Words: Belinda Connolly
LinkedIn now boasts more than one billion members across the globe. With more users comes a bigger, more engaged audience – and more competition. This means you’ll need to sure up your LinkedIn marketing strategy so that it takes advantage of the tools and tips that others may not be utilising on the platform.
Whether you are trying to establish yourself as an industry expert or driving conversions, we’ve talked before about the importance of building your brand on LinkedIn. In 2024 there are more efficient tools and clever ways to improve your presence than ever before. Read on to discover how to take advantage and optimise your LinkedIn strategy.
LinkedIn Live
This feature is nothing new, but it is something that you should be using as part of your LinkedIn strategy in 2024. LinkedIn Live allows eligible members and Pages to broadcast live videos using either a third-party broadcast tool or a custom stream (RTMP – Real-Time Messaging Protocol) to a LinkedIn profile, LinkedIn Page, or Event. There is the option of broadcasting in real time or scheduling. To access LinkedIn Live you need to fulfil the following criteria: Audience of more than 150 followers and/or connections A history of abiding by LinkedIn’s Professional Community Policies.
What you need to know:
- If your profile or Page is eligible, you will see the option to select LinkedIn Live in the Event drop-down menu.
- Create an event via a preferred third-party broadcast tool – you cannot stream directly from LinkedIn.
- Turn on Creator Mode: During this process, you will see if LinkedIn Live is available to you under creator tools. Creator Mode is not available for Pages.
- LinkedIn Live can help eligible people or Pages enhance their presence and engagement organically by reaching out directly to their audience in a more personal way.
Predictive Audiences & Audience Expansion
LinkedIn discontinued its lookalike audiences feature at the end of February, meaning there is no longer the functionality to create new lookalike audiences or edit existing ones. Instead, users will have to make the most of the platform’s predictive audiences, or audience expansion options. What this means: Predictive Audiences help expand your campaign’s reach by creating an audience of people with similar characteristics to your existing data source who are more likely to convert. To create a predictive audience, LinkedIn combines your data source and their own AI to automatically generate a new custom audience. This includes contact lists, Lead Gen Form, or Online Conversions along with LinkedIn’s AI.
What you need to know:
- You can adjust the audience by location and size.
- Targeting filters can be used to exclude audience during campaign setup.
- Create a predictive audience on your Audiences page in Campaign Manager.
Audience Expansion shows your ads to audiences with attributes similar to your target audience. It does this mainly through professional demographics, which can be combined with Matched Audience segments.
What you need to know:
- You can exclude specific attributes from your target audience.
- LinkedIn recommends using Audience Expansion when using specific segments where there’s a possibility of you missing some members. For example: Job titles, skills and groups.
- Audience Expansion is automatically enabled for available campaign objectives but can be disabled when creating or editing a campaign.
- This transition reflects LinkedIn’s evolving approach to audience targeting, encouraging use of more advanced tools to enhance campaign effectiveness. By optimising your audience you can ensure your messaging is reaching the right people at the right time.
Custom CTAs
For Premium members on a Business Plan, LinkedIn has custom Call to Action (CTA) buttons on their profiles. This allows members to introduce a personalised element into their LinkedIn profiles with options like contact me, learn more or visit website. These customised buttons encourage users to take specific actions, and are designed to increase user engagement, showcase expertise and create stronger connections.
What you need to know:
- This customisation is designed to streamline the process by removing the need for interested users to return to the profile to access the designated action.
- This feature could help brands showcase their unique selling points, products, or services.
- This tool can facilitate direct engagement and conversion between the brand and its audience.
- These practical tools are designed to bridge the gap between a profile visit and actionable engagement. With the ability to prompt immediate action, these CTAs can optimise the user journey by improving user engagement.
Social Selling Index
LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index (SSI) measures how effective you or your brand is at implementing the principles of social selling on the platform, which can ultimately influence your sales success. Ranging from 0 to 100, the SSI is created on an overall score based on the following four pillars: establishing a professional brand finding the right people engaging with insights building relationships.
The platform updates every user’s scores daily, and the idea is for users to be constantly improving their score to get closer to 100. An easy way to improve your score is by having a content marketing strategy for LinkedIn including strategic content that asks questions, uses interactive graphics, or highlights your expertise via articles you have written and shared.
What you need to know:
- Having a high score can give you an edge over your competitors, as it shows that you’re leveraging the platform effectively to connect with potential customers.
- A higher score can result in more invitations to connect, which can lead to more prospects, lead generation and sales. Find your score here.
LinkedIn Newsletters
The beauty of LinkedIn is that your audience is already there. Creating a strategy that combines regular posts with a dedicated newsletter is a good way to optimise your engagement organically. Indeed, 1.3 million read LinkedIn newsletters per day.
These newsletters are also a great way to grow your audiences. Whenever a subscriber engages with a newsletter by liking, commenting, or sharing, their activity is potentially visible to their connections, amplifying the reach organically. This ripple effect can increase your brand’s visibility and attract new subscribers and potential leads without any additional advertising spend.
And unlike traditional email marketing, which requires gathering email addresses and updating your database, LinkedIn makes the process easy. The platform offers single click subscription, and new editions of newsletter are highlighted in subscribers LinkedIn feed as well as sent via LinkedIn notifications.
What you need to know:
- Sharing valuable insights and industry news can position your brand as a thought leader. Do this by sharing in-depth analysis, trends, and professional experience to build credibility.
- Anyone on the platform can discover, read, and share your Newsletter. Discover how to create a newsletter here.
- LinkedIn Newsletters can organically grow engagement on the platform through direct communication with your professional audience while establishing your brand’s authority.
By embracing these under-utilised tools and strategies, you can optimise your brand’s LinkedIn marketing strategy to improve reach and increase connections with your target audience.
