In addition to teaching a social media class and doing speaking engagements on social media, I had the opportunity recently to talk about LinkedIn at an expo and be interviewed for a magazine article about LinkedIn.
My big takeaway is always about how LinkedIn is well-suited for research, networking, job hunting, recruiting and even business-to-business (B2B) marketing.
For that last item, it seems many people who use LinkedIn are familiar with groups, introductions and InMail, but few know about sponsored updates.
First, you need to have a company page. Don’t forget to populate it with your company’s background, products/services, etc.
When you post an update, the only people who will see it are those who are following your company page. If you’re just getting started, you probably don’t have many followers, and they probably aren’t necessarily your target audience.
To get your update in front of your target audience, you can make it sponsored, which is similar in setup to Google AdWords or Facebook ads, meaning you can be highly selective in the categories in which your audience fits. For example, you can choose geography, gender, age, industry (including which to exclude) and my favorite, job title.
Yes, this is how you can get your message into the news feeds of CEOs, HR people, etc. Think about this: how would you get in front of your selected group otherwise? You would probably have to do things like advertise in niche publications and trade show marketing.
LinkedIn offers you both a pay-per-click payment option, as well as pay per 1,000 impressions. I like the latter, as it seems more cost-effective, and you don’t pay for the clicks you do get.
I suggest your sponsored update be of some value to your audience, like a white paper, article or video, instead of some sort of solicitation. Your content should be housed on your website, and you should monitor the clicks as part of your conversion tracking (often done through Google Analytics).
