month and will offer ‘a trusted, employee-only space to help them join the conversations that matter most’ – essentially helping companies to create socially engaged colleagues.
How can I use LinkedIn My Company for my business?
LinkedIn My Company is ideal for anyone looking to improve stakeholder and employee engagement across LinkedIn. It also acts as an important tool to share updates, team achievements and to encourage cross communication online.
The new tab will feature on both company pages and personal LinkedIn profiles and will include:
- Trending co-worker content
- The ability to celebrate co-workers
- Opportunities to connect with other employees on LinkedIn
The Curated Posts feature, will allow Admins of a page to curate content for employees to share organically on LinkedIn and Twitter, and measure impact with LinkedIn insights.
What are the benefits of LinkedIn My Company?
The new feature will be a great way of amplifying important news and campaign content for businesses. For example, when announcing new contracts or a campaign, organisation can now add this to the curated content feature and increase visibility.
LinkedIn Retargeting ads
What are LinkedIn Retargeting ads?
LinkedIn ads now allow businesses to retarget people who have previously:
- Visited a page on their website
- Viewed their video ads
- Opened or submitted a lead gen form ad
- Engaged with their LinkedIn company page
- RSVPd to their LinkedIn event
How can I use LinkedIn Retargeting ads for my business?
The retargeting ads are fairly sophisticated and act as a great tool to convert warm leads, and encourage more people down the sales funnel. This is further supported with website targeting, which starts monitoring web visits as soon as the LinkedIn Insight tag is added to a company website. Once set up and running, the Insight tag allows businesses to see more data around their conversions, including demographic insights and web visitor profiles.
Companies can also upload a database, or use a database from a third-party platform. The compatible platforms are:
- Axciom
- Bombaro
- HG Insights
- HubSpot
- LiveRamp
- Marketo
- Microsoft Dynamocs 365
- Oracle Eloqua
- Salesforce Advertising Studio
- Zapier
- What are the benefits of LinkedIn Retargeting ads?
Alternatively, marketers can upload lists, but these need to feature email, first name, last name and mobile IDs.
What are the benefits of LinkedIn Retargeting?
This new feature allows businesses to access more retargeting options to help convert audiences. It enables more sophisticated and strategic social advertising across the platform, which means companies can now engage with people visiting their pages, serve more targeting advertising and increase engagement with content.
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