With nearly 800 million users and prolific feature launches to help businesses drive results, LinkedIn is a smart marketing choice for any brand in 2022. While platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram often get more media buy love, LinkedIn has a built-in audience of professionals catered to specific industries to help you build connections and strengthen business ties.
So which LinkedIn features should you leverage? That largely depends on the goal of your company’s strategy. Is it to gain a wider audience or reach? Are you looking for new ways to conduct business since conferences and in-person meetings have come to a halt lately? Or are you simply seeking out vendors or new team members, a widely used function of LinkedIn? We explore some ways to best take advantage of this professional, genuinely productive environment.
LinkedIn Live
LinkedIn Live is the platform’s unique spin on the live stream video trend, allowing you to broadcast video conversations with a professional community and share original content on industry topics to increase engagement and inform. On average, LinkedIn Live videos get 7X more reactions and 24X more comments than native video, so you have more chance of reaching organic viewers and gaining audience share, especially within your industry.
In order to become a broadcaster, you must first request access from LinkedIn and meet certain criteria (for example, you must have at least 150 followers/connections) to ensure a safe and quality learning environment for users. If you’ve been steadily building a network on LinkedIn and are already creating original posts or publishing articles, you should be an ideal candidate.
Video Meetings
Virtual networking goes next level with LinkedIn’s Video Meeting feature. The built-in video function in LinkedIn Messages is meant for one-on-one meetings so you can connect in the moment to build stronger bonds with potential clients or business partners without going offsite. Since LinkedIn’s brand promise is already built around networking, leveraging Video Meetings can lend your brand professionalism and credibility.
LinkedIn Polls
A fresh alternative to targeted focus groups or email blasts is LinkedIn Polls. While not a new feature on LinkedIn, it’s a shrewd way to connect with your audience or professionals in your industry in a genuine way by asking their opinions so you can understand trends in the market directly from the source. Not only do Polls drive engagement – it’s a short piece of content with minimal investment, after all – people like having their voice heard. And you can provide further value by engaging with commenters on your post and on related posts so you build trust organically and authentically. Polls help position your brand as one that actively listens to its audience to give them more of what they really want.
As LinkedIn continues to be a rising star and evolve as a sought-out social platform, consider its many business-related features as a dynamic marketing tool for your brand. Networking, strengthening professional ties, attracting a larger audience and establishing thought leadership in your industry are all smart goals LinkedIn can help you achieve in 2022.
Need help with a LinkedIn marketing strategy for your brand? Let’s talk. Please reach out to Barbara Wray at barbara@wickmarketing.com or (512) 479-9834.
