How to get the most out of LinkedIn: the latest features

Business page features

Let’s start with 4 new features that can help expand the reach of your LinkedIn page in a B2B or B2C context.

Custom CTA Analytics

Company Page visitors can now do more than just follow your page. LinkedIn recently added a new range of call to action buttons: contact us, learn more, register, sign up and visit website. The great thing about this is that LinkedIn also provides the analytics data on the left-hand side of your Page Admin home, or at the top of you ‘Visitor Analytics’ tab. This dashboard will provide a deeper insight into how many visitors are clicking through. The customization option can be a big help when it comes to generating leads. You’ll be able to guide the visitor to a more specific outcome.

“With the Custom CTA Analytics, you’ll be able to guide the visitor to a more specific outcome and get deeper insights from it”

Employee Engagement Notifications

As a LinkedIn Page admin you can now notify your employees when an important update takes place. With employees we refer to the members who have listed your organization as their place of work in their experience section on their profile. Your employees can be your most powerful ambassadors, so this is a very welcome tool to increase their engagement with the company’s page. When they are alerted of important posts, they will be nudged to react, comment or share your company’s update.

“With Employee Engagement Notifications, you’ll increase the engagement of your most powerful ambassadors”

An important one to take into account here is that the notifications are limited to once every seven days. Nobody likes a notification overload, right? Not even your employees. Users can opt out of these notifications at any time. If you choose to notify them, consider the following:

• How fresh is the content?
• Is it something many employees are able to relate to?
• Will they look like thought leaders if they share the post and will your brand benefit from this increase in reach?
   

LinkedIn Live

Even though this feature is still in a testing phase with restricted access, you can now broadcast video content through LinkedIn’s livestream format. LinkedIn is currently testing this livestream feature, so only a select group of members and Pages have access. With LinkedIn Live you can broadcast video content, giving brands and influencers the opportunity to connect with audiences in real time. There are some guidelines and restrictions which come with it though. For starters, take into account that this feature can’t be used for selling or for promotional purposes. Next, you’re not allowed to pre-record your content and the duration must be longer than 10 - 15 minutes. If the content is any shorter there won't be enough time for the audience to grow and interact.

“The LinkedIn Live feature allows brands and influencers to connect with their audiences in real time”

If your brand would like to be considered for early access, you can still apply to become a live video broadcaster. Once you’ve been granted access, there are a fair amount of guidelines to consider. For instance, you must go live within 30 days of getting access to ensure LinkedIn doesn’t remove you from the beta testing. The platform of course wants to make sure the newest features are tested with qualitative content in order to launch to a high standard. Here you can find more information about this feature. If you weren’t selected in the testing phase, there is still of course Instagram or Facebook to use as a livestream platform.

Events

The name pretty much speaks for itself. With LinkedIn Events you can organize professional offline gatherings and send out invitations online. This can be compared to the Facebook events we all know, but within a business context of LinkedIn. This makes it easier for users to grow their networks and build actual personal relationships with each other. This feature is being gradually rolled out to all of the LinkedIn members. Anyone can however already join an event once they receive an invitation.

“With LinkedIn Events you can organize professional offline gatherings and send out online invitations.”

Ads and targeting

LinkedIn is a very interesting platform for advertising. In our previous blog post, we already mentioned that the cost is much higher compared to other social platforms but the quality is a lot better. It is definitely worth considering LinkedIn, and while doing so, experiment with the newest features added to the platform. Here are 5 to take a look at:

Square & vertical video Ads

LinkedIn is also becoming more ‘video-friendly’. The platform is facilitating more audiovisual formats to be used for content and ads. Square and vertical video Ads - just like on Facebook - are two of the newest formats. Feeling a bit lost in the video world? In our previous blog post you can find some tips and tricks to help get you started.

Interest targeting + Bing

With interest targeting you can now reach a more relevant audience based on the topics that users read, comment on, like, follow or share on LinkedIn. There are more than 200 professional interest categories to select from including AI. The professional search behavior of Bing is also being used to enhance the results. Using interest targeting will most likely lead to a larger audience seeing your content. This is great when the main objective of your campaign is to increase (brand) awareness or consideration.

“Interest targeting allows you to reach a more relevant audience based on the topics that users read, comment on, like, follow or share on LinkedIn.”

Lookalike audiences

Following on from Facebook and Google, LinkedIn now also allows you to create lookalike audiences. With this feature you can target people with similar characteristics to your existing audience segments (e.g. website visitors) to help you expand your reach.

Audience templates

LinkedIn also has pre-populated sets of targeting options you can now integrate when setting up your campaign flow. This is a handy timesaver with the added benefit of using tried and tested segment settings.

Nurture targeting

It is now possible to retarget previous leads who have interacted one way or another with your ads or content in the past. Basically this means you can tailor the experience based on the actions that members take with your content. This helps you to create long term relationships with prospects and nurture them on a regular basis with relevant messages about your brand through content and ads.

“With nurture targeting you can tailor the experience based on the actions that members take with your content.”

Let’s recap

LinkedIn already has nearly 660 million members in more than 200 countries worldwide and is continuing to grow rapidly. This makes LinkedIn a key platform for social media marketing, especially within a professional setting. If you are using the platform for a brand and it is quite new to you, we have your back. We’ve given away all of its secrets in our previous blog post. Start with the step by step basic best practices and further experiment with the newest features mentioned above.

Need some help increasing your LinkedIn page reach? Contact us.