Small Businesses have a world of opportunity in LinkedIn, and here are the LinkedIn Updates and features you need to know about, which we have curated as a way for you to stay up to date, as well as use some of the oldies but goodies! The Social Media platform is developing all the time, so it’s important to know what impacts you, and how you are able to optimise your presence on LinkedIn.
1. LinkedIn Influencer Marketing
LinkedIn has recently released a statement pushing influencer marketing on the platform. It tells users it’s a great way to reach key decision-makers in your industry. When you partner with a LinkedIn influencer, you’re able to tap into their audience and reach people who are already interested in what you have to offer.
To get started with LinkedIn influencer marketing, you need to identify the right influencers for your brand.
An “Influencer” on LinkedIn has good authority and is likely to have over 1,000 followers (at the very minimum), and of course, you would want the influencer’s audience to be aligned with your target market.
What does this mean for you?
Once you’ve identified your potential influencers, reach out to them and see if they’re interested in partnering with you. You can offer them compensation, free products or services, or exposure to your audience.
Here are 3 examples:
- Offer a place on your podcast as exposure to your audience, in return for them talking about your service favourably in a LinkedIn video.
- Ask an influencer to record a video demo about your product or service and get them to specify what they liked about it, in return for your product or service for free.
- Ask them to make a social media post about your product or service and how it can positively impact their audience if they were to purchase it.
When you’re working with a LinkedIn influencer, it’s important to give them the freedom to create content that is authentic to their brand and resonates with their audience. You should also promote the influencer’s content within your own LinkedIn presence as this will create more eyeballs on your content.
2. Video Marketing in LinkedIn
LinkedIn Updates us on video marketing and has proven that video marketing is another great way to reach your target audience on LinkedIn. Videos are more engaging than text-based posts, and they can help you to tell your brand story more effectively.
When creating videos for LinkedIn, make sure they are good quality and highly valuable to your audience; considering their pain points, wants, needs, motivations and desired outcomes; paying close attention to creating an emotional connection.
Examples of videos you may wish to consider:
- Testimonials/Case studies
- Promo videos
- Explainer Videos
- Demo Videos
- How to Videos
All of the above will showcase your uniqueness and spark an emotion in your audience; and it can even be fun or funny content that suits your brand.
Here are a few tips for creating effective LinkedIn videos:
- Keep your videos short and to the point. Aim for videos that are no longer than 2 minutes long.
- Add subtitles and captions to your videos so that they are accessible to everyone.
- Promote your videos on your LinkedIn Profile and in your LinkedIn groups if you are using them.
3. Fully Automated Ad Campaigns
Not all LinkedIn updates are up and running as yet, and at the time of writing, neither is this one, but we’re looking forward to its roll out!
LinkedIn is further integrating AI into its advertising tools, introducing a feature named “Accelerate.” This function streamlines the entire campaign creation journey, and in a few minutes, we’ll be able to get an entire ad campaign drafted, simply by supplying a URL.
Watch this space – it’s being tested!
4. Check out competitor advertising
One of the more recent LinkedIn Updates – LinkedIn has made it really easy for businesses to look at the advertising of their competitors – so why not check our what your competitors are up to?
How to do it:
Go to your competitors business page > Click on Posts > Click on Ads
Dive in and check out:
a) What they are advertising for
b) When they tend to advertise
c) What their key messages are
d) Who they’re advertising to
e) What their landing pages are like
This will build up a great picture for you.
5. LinkedIn Post Ideas
Struggling for post ideas for your company page?
This is a noteworthy feature that you might want to use – Post Ideas
LinkedIn offers a number of post ideas for you to consider. You can scroll through a few options, and find the one that is right for you! Here’s what it looks like on the page – so look out for it.
6. Who do you want to see your LinkedIn Post?
Don’t forget to make use of simple features, like who can see you post.
When you start your post, you can click on the down arrow next to you name and there are a range of options as to who you want to see you post…
Of course, selecting everyone is going to give you further reach but you might find at times, your post lends itself to a more ring fenced audience. It’s most certainly a consideration!
7. LinkedIn Voice Messages
LinkedIn voice messages isn’t a new feature nor really a trending one either, but has a great response rate!
By sending a voice message via DMs to your recent connections (or indeed existing ones) can not only make it personal to them but can also create more engagement.
Why not give it a try – send 10 voice notes out this week and see what happens!
Here’s where to find it on mobile…
How to use these LinkedIn Features and LinkedIn Updates together.
You can use these LinkedIn updates and features together to create complimentary marketing activity to help you reach your target audience and achieve your business goals.
Examples:
- Partner with a LinkedIn influencer to create a video testimonial about your product or service.
- Promote that video on your own LinkedIn channels and in your LinkedIn groups
- Be sure to check out competitor ads first so you can cut through their noise!
- Why not send the video to your ideal customer connections with a voice note about arranging a meeting?
What one thing will you do to ensure you start to use the features to get visible?
How can you use the features in conjunction to optimise your visibility and reach?
Want to read more about LinkedIn – here’s an article on LinkedIn Creator Mode.
