As we reach the halfway mark in 2020, organisations at scale are beginning to realise the full potential of LinkedIn and the carefully curated ways the platform has helped companies stay engaged with their customers, prospects and employees whilst maintaining a seamless user experience.
Below we take a look at some key features that will continue to pave the way for professionals to enjoy an informative environment that is largely unaffected by algorithms influencing organic impressions in comparison to it’s more informal counterparts, Facebook and Instagram.
LinkedIn Live
What would seem like an overdue addition to the platform, businesses can now stream live video to their network in real-time on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn Live has provided a clear opportunity for companies to build valuable relationships with prospects by equipping pages with the tools to effectively reach relevant people who have joined the platform with the intention of discovering professional connections, learning and engaging on topics within their field.
With 76% of B2B buyers having used webinars in the past 12 months to make a purchase decision, this content type will prove invaluable if used correctly. LinkedIn Live is currently the fastest growing content type on the platform with 7x more reactions and 24x more comments on streams vs native video.
Invite to follow
This undeniably valuable feature was removed a while back but was recently re-introduced to the delight of B2B business page owners in particular. Pages are issued with 100 invite credits per month that page admins can use to invite their personal connections. When an invite is accepted, the credit is returned, and credits do not roll over.
It is important to note that people can only be invited once and opt-out options are also available, meaning LinkedIn users can choose not to receive requests at all.
Conversation Ads
Building onto the current message ads (sponsored InMail) in order to offer a more personal and engaged experience, Conversation Ads focus on allowing targeted members to “choose their own path” with multiple calls-to-action (sign up, visit website, register for webinar etc). This can also be integrated with existing features like lead gen forms and conversion tracking.
Staying in line with LinkedIn’s high-quality user experience, messages can only be sent when one’s prospect is active on LinkedIn and receptive to relevant messaging. Insights also allow you to gain a deeper understanding of your target audiences’ journeys with detailed click reporting.
LinkedIn Polls
An exciting and simple way to prompt engagement from your company’s audience, LinkedIn Polls give your audience a voice as well as an opportunity for you to derive valuable insights and sentiments on current affairs or hot topics within your industry.
Polls allows you to pose a medium-form question with a 140 character limit and 4 short response options. You are also able to select a duration from 4 options ranging from 1 day to 2 weeks. Once you have set up your poll, you’re able to add a preamble introducing the poll to your audience.
Employee Notifications
A valuable tool for bolstering any employee advocacy program, page admins can now alert employees when new posts go live on the company page.
To truly harness the power of employee advocacy, an organization needs to equip their team members with relevant content that is easily shareable and positions them as opinion leaders or valuable sources of information amongst their networks.
This prompt is limited to once a week to ensure it does not infringe on the LinkedIn user experience.
LinkedIn is an exciting space to explore as it continues to deliver a fantastic array of tools for businesses to leverage their relationships with their audiences. If growing your business’ audience and keeping them engaged is important to you, get in touch with us at info@mark1.co.za.
Tayla Calcott – Social Media Manager at Mark1