Need Linkedin?: Why Does My Business
Need Linkedin?: Why Does My Business
Need Linkedin?: Why Does My Business
NEED LINKEDIN?
LinkedIn is so much more than a place to nd a job or an online resume. Its quickly becoming the go-to content publishing platform for the professional mindset. As more professionals are spending more and more time looking for new content and keeping in touch with their networks, it brings with it an opportunity for marketers. The idea of being a sophisticated marketer comes from the current state of the golden age of social media marketing and how it is
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FROM BRAND BUILDING, TO LEAD GENERATION, TO CONTENT MARKETING AND ADVERTISING, LINKEDIN CAN HELP YOU BUILD YOUR BUSINESS.
transforming into the enlightening era. No longer can marketers just do social, they need results and actionable insights in order to prove the value of their efforts. And no longer are we forced to take a spray and pray method to get our message heard in the noisy world of social. The technology is in place that allows us to take a much more rened approach, a sophisticated approach if you will, to social media marketing on the worlds largest professional network.
8:00 a.m.
Most LinkedIn members look for inspiration early in the day with peak consumption at 8:00 a.m.
Table of Contents
A NOTE TO THE SOPHISTICATED MARKETER WHY SHOULD I BE READING THIS GUIDE?
LinkedIn is so much more than a place to nd a job or an online resume. 3 go-to Its quickly becoming the content publishing platform for the professional mindset. As more professionals are spending more and more time looking for new content and keeping in touch with their networks, it brings with it an opportunity for marketers.
PART 6: PUBLISH
The idea of being a sophisticated WITH A PURPOSE: marketer comes from the current CONTENT state of the golden age of social MARKETING ON LINKEDIN media marketing and how it is
transforming into the enlightening era. No longer can marketers just do social, they need 4 results and actionable insights in order to prove PART 3: OPTIMIZING the value of their efforts. And no YOUR PROFILE longer are we forced to take a spray and pray method to get our message heard in the noisy world of social. The technology is in place that allows 1214 us to take a much more rened approach, a sophisticated approach PART 7: EXPAND if you will, to social media marketing YOUR TARGETED on the worlds largest professional REACH: network. ADVERTISING
5 6
PART 4: EXPAND YOUR NETWORK OF INFLUENCERS PART 5: EASILY KEEP YOUR FINGER ON THE PULSE
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25 SOCIAL MEDIA EXPERTS YOU NEED TO KNOW
ON LINKEDIN
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A Note to the
SOPHIsTICATED MARKETER
This type of marketer is grounded in timeless, Mad Men-era tactics and combines them with new, modern technology. What worked during the golden age of marketing still works today, but marketers need to adapt. Social media is their playground, content is their fuel, and platforms like LinkedIn are the new black. This guide was written with you in mind, the sophisticated marketer. Everything you need to know about marketing on LinkedIn, written both strategically, and instructionally. Its your one-stop shop to the vast opportunities that awaitincrease awareness, inuence perception, generate leads, and ultimately drive revenue with LinkedIn. Lets get started, shall we? Jason Miller The sophisticated marketer is someone who takes marketing techniques, both old and new, and executes them in an overall integrated marketing strategy. Senior Content Marketing Manager, LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
2012 was the year of social. 2013 was the year of content. And 2014 is the year where they come together. Social media no longer lives in a silo but instead is a vital component for the success of many marketing campaigns. With content fueling your social marketing, we have arrived at the age of truly integrated marketing strategy, and its being led by a new breed of sophisticated marketers.
Why should I be
This guide is a labor of love for us here at LinkedIn. We created it to be a one-stop shop for everything a marketer needs to know about getting the most value out of LinkedIn for themselves and their company. Its not just an instruction manual, but a strategic guide with lots of input from top thought leaders and LinkedIn marketing experts combined with the expertise of the LinkedIn Marketing Solutions team. And its all about how to truly tap into the potential and power of social media marketing. Thats because social media marketing is no longer
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Plus, all these professionals are highly receptive to relationship building. They demonstrate this in what they do while on the network. Time on LinkedIn isnt simply spent. Time on LinkedIn is invested in professional development. And its reected in the growing number of visits to and time spent on LinkedIn.
Our members investment is born out of their professional mindset. The professional mindset is aspirational. In other words, members are thinking about how to achieve their ambitions and further their careers. As a result, our members are highly receptive to advertising, content, and experiences that can help make them more knowledgeable and, ultimately, more successful.
259,000,000+
150 161 175 187 200 225 238
115
131
Q311 Q411 Q112 Q212 Q312 Q412 Q113 Q213 Q313 Q413
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LinkedIn is a platform enabling sophisticated marketers to forge relationships with these professionals. Its no wonder LinkedIn has quickly become the go-to content publishing platform for marketers. In fact, a survey of LinkedIn members found that LinkedIn is considered the most effective social network for delivering B2B content1. And research conducted by Investis IQ2 found that LinkedIn is the number-one social network for driving trafc to corporate websites.
As a growing number of professionals spend more time reading news and keeping in touch with their network through LinkedIn, you have an unprecedented opportunity to build and cultivate relationships with professionals the world over. And these relationships can translate into revenues. Since 2010, the number of B2B and B2C marketers generating sales via LinkedIn has grown consistently. U.S.-based agencies rate LinkedIn as the most important social media platform for new business. In fact, 50% of our members report they are more likely to buy from a company they engage with on LinkedIn. And a whopping 80 percent of LinkedIn members want to connect with companiesbecause those connections provide them opportunities to enhance their professional decision-making. All it takes is a sophisticated marketer who seizes the opportunity to engage them. What do we mean by a sophisticated marketer? The idea of being a sophisticated marketer comes from the transition of social media marketing from pure theory to effective use. But marketers cant just do social. Now they need to produce results and actionable insights in order to prove the value of their efforts. Fortunately we no longer are forced to take a spray-and-pray approach to getting our message heard in the noisy world of social. The technology is in place that allows us to adopt a much more rened sophisticatedapproach, if you will, to social media marketing, using the worlds largest professional network.
LINKEDIN CONSIDERED MOST EFFECTIVE FOR B2B LEAD GEN Among top performing organizations, % of B2B Marketers who rated the Social Media Site on effectiveness in generating leads 93% 84% 71% 56% LINKEDIN CONTINUES TO CONSISTENTLY GENERATE SALES FOR B2B MARKETERS Percentage of companies who acquired a B2B customer through that channel B2C MARKETERS ARE RAPIDLY DISCOVERING LINKEDIN Percentage of companies who acquired a B2C customer through that channel
1.5x
61% 45%
65%
2.0x
51% 39% 26%
2010
2011
2013
2010
2011
2013
1 2
Source: B2B Content Marketing report, Holger Schulze, 2013 Source: Dazeinfo
Sources: 2014 B2B Content Marketing Trends/ North America, Content Marketing Institute/ Marketing Profs. Webbiquity, Aug 27,2013. Content Marketing gets Social, Unisphere research, 2013. HubSpot, State of inbound Marketing 2010,2011,2012.
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In fact...
EXTEND Extend through social sharing and drive quality trafc and data to your sites
Accurate targeting, based on authentic data, is the foundation of the LinkedIn platform. LinkedIns targeting is highly accurate because it draws from actual prole data provided by and continually updated by our members. You can also target the 1st degree connections of specic members. And you can use their behavior on LinkedInlike what Groups they join, and how much they share and comment to inform targeting. Marketers can use our targeting data to tailor their messages and content.
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As the worlds largest professional network, LinkedIn is a powerful publishing platform. We help marketers directly engage LinkedIn members with content and experiences that are professionally relevant. Think of it as publishing with a purpose.
By using LinkedIn to build relationships with the worlds professionals, you can achieve a full range of marketing objectives: GENERATING AWARENESS INCREASING CONSIDERATION AND PREFERENCE DRIVING TRAFFIC AND LEADS BUILDING COMMUNITY CREATING ADVOCACY Thats because your campaigns will resonate more if theyre targeted to professionals with our targeted advertising products. Your content will have greater impact and sharing when its published in a professional context. And your effort will extend through the social sharing that happens naturally on LinkedIn. You can also use LinkedIns API to create custom branded experiences that allow members to engage using their LinkedIn login. This simplies the need for them to enter additional data. Even more importantly, by using the API to access LinkedIns rich data, you can tailor the user experience based on prole data and encourage virality by triggering your app to publish updates about a users activity on site. Plus, you can extend the quality trafc of LinkedIn professionals to your own branded sites. Embedding calls-to-action in your creative on LinkedIn ensures the ow of inuential, afuent and educated professionals to your own online properties.
As far as Im concerned, other social networks can have the cats and the memes and the OMGs. LinkedIn is about content and connection. As a professional marketer, thats what I care about most, and LinkedIn delivers every day. If youre not keeping up with the industry using LinkedIn Pulse, youre missing the heartbeat of whats going on in digital.
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Jay Baer, Social Media & Content Marketing Strategist, New York Times Best Selling Author, Keynote Speaker, Social Pros Podcast
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Perform branding and lead generation in tandem for ultimate effectiveness.
Some marketers approach branding and lead generation as standalone activities. But when it comes to striking the right marketing mix, its critical to balance branding with lead generation. Thats because strong branding paves the way for successful lead generation. After all, brand awareness is all about making prospective customers familiar with and knowledgeable of your brand. The goal is that they associate your brand with certain characteristics and qualities and recognizeand trustyour brand. Ideally, you want your brand to be seen as a trusted and credible authority on a chosen category, topic or issue. With that foundation in place, prospects are more open to responding to your ads, content and offers when you are trying to generate leads. In fact, the most successful marketers take steps to ensure their branding and lead generation strategies are working in lockstep. LinkedIn Marketing Solutions can help you address both branding and lead generation in an integrated, effective way. .
LinkedIn is the only platform that the majority of B2B marketers consider to be effective.
Content Marketing Institute 2014 Content Marketing Research Report
Solutions
Solution LinkedIn Display and Text Ads Sponsored InMail Company Page Showcase Pages Follow Company Ads Company Updates Sponsored Updates SlideShare Content Ads Custom API Solutions LinkedIn Groups LinkedIn Partners
Branding
Branding
Lead Generation
Lead Generation
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Now that you understand the power of marketing on LinkedIn, let us highlight ve strategic marketing opportunities. Well explore these in greater detail in Part 6 and 7:
1. COMPANY PAGES: The best relationships are rooted in great conversationsand your tool for starting those conversations is the Company Update on your Company Page. Its no wonder Company Pages have evolved from a nice-to-have to a need-to-have. Through a Company Page, you can market your business to the LinkedIn community, telling your companys story and giving customers and prospects a place to learn about your business, your employees, and your brand. 2. COMPANY UPDATES: What resonates most with followers and drives engagement? When you communicate with them in a relevant and personal way. And through Company Updates, sent from your Company Page, you can do that by tailoring your company status update to your followers professional interests. Specically, you can deliver highly targeted content into the feed of LinkedIn members, increasing their engagement with and loyalty to your brand. 3. SPONSORED UPDATES: While organic company updates are a terric way to connect with your existing company followers, Sponsored Updates allow you to extend your reach by delivering updates into the feeds of members beyond those already following your company. 4. DISPLAY ADVERTISING: Sophisticated marketers understand that they must combine push and pull marketing to reach their target audience. For push marketing on LinkedIn, you can display ads on various LinkedIn pages, including prole pages, home pages, inbox, search results pages, and groups pages. With LinkedIn Premium Display Advertising, you can take advantage of an uncluttered, premium environment to reach a high-quality professional audience seeking insights and information. Or you can drive new customers to your business with our easy-to-use, self-serve CPC LinkedIn Ads platform that allows you to get your message in front of your audience in just minutes. 5. INMAIL: Through InMail, you can reach anyone on LinkedIn without an introduction or contact information. You get professional, credible outreach with your LinkedIn prole attached.
28% No Integration
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Founder and CEO of Copyblogger Media LI: Do you regulary check your Pulse feed? If so, how do you use it? BC: Ive just started following the Marketing Strategies category on Pulse, and its a treasure-trove of content all in one place. This has become a great resource not only for staying up to date on the latest ideas from others, but also fuels our own content sharing on other social networks.
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Optimizing
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This infographic highlights all the opportunities for getting the most from your prole.
YOUR PROFIlE
such as SlideShare presentaions, videos, and infographics to your prole is a fantastic way to showcase visual assets to prole visitors. How Your Company Can Benefit from an Optimized Profile It goes without saying that your company and all of its employees should optimize their LinkedIn proles. After all, an optimized prole can boost the visibility of your company and its content in the search resultsboth on and off the network. Thats because search engines like Google scour pages and URLs for keywords, and LinkedIn proles offer many opportunities to embed keywords, such as within the LinkedIn URL, other URLs you list within your prole, job titles and descriptions, and content links you include. So if your company and its employees have optimized their proles, you could very well gain an advantage when prospective customers are searching for companies, products and services like yours.
PART 3: Optimizing your Prole 12
Every day we see millions of professionals nd others and get found through LinkedIn search.
Whether someone is searching for people, jobs, companies or groups, we provide the most relevant results based on your professional identity, your network, and how the people in your network engage with LinkedIn. Plus, one of the rst steps many members take when receiving content from a company or another member is click through to the personal prole or Company Page to learn about the sender. Thats why its critical for you and your company to maintain complete and optimized proles. How You Can Benefit from an Optimized Profile As a marketer, you can use LinkedIn for networking and to further your profession. After all, these days very few people end up working for a single company their entire career. So whether youre actively seeking a new position or maximizing the job you are already in, its wise to make sure your prole is set up for maximum exposure and engagement. In addition, adding rich media content
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Here are ve things you need to know about LinkedIn Search, as summarized by Stacy Donovan Zapar, the Most Connected Woman on LinkedIn:
1. When people search LinkedIn, the results are sorted by relevance, which takes into account the following: 1 st level connections with proles that are 100% complete (or close to it) and have the most in-common connections/ shared groups, ranked in descending order 1st level connections with the fewest in-common connections/ shared groups, ranked in descending order by prole completeness 2nd level connections ranked in descending order by prole completeness 3nd level connections ranked in descending order by prole completeness Shared group members (outside of your network), ranked in descending order by prole completeness Everyone else (those outside your network), ranked in descending order by prole completeness 2. Keywords in your name, headline, company name, job title and skills rank higher in the search results than keywords in other sections. 3. Using all elds and options available to youlike joining 50 LinkedIn groupsboosts your ranking. 4. Use a variety of keywords and terms in describing what you do and offer to show up in a variety of search results. 5. View LinkedIn search trends to see how many times youve shown up in search results and how many people have viewed your prole over the past three monthsand then adjust your prole as needed.
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SHANE ATCHIsON
LI: What types of clients should be leveraging LinkedIn more than they currently are? SA: I think that clients with investments in content are missing a massive opportunity to leverage their LinkedIn presence. They could use LinkedIn in combination with their owned properties to precisely target, share, and then realize return on their content investments. But for this, they need a comprehensive strategy that integrates the LinkedIn platform, their content, and their CRM efforts. LI: What is the risk of a client not having a company presence on LinkedIn? SA: The biggest risk, especially for B2B, is a loss of discoverability. LinkedIn is becoming the de facto starting point when searching for partners and evaluating solutions. A thoughtful LinkedIn presence is not only a great opportunity to increase your visibility as an individual. Corporations can also use it to turn both their workforce and followers into brand ambassadors. LI: How are your clients marketing objectives different on LinkedIn compared to other social networks? How does that impact your clients content strategy? SA: Most social networks only serve opportunities at the top of the funnel and provide limited ways to engage. You can tailor the LinkedIn platform to each clients marketing objectives and use it as part of a larger content strategy. The platform makes it easier for brands to serve audiences with content tailored to the individual both in terms of depth and timing. This makes content smarter and relevant at scale. As a result, it can drive engagement lifecycles rather than one-off opportunities. LI: How do you compare the audience targeting capability of LinkedIn with other social networks? SA: There are three major ways LinkedIn data is better for targeting: Recency, authenticity, and standardization of data. Recency means that people tend to keep their LinkedIn in proles up to datesomething they rarely do on other networks. Authenticity means that they are who they say they are. You cant put a fake job title up on LinkedIn. And the standardization of user generated data makes it easier to analyze and integrate the platform into your content strategy. LI: How are marketers getting it wrong with LinkedIn? SA: They think of it simply as a hiring, prospecting, or one-dimensional advertising platform. Its actually a versatile content platform with precise data that can be integrated into a variety of programs on and off the site. For example, B2C brands often miss the opportunity LinkedIn provides to enhance or expand distribution networks or channel partner communication plans. They also miss the opportunity to build programs around LinkedIn that leverage content to drive engagement lifecycles and stimulate organic community building. The platforms capabilities in this area are unmatched and underutilized.
PART 3: Optimizing your Prole 14
CEO of POSSIBLE LI: What factors are most important to you when considering advertising channels for your clients? SA: Our top ones include audience concentration and relevance, segmentation and targeting functionality, and the ability to extend or amplify channel content across other owned and earned properties. We also leverage our social listening and marketing sciences technologies to identify opportunities for the brand within each channel and with each audience.
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It thrills me to see LinkedIn gaining ground as an interesting place to hang out. Ive long held that LinkedIn is the dark horse of the social media platformsor, at least, its the workhorse of the bunch. If Twitter is where you go to meet people you dont know and Facebook is where you go to talk with people you already know, then LinkedIn is where all of you can meet up to get stuff done together.
Ann Handley, Author of Content Rules, Chief Content Ofcer at Marketing Profs
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You can follow an Inuencer without being connected to them.
In addition to joining in rich conversations, you will see which Inuencers and topics are driving the most interestperhaps sparking an idea of your own for a post or content asset. Plus the ability for LinkedIn members to like and share Inuencer content lets you quickly nd out what the people in your network are reading and reacting to, helping you unearth new ideas. Want to broaden your horizons? Take advantage of discovery modules within LinkedIn to help you nd more relevant content based on the people youre following and the posts youre reading.
625,000
LinkedIn FOLLOWERS
Bill Gates is an Inuencer with over 625,000 followers. One of his posts garnered over 1,600,000 views, more than 10,000 thumbs up, and over 4,000 comments.
11,000
LinkedIn FOLLOWERS
Joe Pulizzi, a speaker, entrepreneur, author, and founder of Content Marketing Institute with over 11,000 LinkedIn followers. One of his posts pulled in nearly 38,000 views and over 140 comments. Its easy to be part of such a rich discussion!
30,000
VIEWS
49% of Inuencer followers are directorlevel and above 22% are entry-level professionals
PART 4: Expand your Network of Inuencers 16
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LinkedIn Expert & Author: LinkedIn Marketing: An Hour a Day, International Keynote Speaker, Forbes Top 20 Most Influential LI: What type of content best connects with audiences on LinkedIn? Is there a specic type of content you prefer to consume on LinkedIn? VR: Thats kind of an apples or oranges type question when it comes to LinkedIn. Im a fruit salad gal myself!
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PART 5:
With all the news websites, blogs, and newsletters out there, staying in-the-know can be time consuming.
our partnerships with more than 750 publishers, such as Harvard Business Review, TechCrunch, and Fast Company. Pulse makes it possible to access tailored news based on your interests. Specically, you as a marketer can easily leverage all the great business knowledge owing through LinkedIn in the form of news, Inuencer posts, industry updates, discussions, comments and more. And because you can customize content based on your preferences, you can zero in on what matters most to you. Think of Pulse as your daily newspaper one that lets you stay up to speed whether youre on your desktop, mobile phone (Android or iOS), or tablet!
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Organize your daily reads Lists in the Pulse app allow you to organize your channels into topics of your choice, such as Technology, Sports, Favorites, or Must Reads. Any Channels or Inuencer content that you follow on LinkedIn.com will automatically sync with the Pulse app, and you can also add any blog or news feed via the robust search functionality on Pulse. As a result, you gain instant access to the most relevant and personalized news content that maps to your professional interests. And heres a suggestion for a Channel to follow right away for fresh insights on marketing from LinkedIn Inuencers and top sources such as The Wall Street Journal, Ad Week, Mashable, and more: the Marketing Strategies channel https://www. LinkedIn.com/channels/marketing_ strategies Share with your network Weve made it even easier for you to share news and insights from your Pulse app. With the new, enhanced social featureseasily accessible within every piece of content at the top of the screenyou can see what other professionals are talking about and instantly like, comment or share an article with your professional network on LinkedIn.
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3. Curate useful news as status updates and on the Company Page 4. Use LinkedIn as a follow up after meeting people online and especially at ofine events where business cards are exchanged Beyond that, LinkedIns social network platform provides many opportunities to engage with prospects, support individual and brand thought leadership and connect with other groups like industry media and prospective employees. Whether its targeted advertising or curating a mix of industry and company news on the brand page, companies that want to attract and engage other businesses need to be on LinkedIn.
CEO @TopRank Online Marketing, Author: Optimize, Public Speaker: Integrated Search, Social, & Content Marketing LI: Do you regulary check your Pulse feed? If so, how do you use it? LO: I check LinkedIn daily including the Pulse feed. I follow a number of the thought leaders and also look for the news stories my network is engaging with. The feed offers content that I can interact with through liking, commenting, sharing on LinkedIn or curating to our broader community.
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LINKEDIN: A KEY PLATFORM FOR B2B CONTENT DELIVERY How effective are these Social Networks in delivering B2B Content (% of respondents)
% 0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
Effective
Ineffective
I dont use it
Source: Customer Engagement: The Role of Content in the IT Purchase Process & Connecting Content Marketing to Sales Follow Up. IDG Enterprise, Sep2013. N=1,138 range of industries worldwide were surveyed in Spring 2013.
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Showcase Pages: Reach and Build a Relationship with Specic Audiences
Like many companies, yours likely considers many parts of its business to be important. And to give each its due attention, you likely have more than one voice. With Showcase Pages, you can build a presence and present a unique voice for every important part of your business. By creating dedicated pages for your more prominent brands, businesses, and initiatives using Showcase Pages, you can extend your LinkedIn presence. In other words, you can create a distinct platform for each aspect of your business that has its own message to share with its own target audience. Its a unique way to directly engage the right people in the right context. And just as with Company Pages, your administrators will be able to monitor performance through dedicated analytic tools within the Showcase Page experience.
When I ran marketing at a mobile startup, we routinely compared the impact of each channel at each funnel stage. We plotted channels along two dimensions: volume of names and cost per lead. LinkedIn topped all other lead sourcesacross both dimensions and at every stage of the funnel. When it came to content distribution and lead generation, LinkedIn quickly became the rst dollar budgeted each quarter.
Joe Chernov Former VP of Marketing at Kinvey, now VP of Content at Hubspot
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Attract More Followers
The more the merrier on the social merry-go-round. Here are some simple, effective strategies for attracting more followers with your company updates: E ngage your colleagues. Employees are 70% more likely to engage with your company updates, so dont forget to ask them to do it! Initiate communication and make it easy for them to respond. Cultivate a larger following with a multi-channel approach. Encourage your teammates to add a link to your company page in their email signatures. If needed, ask your designer for help creating a customized banner or button. Add a Follow button to your website. Your web team can pull code for a Follow button from developer.linkedin.com to add to your blog or website. This lets LinkedIn members follow your company with a single click.
Content Marketing is the planning, creation, promotion, and measurement of content to a target audience with the goal of satisfying customers and affecting a business outcome. LinkedIn offers an incredibly useful platform for research, ideation and the amplication of content to specic interest groups from your target customers to the inuencers that inspire them to take action. LinkedIn is essential for achieving content marketing results.
L ee Odden, CEO @TopRank Online Marketing, Author: Optimize, Public Speaker: Integrated Search, Social, and Content Marketing
8:00 a.m.
Most LinkedIn members look for inspiration early in the day with peak consumption at 8:00 a.m.
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Follow Company Ads: Encourage Members to Follow You
Want to encourage members to follow your Company Page or your Showcase Page? Use Follow Company Ads to deliver personalized messages on the homepages of your target audience, establishing the relevance of your business to these members and building your Follower audience. Once members choose to follow you, their new status will be shared with their full network: a powerful social means of building your audience further. HP has found incredible value by taking advantage of the unmatched targeting available via LinkedIn Follow Company Ads. In addition to allowing HP to target the people it wants to engagesenior-level decision-makers in various industriesFollow Ads empowered the company to increase followers by 300,000 in a two-month period. Moreover, HP was the rst company on LinkedIn to hit 1,000,000 followers.
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Company Updates: Engage Your Followers
LinkedIn Company Updates are a powerful way to reach and engage professionals with relevant content across multiple devices. They are sent from your Company Page and deliver targeted content into our members feeds, increasing their engagement with your brand. But are your updates optimized? Keep the following best practices in mind when creating and posting your company page updates to dramatically increase engagement and overall reach. 1. Optimize introductions and headlines by thinking like a journalist, adding your point of view, asking thoughtful questions to involve your audience, and including a clear call to action. 2. Stand out in the feed by including a compelling image or some type of rich media. 3. Attract an audience by aligning your content to members needs and interests by making it snackable and valuable. 4. Keep your audiences attention by producing content consistently, responding to timely events, engaging members through comments, and continually rening your content strategy. 5. Extend your targeted reach beyond your Company Page followers by using Sponsored Updates to promote your best content.
1 IN EVERY 3 INTERNET USER VISITS A BRANDS SOCIAL MEDIA PAGE Paid Social Media advertising objectives Primarily branding related, e.g. raising awareness, inuencing brand opinions Primarily direct-response related e.g. driving product trails or site visits A mix of bothmore than half is branding A mix of bothmore than half is direct-response 16% 15% 25% 29% 14% 25% ADVERTISERS AGENCIES 45% 31%
Sources: Content Marketing gets Social, Unisphere research, 2013, N= 217 Nielsen, Paid Social Media Advertising Report, 2013. N = 500 U.S. digital marketing and media professionals
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Follow the 4-1-1 Rule
The 4-1-1 Rule was coined by Tippingpoint Labs and Joe Pulizzi of the Content Marketing Institute. While it was originally created with Twitter in mind, it can successfully be applied to your companys content marketing strategy using LinkedIn. The rule states: For every one self-serving tweet, you should retweet one relevant tweet and most importantly share four pieces of relevant content written by others. Its basically saying to share the love. Instead of constantly bombarding your followers with demos, webinars, and whitepaper downloads, create a cadence of helpful insights relevant to your audience. Mix in a bit of industry thought leader content; news and trends are a great way to build relationships with prospects while keeping current customers in the know. Youll authentically engage in conversations, build awareness, and interact with LinkedIn members without giving the impression that youre a self-centered know-it-all. Its all part of moving to the new marketing mindset of always be helping instead of the outdated always be selling.
Sell something, get a customer for a day. Help someone, get a customer for life.
Jay Baer digital marketing strategist, speaker, author, and president of Convince & Convert
Consistent posting: Create an editorial calendar of updates within your company, and highlight relevant third-party material. Then share it with company followers. Building a cadence around the 4-1-1 rule will continually add value for your followers.
Sources: Tippingpoint Labs. www.tippingpointlabs.com
4 New Tweets
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Sponsored Updates: Content Marketing in the Professional Feed
Our members are already engaging with high-quality content from news sites, thought leaders, their connections, and brands. With Sponsored Updates, you can join the conversation and appear along with that content. You can publish Sponsored Updates with rich media and ensure relevance with robust targeting functionality. And that means you can reach the right people at the right time with your best articles, images, infographics, PDFs, presentations, and videos. Plus, Sponsored Updates are the only way to reach LinkedIns mobile users at scale, since they appear in the feed on desktop, tablet, and smartphone. Sponsored Updates are a powerful tool to: Raise awareness and shape perception. Send Sponsored Updates to your target audience to rapidly increase awareness and shape the perception of your brand, products, and services. Drive quality leads. Generate quality leads by sharing insights that professionals seek. Watch that content spread via the peer sharing that occurs naturally on LinkedIn. Build relationships with the worlds professionals. Publish your content with Sponsored Updates to create value and establish trust that sparks ongoing conversations and deeper customer relationships. Targeting options Sponsored Updates allow you to reach a targeted audience beyond your Company Page followers. You can dene your audience using criteria such as location, company size, industry, job function, and seniority. Remember, theres always a tradeoff between targeting and audience size. If you target too specically, your update may reach a very small audience. Performance tracking You can promote updates in 20 languages across the 200 countries and territories where we have members. And within a minute or two of publishing your update, youll see impression and engagement metrics. And reporting on your post will be updated in near real time. That means you can track how well your posts hit the mark and ne-tune your strategy instantly.
Bislr, a provider of marketing automation solutions, used Sponsored Updates to generate high-quality leads with a high conversion rate and at a lower cost. Plus, it generated additional brand awareness as a benet of organic sharing. Read Case Study
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How Sponsored Updates work
Getting a LinkedIn Company Page is the rst step to using Sponsored Updates. All Sponsored Updates must rst be created as organic Company Updates. Similar to an ad unit, a Sponsored Update is sent to a member when they visit LinkedIn. Sponsored Updates are clearly distinguished from organic content to make sure our members can differentiate between organic and paid content. Currently, they are labeled as Sponsored. Links in Sponsored Updates can drive trafc wherever youd like, including your content portals, relevant news or articles, YouTube or SlideShare channels, whitepapers, and event registration forms. Sponsored Updates are purchased through a second-price auction. Heres how it works. Each time there is an opportunity for a Sponsored Update to be shown, LinkedIn runs an auction to determine which update to show. For any given auction, there can be many bids from competing advertisers looking to reach that member. That means when you sponsor an update, your campaign enters an auction to determine whether its shown to your target audience. Sponsored Update inventory is non-guaranteed, but you may adjust your bid and content to perform better in the auction.
Adobe used Sponsored Updates as part of its campaign to raise awareness of the company as an innovator in digital marketing. As a result of the brand exposure in the LinkedIn feed, research conrmed that U.S. marketing executives were 50% more likely to agree that Adobe can shape the future of digital marketing. Learn More
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CHRIs DAlEssANDRO
a brand for them. Question number one is always, can we build the brand on this platform? LI: What types of clients should be leveraging LinkedIn more than they currently are? CD: Any organization that needs to do a better job of getting the brand in front of afuent people or just the right professional people. LinkedIn is a great platform for targeting this type of audience. The other type of client that needs to be on LinkedIn is any organization that needs to recruit top talent. LI: How do you compare the audience targeting capability of LinkedIn with other social networks? CD: The biggest thing thats come to our attention is we can trust the results from LinkedIn. People are less apt to elaborate on LinkedIn than they are on other social networks. Sometimes you dont know if youre actually getting the person youre targeting, and my personal version of why I prefer LinkedIn over other social networks is because I know who Im getting. I trust LinkedIn data not because other social networks are lying about their data, but rather because consumers are more apt to elaborate on other social networks. LI: How are marketers getting it wrong with LinkedIn? CD: They are seeing it as an advertising platform and they are not leveraging it as a content platform. Advertisers are trying to drive lower funnel activities instead of participating in the conversation. I see LinkedIn as a way to continue the dialogue in a way that naturally promotes the value proposition of the brand and I think many brands are still using it as an ad platform because most media buying agencies follow the path of least resistance and buy what is easy. Getting the creative and content development teams involved makes it harder for them to buy. They can simply put an ad on the page instead of engaging the creative agency and building a plan that will be better in the long run.
Executive Director, Digital, Nissan United LI: What factors are most important to you when considering advertising channels for your clients? CD: It all depends on the goals of the campaign or what we are trying to accomplish. My focus is on a global campaign that transcends the US and Europe so a lot of what we are doing is branding. We look at platforms as how can we best utilize our money to get in front of as many people as we can to convince them the Nissan is a
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PART 6:
SlideShare: Tap into Visual Tendencies
We are all visual thinkers. In fact, 75% of the sensory neurons in our brains process visual information. Visual content can help set you apart from text-heavy competition, and SlideShare is the perfect channel for your visual content. SlideShare is not just a repository for your slide presentations. Its a social channel where you can establish your brand as a thought leader and authority around topics and keywords. Through SlideShare, you can: Share presentations, videos, infographics and other documents with your LinkedIn network Upload portfolios, conference talks, PDFs, marketing/sales presentations and more Embed videos in presentations and add audio to make a webinar With more than 60 million visitors a month and 3 billion slide views a month (thats 1,140 slides per second), SlideShare is the worlds largest professional content-sharing community. And thats something you cant afford to overlook.
3. Use SlideShare Content Ads to pull SlideShare content into 300x250 ad placements on LinkedIn
Its almost not fair to ask for my take on SlideShare. I consider it one of the top three plays in my own content marketing efforts. I contribute to the SlideShare blog. I recommend it to everyone of my clients and am hired often to write and design the presentations. However, Im biased for many reasons. Atop the list: SlideShare and its integration with LinkedInaccounts for a massive chunk of my websites trafc, has a lot to do with the authority Ive gained in content marketing and copywriting for the web, and is helping bring me all kinds of opportunities including new business, partnerships, and speaking engagements. If youre not using SlideSlide to distribute your content, youre missing out on, what, 60 million eyeball opportunities a month? And if you are, you know exactly how the service can align with your marketing goals.
Barry Feldman, Feldman Creative
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Here are nine tips to help ensure content domination on SlideShare:
1. Keep your presentations short and sweet: Between 1030 slides is optimal 2. Be visual: Shoot for an average of 19 images in your 1030 slides 3. Get to the point: Aim for an average of 24 words per slide 4. Be the authority on your topic: Choose a topic and own it 5. Focus on design and tell a story: Design your deck to pull the reader from one slide to the next 6. Rev up the SEO for each presentation: Include keywordrich titles, descriptions and tags in order to give your presentations a ghting chance in the world of search engines as well as inside the SlideShare search results 7. Integrate your presentations into multiple channels: SlideShare easily embeds into landing pages and blogs and renders beautifully in Twitter 8. Repurpose your presentations: Slice and dice them into blog posts, infographics, webinars and videos 9. Make SlideShare part of every campaign: Add a SlideShare checkbox to your campaign checklist If you dont have a SlideShare account, sign up from LinkedIn to share your presentations worldwide and drive more views and trafc.
In a recent conference, I was asked my opinion on what is the biggest opportunity in B2B Content Marketing? Without hesitation, I answered SlideShare.
Michael Brenner, Vice President of Marketing and Content Strategy at SAP, Speaker, Blogger and Social Business Marketing Leader
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Content Ads: Enhance the Member Experience without Interrupting It
On LinkedIn, our members are actively consuming and sharing information and insights. And you have an opportunity to share content with LinkedIns professional audience using Content Ads. Content Ads use images and video content that stand out above the fold on our uncluttered, clean LinkedIn page design. Use them to position your company as a thought leader and engage your audience with white papers, videos, brochures and other high-value contentwithout interrupting the user ow and by enhancing their member experience. Our content ad unit delivers up to ve different items of content via different tabs, including blog posts, case studies, white papers and video. Because the ads are RSS enabled, they update automatically whenever live content featured in them changes. Content ads are extremely simple to create: you supply us with assets and content and well create your ad, including a preview for you to sign off, within ten working days. Youll be able to leverage the depth of LinkedIn member proles for accurate targeting of your ad, and youll get access to detailed analytics showing how members interact with each content tab.
Standard Content Ad
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SlideShare Content Ads: Enable Seamless Engagement
SlideShare Content Ads are the latest addition to LinkedIns expanding Content Ads portfolio. Through the SlideShare Content Ad format, you can: Extend reach and discoverability of your SlideShare content Drive engagement by offering user value Demonstrate thought leadership and industry expertise With SlideShare Content Ads, we combine SlideShares rich, professionally relevant content with LinkedIn Marketing Solutions unique targeting capabilities. SlideShare Content Ads give your content the reach it deserves, delivering in-depth presentations through a 300 x 250 ad unit that enables broad, exible distribution. Your audience can interact with the presentations in these ads just as they would on SlideShare itself, scrolling forwards and back, and choosing whether to expand the presentation or view it within the ad unit. Plus, you can embed a lead capture form in your presentation, which LinkedIn members can ll in and submit directly from the presentation. Importantly, they can do without interrupting their LinkedIn session. Moreover, by combining detailed LinkedIn Analytics with SlideShares content viewing metrics and leadgeneration forms, we provide a uniquely in-depth view of engagement with your content marketing.
SlideShare Content Ad
SlideShare makes it easy to take what youve already got to a much wider audience. Andin stark contrast to most business experiences with social media todayit delivers measurement based on real business activity, like leads.
Todd Wheatland, Author of The Marketers Guide to SlideShare
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PART 6:
LinkedIn APIs: Deepen Engagement, Share Content Network-wide
Leverage LinkedIns professional audience and platform across your other digital channels with a range of full-edged APIs and plug-ins that help deepen engagement with your audience and share content across our network. You can use LinkedIns APIs to create custom branded experiences that allow members to sign in using their LinkedIn login. This eliminates the need for them to enter additional data. Even more importantly, by using the API to access LinkedIns rich data, you can tailor the member experience based on prole data. You can also encourage your experience to go viral by triggering it to publish updates about a users activities. We offer developers powerful options to leverage our content and connections while keeping users on our site. Here are just a few ways you can take advantage of our APIs: Invite members to sign up to your site using their LinkedIn login credentials Leverage select areas of the LinkedIn identity to deliver relevant content Plug LinkedIn feeds into your site Invite your users to share updates across the LinkedIn platform To add a LinkedIn plugin to your site or app, visit developer.LinkedIn.com to generate the required code and add it to the source code of your site or app. The LinkedIn Certied Developer Program (CDP) makes it easy to engage developers certied to work with LinkedIn data, who are trained and supported by LinkedIn. We also offer options for working with a broader range of developers as well.
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PART 6:
LinkedIn Groups: Join the Conversation
Companies often talk about joining the conversation and establishing thought leadership. By participating in discussions taking place in established LinkedIn Groups, you can join the conversation. And by creating your companys own LinkedIn Branded Communities, you can start the conversation. Either way, youre establishing thought leadership for your company. Participate in Group Discussions As a sophisticated marketer, you know that true and meaningful engagement with prospects and customers is sparked and maintained through interactions. The trick is nding the right forum for this engagement, and LinkedIn Groups is a terric way to become part of a community comprising your target audience. Plan to participate You can join up to 50 groups but lets face ityou and your colleagues may not have the time to invest in cultivating conversations, connections, and relationships at that volume. Once you pinpoint the groups that will prove the best investment of your time, its critical to put in the time to participate. Weigh in on active discussions, and point fellow group members to additional information of value, whether thats content published by your company or another organization. The key is to position yourself as a trusted and helpful peer rather than as a marketer focused on reeling in the next customer.
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LinkedIn Branded Communities
Through LinkedIn Branded Communities, you can create your own exclusively branded forum: a targeted environment that establishes your companys expertise and builds a lively community endorsing your brand. As the sponsor of the Community, youll leverage exclusive ad positions to share company, brand and product messages; drive engagement with weekly emails to Community members; and use community management tools to stay involved in the conversation. Plus, you can exclusively promote your content and messages in the right-hand rail with units that support rich media and video. All Branded Communities encourage members to spread your content across their LinkedIn networks, sharing links to comments and discussions and promoting organic growth. Plus, you can use Join Group Ads to boost membership further, with content feeds to give potential Community members a taste of the discussions taking placeand prompt them to join (see the Advertising section for more on Join Group Ads). Real customers, real benefits Philips runs two communities dedicated to thought leadership in health and lighting. The communities have contributed to a signicant rise in Philips net promoter scores. Moreover, the companys health community counts tens of thousands of members and thousands of active discussions, making it a role model for thought leadership on a large scale.
100,000
Engaging with fellow professionals on the issues they care about, and pooling their thinking to solve business problems. Starting a Community provides a uniquely interactive platform for showcasing your thinking, driving collaboration, inviting feedback and engaging key stakeholders.
Similarly, Microsofts Cloud Computing community has attracted more than 9,000 senior managers in relevant industries such as IT, engineering and consultancy.
You can nd communities to join in the Groups Directory or view suggestions of groups you may like. Heres how to create a new community focused on a particular topic or industry.
PART 6: Publish with a Purpose: Content Marketing on LinkedIn 37
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Get aligned for community success
Remember: marketing creates the content but needs to work hand in hand with sales to ensure they know the story and can carry the conversation when participating in LinkedIn community discussions. Your sales reps should be engaging prospects and customers in online venues. After all, they need to interact with prospective customers wherever they are spending timeand before the competition gets there. Plus, listening to and participating in online conversations will provide your sales team with keen insight into what most concerns your prospects. They can then offer relevant information such as a link to an eBook, white paper, webinar or other content that establishes your company as a valuable and trusted resource.
You can drive increased membership of your community using Join Group Ads.
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consumer behaviors on a platform like LinkedIn and then, as the consumer is engaged, he or she creates new data to help you optimize that experience. It starts with behavior which is informed by data, which we use to inform content. LI: How are your clients marketing objectives different on LinkedIn compared to other social networks? How does that impact your clients content strategy? LW: I would argue that the objectives of a platform like LinkedIn should not be different from other social networks and that all networks should adder up to the overall marketing objectives of clients. As you drill down into the use case for LinkedIn, there are absolutely some more tactical and specic initiatives it could be leveraged for. But if youre talking about marketing objectives broadly, Id like to think that everything we do and all these things we create ladders up to bigger objectives like sales, top of funnel, etc. Too often in social media, marketers get hung up on chasing the social networks specic metrics and at the end of the day, what has to matter is that a marketers investments are moving the needle against the core macro objective. LinkedIn has proven effective for clients leveraging it across the spectrum of objectives ranging from brand lift and consideration, to ROI and direct response. LinkedIn works against key measures whether they are top or bottom of the funnel. LI: How would you advise a marketer looking to create more shareable content? Are there specic strategies or tools you recommend? LW: We believe sharing is an indicator of valuable consumer behavior. Weve spent a lot of time on tools provided by a company like ShareThis, which provide powerful indicators of the types of content that are most sharable. Weve built a planning tool that allows our planners to buy ads against content that is more likely to be shared. Weve actually spent
PART 6: Publish with a Purpose: Content Marketing on LinkedIn 39
President, Global Digital, Data and Analytics at Starcom MediaVest Group LI: What factors are most important to you when considering advertising channels for your clients? LW: One of the things we say is that its about behavior, not channels. From our perspective, when you start with consumer behavior you usually start with data. We really believe that data helps to create experiences and we use the phrase created by data and creating its own data. You can use data to understand
a lot of time in the space looking at trends of topics and keywords which are another indicator of things being shared. We partner with companies like Visible Measures on the video side. It can be different with video, and they have years worth of data on the types of video content that will most likely drive certain earned responses. We also share that part to plan how our video content can drive greater shares because we think its a strategic question. Its vital to our strategy to think about the intersection of paid, owned, and earned.
PART 7:
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PART 7:
LinkedIn Premium Display Advertising for Awareness and Consideration at Scale
With LinkedIn Premium Display Ads, you can target the exact audience you want in a premium uncluttered environment. That makes it easier to use existing ad creative to drive brand awareness and consideration at scale among LinkedIns audience. Display ads give you a fantastic share of voice. Thats because, unlike other digital publishers, LinkedIn only serves two visual ads on a page at any one time. Combine this with our powerful targeting capabilities and its a no-brainer. Heres an example of how Cathay Pacic realized these benets. The renowned airline wanted to increase brand awareness within its target market, so it identied LinkedIn members who belong to LinkedIn groups related to business travel in Asia. It then targeted those members with Display Ads and Sponsored Polls. LinkedIns accurate targeting resulted in 1,324 poll responses from business travelers and a total of 97 product recommendations. According to the international airlines Vice President Marketing Americas, the campaign was successful in spreading brand awareness and connecting with customers.
With LinkedIn Display Ads, you reach the right audience at the right time on the most accountable medium
Depending on the type you choose, display ads can appear on a home page, prole pages, group pages, company pages, on members inbox and messages pages, or at the bottom of a page to catch the eye of members before they navigate away.
From a marketing standpoint, the targeting is unprecedented. For marketing campaigns, LinkedIn can identify who to send it to and when to send it but with precision we have never seen before. The success stories are still building, but we will see more B2B marketers drive success via LinkedIn over the next couple years.
Craig Rosenberg, The Funnelholic www.funnelholic.com
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NEAl SCHAFFER
there is other great content to be found in Network Updates as well as relevant Groups. It all comes down to content that is both relevant and timelybut deep as well. LI: How do you make sure personal time spent on LinkedIn is productive? How does this differ from other social networks? NS: I spend my personal time on LinkedIn 2 ways: 1) Keeping up-todate and engaging with my network, and 2) Business intelligence looking for information on people, companies, or news in my industry. I limit my time and remain clear on my objectives. LI: What recommendations do you have for marketers looking to connect with target audiences on LinkedIn? NS: LinkedIn, like any other social network, is about people that are using social media for communication with others as well as information gathering. Professionals are not looking to be sold to, but they are seeking out information that can help them do their jobs better. The best approach that I would recommend for marketers to connect with their target audience would look like a combination of the following: Establish robust profiles that make them discoverable in LinkedIn prole search. Share relevant content consistently from their personal prole. Reach out and connect with those from their target audience that they know but have yet to connect with. Proactively utilize their LinkedIn network for introductions to key people in their target audience, using LinkedIn Inmails when an introduction is not possible. Engage in relevant groups. Create a group to represent your company. Promote your LinkedIn Company Page, build up a follower base, and engage with them. Utilize the potential that LinkedIn Ads has to help precisely connect you with your target audience.
Author, Maximize Your Social, Trilingual Social Media Strategy & Social Business Coach, Consultant, Trainer & Speaker LI: What type of content best connects with audiences on LinkedIn? Is there a specic type of content you prefer to consume on LinkedIn? NS: The content that best connects with audiences on LinkedIn is undoubtedly the type that makes us do our job better as well as invest in our professional brand. Without a doubt the recently added Inuencer content is of the highest quality, but
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PART 7:
LinkedIn Ads for Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Performance
LinkedIn Ads is a self-service advertising solution that allows you to place text ads on prominent pages across LinkedIn to reach LinkedIns professional audience. Your text-based ad includes a headline, description, and can even feature a 50x50 image. You specify which LinkedIn members view your ads by selecting a target audience based on characteristics like job title, job function, industry, geography, company size, company name, LinkedIn Group, and more. You can also control your advertising costs by setting a budget as low as $10 per day and can choose to pay on a cost-per-click or impression basis all without any contracts or commitments.
HUbSPOt GENERAtES QUALItY LEADS WItH AccURAtE tARGEtING USING LINKEDIN ADS
HubSpot creates marketing software that helps businesses grow web trafc, generate inbound leads, and convert leads into paying customers. The challenge for HubSpot was nding advertising venues with the right mix of marketing professionals who respond well to HubSpots offers of free marketing materials. HubSpot rst experimented with ad campaigns on social networks other than LinkedIn, but the campaigns did not yield satisfactory results. Theres a lot of distraction on other social networks, Dan Slagen, the companys head of paid marketing, says. People are there for reasons besides improving their businesses, or networking with other professionals. HubSpot also needed to accurately target its campaigns beyond simply just location, keywords, and interests, drilling down into specic professional attributes of its potential customersa capability that other social networks do not provide. Using LinkedIn Ads, HubSpot has been able to achieve clickthrough rates ranging from 0.1% to 0.3% with an average CPC of about $3, which is actually a fraction of the cost of paid search advertising, Slagen explains.
With LinkedIn Ads, weve been able to generate a clickthrough rate that is 60% higher than our average across other social networksand at the same time, the quality of leads coming through LinkedIn is greater than through other social media channels.
Dan Slagen, Head of Paid Marketing, HubSpot
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PART 7:
Sponsored InMail: Deliver Directly to Members Inboxes
Using Sponsored InMail, you can reach high-value, targeted prospects on LinkedIn with attention-grabbing messages that speak directly to their interests. You can designate recipients by geography, job role, group membership, company size and other criteria. These notications are prominently displayed on the LinkedIn homepage and in members inboxes for high visibility that cuts through the clutter. In addition, you can amplify your message by including social media widgets that empower your audience to easily spread your message to likeminded professionals. Sponsored InMail is ideal for: Boosting conversion through targeted product and service promotions Supporting display ad campaigns by emphasizing key messages and calls to action Our 60-day exclusivity rule prevents other companies from messaging your target audience and ensures 100% share of voice. And the exible format makes it simple to integrate content and messaging from across your LinkedIn ecosystem, such as from your Company Page. Accurate targeting ensures you reach the members that matter most, from across our network of over 259 million professionals.
Your rst connection with someone you dont know should simply be to get a positive response. Dont look to do anything more. The simplest way to get a response, a valuable one at that, is to ask for their expertise. Even LinkedIn understands how valuable that request is that theyve made Expertise Request a drop-down option when sending an InMail message.
avid Spark (@dspark), Founder of the brand journalism rm, D Spark Media Solutions. Blogger at Spark Minute and podcaster at the Tear Down Show.
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APPLE USED PERSONALIZED, tARGEtED EMAILS tO RAISE AWARENESS OF tHE IPAD 2 AS A bUSINESS tOOL, INcREASING cONSIDERAtION AND SALES.
Sponsored InMail leverages the credibility of the LinkedIn platform so that, unlike conventional email campaigns, they are more likely to be opened, read and acted on.
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CEB reaches executives in transition with LinkedIn Sponsored InMails
CEB (www.executiveboard.com), the leading member-based advisory company, markets its research in human resources, information technology, and corporate innovation to a raried group of highly senior executives. It was challenging to convince highly inuential executives to take the time to check out some of the compelling thought-leadership materials that CEB offers. Rory Channer, Managing Director of Marketing for CEB, and his marketing colleagues knew that a dening moment for connecting with an executive about CEB services is during a period of transition. Using LinkedIn targeting capabilities, they chose to focus on executives in human resources and sales that had been promoted or added signicant new responsibilities. The title of CEBs InMail specically addressed executive challenges: How will you ensure long-term success in your new role? The InMail went on to congratulate the LinkedIn member on his or her professional shift, invited them to try out CEBs Leadership Transition Service, and offered a free white paper on the hallmarks of successful leadership transitions. The InMail campaign generated open rates that were four times the rate of CEBs typical online marketing campaigns, and twice the typical clickthrough rate.
Using LinkedIns targeting to reach executives at the moment when the CEB pitch would be most relevant is the key to this campaigns success.
Rory Channer, Managing Director of Marketing for CEB
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NATE STRICKER
LI: How do you compare the audience targeting capability of LinkedIn with other social networks? NS: With LinkedIn, with content generation, theres an opportunity with native content to be a bit more surgical with the data you have, and the kind of content you deliver the holy grail of the audience and the content equation together. I think thats denitely an area where there is opportunity because no one network is especially nailing it right now. LI: How are marketers getting it wrong with LinkedIn? NS: Theres still some education required. LinkedIn is viewed as, even before being thought of as a media opportunity for advertisers, as a marketers in-house PR rmthe PR mechanism, if you will. I think the rst step is recognizing that it has quite a bit to offer from an advertising perspective. The second thing is that there are a lot of categories that could benet from LinkedIn beyond the obvious ones. Its not just an environment for the Wells Fargos and the Bank of Americas and the University of Phoenixes of the world, but has huge value for the GEs and the Geicos and the Chryslers, etc. I think thats a story that can be better avored in the marketplace. LI: How would you advise a marketer looking to create more shareable content? Are there specic strategies or specic tools that you would recommend? NS: From a tool standpoint, a really good social listening service can cover a wide swath of sources. It can also provide access to other media, search trends and search behaviors so you have a rich tapestry to draw from in terms of what is relevant for consumers, particularly your target audience. Good listening is the rst step. Youre not going to create shareable content if what youre building is not relevant and intriguing to consumers. Sometimes its a balance of what the advertiser wants
PART 7: Expand your targeted reach: Advertising on LinkedIn 46
to get across versus the passions that ignite the interest of the consumer. The second part is having compelling content that leverages things like sight, sound and motion that uses the listening platform to nd topics that have a currency to them, and then nally making it easy to share so a user can choose to share in whichever platform they are most comfortable with.
Client Director, Strategy LI: What types of clients should be leveraging LinkedIn more than they currently are? NS: Because of the association of the content on LinkedIn, as well as with the audience that goes to the site, any category where a client is aiming to make headway from a leadership perspective. If youre looking to make a leadership statement and/or be seen curating a point of view with content, there is a lot of upside to the LinkedIn proposition.
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Partnering with LinkedIn has enabled us to deliver robust audience demographics, content analytics, and publishing capabilities to todays biggest brands across every industry. Brands are using this context and capability to deliver great experiences that make professionals more productive and successful, and as a result, are building valuable and lasting relationships.
Jim Rudden, CMO Spredfast Inc.
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Collaborate with Best-in-Class Partners The CDP charter partners were selected and certied based on their ability to deliver unique value to marketers using our APIs and platform products. They also have a proven track record of delighting customers with successful application launches. This includes exclusive access to LinkedIn technical specialists, enabling them to deliver innovative and impactful marketing solutions in the following categories: Custom applications Social media promotions Social media management Social media analytics Certified Developer Partners As certied partners, they receive attention and communications from LinkedIn to help them effectively use LinkedIns platform products to build custom marketing programs. Social Media Management program: This program enables you to manage your companys engagement on LinkedIn, including the administration of Company Pages, Showcase Pages and Groups, using the platforms of our SMM partners. Ads API Program The Ads API program allows marketers to run and manage selfserve LinkedIn Ads campaigns effectively at scale.
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KRIsTINA JARAmIllO
decision makers (my prospects), key professionals that inuence business marketing decisions, and potential referral sources/white label partners. LI: What type of content best connects with audiences on LinkedIn? Is there a specic type of content you prefer to consume on LinkedIn? KJ: The best type of content that I found is case studies and real life examplesthis demonstrates your relevance. Most business leaders and B2B marketers LinkedIn proles do not have case studies. They talk about their skills and expertise but there is no content for their targeted prospects to see why they should connect. Within the different LinkedIn Groups, you should also create discussions on real life case studies. This gives B2B organizations a chance to showcase their expertise and at the same time educate prospects on the challenges companies are having and the steps they need to take to overcome the challenge. Here are some other forms of content that have worked well for me and for my Get LinkedIn Help clients: Radio show interviewsI host a B2B marketing radio show at http://www. b2bmarketingradioshow.com where guest experts, including LinkedIns senior content marketing manager Jason Miller, share their insights. SlideShare presentations and videos which support your case study and result-based LinkedIn prole. Some of our clients most read discussions were based on their SlideShare presentation content. Blog posts and articles that change the way people think and actI personally love content that is meant to start a debate. The goal is to change how people present themselves on LinkedIn and how they market on LinkedIn. LI: How do you make sure personal time spent on LinkedIn is productive? How does this differ from other social networks? KJ: You create a LinkedIn strategy that includes identifying your goals, (lead generation, brand awareness, thought leadership, strengthening strategic alliances, community building, getting more VAR, etc.) dening your target audience, locating the Groups your targeted audiences belong to and identifying the type of content that your audience will relate to. Within your strategy, you have to also map out the actions needed to take on LinkedIn (webinars, webcasts, white papers, email marketing). LI: How are marketers getting it wrong with LinkedIn? KJ: Marketers are getting it wrong with LinkedIn in a number of ways including: Theyre basically completing brand maintenance activities instead of a tool for lead generation. They may do some updates and some commenting on discussions but there is no strategy behind their efforts. They are just connecting with anyone and everyone.
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LinkedIn Marketing Expert, GetLinkedInHelp.com LI: How are your marketing objectives different on LinkedIn compared to other social networks? KJ: I do not do anything on Facebook as my complete focus is on CEOs, C-level marketing and sales executives and small business owners in B2B organizations. Twitter, I use as a tool to broadcast my different messages. I use LinkedIn to directly connect with and build relationships with key
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KRIsTINA JARAmIllO
Group. I also created a number of discussions inside the different LinkedIn Groups to make my article go viral. LI: Whats something thats not in your LinkedIn prole? KJ: You wont nd a resume on my LinkedIn prole. For example, you wont nd me putting Founder of Get LinkedIn Help as my previous position and a listing of my past positions. What youll nd are positions that speak to different audiences with different needs. Each section of my LinkedIn prole is meant to establish a relationship with you, build credibility, show why you need to connect with meand most importantly get you into my sales funnel. Too many B2B marketing and sales professionals have copy that would speak to HR and recruiting executives.
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About Us LinkedIn members number more than 259 million professionals. Thats over one-third of the 600 million professionals on the planet. This represents the largest group anywhere of inuential, afuent and educated people. Professional Publishing Platform Our evolution into a professional publishing platform drives increased engagement on LinkedIn. Compared with other professional publishers, content on LinkedIn works differently. The rich data on our platform means we can deliver the most relevant content to our members.
Relationships Matter With LinkedIn Marketing Solutions, brands build relationships with the worlds professionals by using accurate targeting to deliver relevant content and communications. As todays connected professionals seek out ideas and insights from the people and brands they trust, marketers use LinkedIn to target advertising and publish relevant content in a professional context. Brands extend reach through the social sharing that occurs naturally on LinkedIn, as well as by extending LinkedIn data to their sites and brand experiences through APIs. For more information, please visit our Marketing Solutions site.