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LinkedIn has become a valuable marketing tool for many businesses, especially those selling to other businesses. With over 720 million users, LinkedIn is a professional platform where business leaders create content to attract not only customers but also prospective employees. Some people reading this may already have a LinkedIn strategy in place, while others will be reading this to learn how to set one up. In this guide, we will show you how these new LinkedIn features work and whether you should consider adding the platform to your marketing strategy.
Let’s explore the new features!
For the introverts among us, hearing this very phrase leads to heart palpitations and extreme nerves. Back in the day, small business owners could lurk in the shadows and run their businesses without having to step into the spotlight. Today, consumers want to know brands better than ever before, which means we need to step out of our comfort zones.
Live video is incredibly valuable because it provides consumers a chance to connect with businesses, ask questions, and learn more about the company. LinkedIn says that 24x more comments are made on its live videos compared to standard videos.
Unfortunately, this feature isn’t available to all users immediately. In order to use this feature, you’ll need to go through the application process. LinkedIn considers your audience size, video history, engagement history, the status of your page (whether it’s in good standing), and 2FA (two-factor authentication).
If accepted, you’ll then need to find a third-party streaming tool since LinkedIn essentially hosts the live video rather than providing the tools to create it. The more live videos you create, the more likely you are to generate interest around your company page. Why not get started today?
It’s one thing to engage customers, but another problem entirely keeping employees engaged. LinkedIn believes that content is more engaging and shareable for employees when it comes from their own company, which is possible using the My Company tab.
When using this tab, pay attention to the Recommend tool. As a Page admin, you can suggest trending articles and curate content. Employees control what they receive through the Content Suggestions tool. You curate the right content, employees engage, and they share it with others.
How do you know whether this new feature is working? Well, LinkedIn has the answer through the new section in analytics. Once in the My Company tab, you’ll see analytics pertaining to this feature so you can see whether reach and engagement have improved.
We mentioned that employees are more likely to engage with the work of their co-workers. Compared to a random brand, the rate of employees sharing your own company’s content is 14x higher.
We all got excited when LinkedIn decided to add product pages, but now the platform is taking it one step further with the addition of Lead Gen Forms. How does it work? Many customers dislike filling out online forms because they don’t want to manually enter all of their details into the fields. As a business yourself, you recognize that time is precious, and people have better things to do instead of entering basic details about themselves into an online form.
The Lead Gen Form system with LinkedIn automatically fills the details of the user into the form. After clicking on a product, their details are added to the form so they’re only one click away from becoming a lead. In the modern marketing world, it’s all about accommodating prospective customers/clients as much as possible. With the form already filled, users are more inclined to click through because the chore has been removed from the process.
As time goes on, this could prove a valuable addition for businesses. Suddenly, you can access the 720-million strong audience and generate leads at no cost. This opens the door for further audience segmentation, ad targeting, product development, content creation, and research.
Some companies want to make the brand more personable, which is something you can achieve with name pronunciation. It might seem simple, but this allows users to get closer to employees while at the same time making your employees feel valued. Essentially, the idea is to record a short audio clip and then upload it to the profile of employees. Once uploaded, users see a little audio button next to the name of employees. After clicking, they hear the recorded audio and learn the pronunciation of the name.
According to LinkedIn, small features like this are what allow businesses to generate an inclusive workplace. Not only can you add the audio file for your workers, but you can also encourage everyone in the community to do so too. Suddenly, the sales team knows the pronunciation of leads and can create a stronger connection with them.
Let’s not forget, one of the reasons Steph Curry decided not to sign a deal with Nike is because the representatives pronounced his name incorrectly. With correct pronunciation for meetings and interviews, your business commits to inclusion and sets an example to the rest of the industry.
Currently, this feature is only available on the Android and iOS mobile apps. Unfortunately, the desktop website doesn’t allow for recording and editing just yet.
Earlier in 2021, the swipe-up feature was added to Stories for all Pages. At this point, the feature is a luxury afforded to businesses only. Therefore, it’s not available to personal accounts. Just recently, LinkedIn included this new feature in its blog for a second time which suggests that not many businesses are taking advantage of the new feature.
This feature allows you to add links to specific posts. From here, users swipe up and access the links with very little effort. After creating your story, you should see a link icon right at the top. From here, add your link and proceed. After sharing the Story, users can swipe up to see links and click through. Not all users will click through, but there’s no reason why you can’t give them the option.
Before going live, be sure to preview the link (the last thing you want is to send people to the wrong page!).
If you’re looking for engagement with an audience, as well as opinions, there’s no better way to achieve it than with a poll. Whether you want to gather genuine customer opinions or know what toppings people like on their toast, a poll is a useful feature for businesses across all industries.
Too often, the world of marketing is shrouded in mystery and unknowns. In reality, you can make everything much clearer by simply asking your audience questions. What email sign-off do they prefer? What features of services do they value the most? What services are they likely to need as 2021 progresses?
In some cases, a simple poll opens the door to further conversations. As long as you keep an eye on results and engage with customers, polls are an effective method of gathering opinions, learning more about the industry, and better understanding the behavior and attitudes of the audience.
When you think of reactions, your mind probably automatically goes to Facebook since this is the biggest social platform on the planet. Now, LinkedIn wants to join the party and allow users to react to posts rather than just liking and sharing them. The following reactions are now available:
There are two reasons why this is great news for businesses and company pages - first, it allows you to learn more about customers and they don’t even need to type a message. With reactions alone, your audience celebrates new products, shows curiosity in certain topics, and supports or loves decisions.
The second reason being that you can generate exposure and learn through tailored posts. For example, ask the audience to give their opinion by using a certain reaction. What aspect do they like most about your service (or services in your niche)? With an option for each reaction, you quickly learn more about your service and the industry as a whole. You could even create a fun post and ask what Will Ferrell from a selection of his characters the audience feels like today (or something along these lines).
LinkedIn is growing, and these valuable features are proof of the effort the company is investing to keep advertisers and businesses happy on the platform. Even after this, we could also point to the carousel posts. You might think that this is impossible on LinkedIn, but some people are creating ads akin to carousel posts through LinkedIn documents. Since users scroll through documents, you’re essentially creating a carousel post but on a platform that doesn’t actually offer them.
With this in mind and all the other new features, which is your favorite?
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