Tag Archive for: LinkedIn

LinkedIn Launches Sponsored Articles For Brands

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LinkedIn is introducing a new feature called Sponsored Articles that allows brands to turn articles they publish on the site into ads that will reach wider audiences.

The goal is to provide a way for users to engage with sponsored content without having to leave the site or interrupt their experience.

Though it is already available to most business accounts, the company said some brands may not have access quite yet. 

As it rolls out, LinkedIn admins for business accounts will start seeing the option to promote their post on eligible content. If selected, brands can also opt to gate their content with a CTA like “Unlock Article”.

While some have suggested the new feature is similar to others on the site, such as lead generation ads, a statement from the company said Sponsored Articles have many unique benefits.

Baptiste Beauvisage, Lead Client Solutions Manager at LinkedIn, highlighted these particular benefits that Sponsored Articles will give brands.

  • “You can use the content you already have on your LinkedIn page.”
  • “Sponsored posts are more viral than a blog article hosted externally.”
  • “You can have all the comments from logged-in members on the article directly.”
  • “There is a better UX.”
  • “You can drive leads without sending users off Linkedin to consult your article.”

Though the feature is currently limited to business accounts, the company is working to bring it to entrepreneurs and others across the site. It is also looking to expand Sponsored Articles with new features and functionalities that may make it more versatile for brands.

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LinkedIn Is Making Collaborative Articles More Visible And Engaging

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LinkedIn is making Collaborative Articles more visible across its platform, including within search, feeds, and notifications. 

In an announcement today, the company said it plans to show more Collaborative Articles when users are looking for information about specific problems or topics. 

In addition to making Collaborative Articles more visible in these spaces, LinkedIn says it will also start showing your contributions to people outside your network and might even notify members “who would benefit” from your knowledge when you make a contribution. 

Other New Changes Coming To Collaborative Articles

LinkedIn announced several other big new changes coming to Collaborative Articles”

  • New “Top Contributors” section: If members found you to be one of the most noteworthy contributors in an article, you will now be featured at the top of the article.
  • Better browsing for readers: A better browsing experience for readers leads to more people seeing your contributions. The new design allows members to easily explore multiple contributions, and new cross-article hyperlinking allows members to easily jump from one article to the next. 
  • Better articles: LinkedIn says it is working closely with our editorial team to continuously improve the quality of the AI-powered article text and titles — you’ll start to see a lot more depth in the articles recommended to you.
  • Improved Top Community Voice badging: If you’re one of the most noteworthy contributors in a skill, your badge for that skill now shows up not only on your profile but also next to your contributions in the article. Badges will only remain active for members who continue to meet our selective criteria and provide noteworthy contributions within a specific skill.

For more, read the full announcement from LinkedIn here.

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New LinkedIn Ads Study Finds What Makes The Most Effective Ads

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If you’ve ever wanted to know the secret to get the best response on LinkedIn Ads, Vidmob’s recently released report on global advertising trends on the platform may be exactly what you’re looking for. 

The report breaks down every element of LinkedIn ads to show which visual elements, text, and creative strategies performed the best on the platform for driving B2B engagement. 

The findings come from over 800 million ad impressions tracked by brands paying for video ad campaigns on LinkedIn within North America and the EMEA region (Africa, Europe, and the Middle East). 

What Elements are Most Effective?

The report says video ads containing the following elements performed better than those that did not:

  • Videos that display messaging in the first quarter of the video saw a 149% boost in views through the first 25% of the ad.
  • Ads that are 7-15 seconds long received a 54% lift in engagement rates.
  • Videos with high text contrast saw a 102% lift in views through the first 25%.
  • Videos featuring a person within the first quarter received a 175% increase to views through the opening 25%
  • Ads that include the phrase “Get a Quote” received 33% higher click-through rates.
  • When ads show a brand logo within the first 2 seconds, they see a 17% increase to click-through rates.

Key Takeaways

From all the data and findings, Vidmob has made 5 key points advertisers should be aware of:

Video: “While short and sweet is the usual go-to for video length, for awareness plays in the tech industry, audiences are engaged with mid-length content too.”

Color: “Don’t shy away from bright hues in upper funnel assets.”

Terminology: “Make use of Tech industry jargon and relevant imagery in creative assets, such as ‘Data,’ ‘Leader,’ ‘Expert,’ and ‘Demand.’”

Functional Benefits: “Focus on functional benefits and how the products or solutions can add efficiencies for the audience.”

Branding: “Make sure some reference to the brand appears upfront in the first 3 sec of the creative.”

For more interesting findings about the best elements to use at each stage of the customer awareness journey, download the full report from Vidmob here.

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LinkedIn Launches 4 New Features For Businesses

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LinkedIn revealed a slew of new features designed exclusively for businesses this week, including content creation, new ways to engage with other companies, and easier ways to have live discussions with others.

Let’s look at all the new features in a bit more detail:

Improved Post Scheduling

Though LinkedIn has offered the ability for regular users to schedule posts ahead of time since late 2022, the feature has not been available to business pages until now. 

Now, business pages can create and schedule posts up to three months ahead of time. Not only does this make it ensure you’ll be delivering steady content to your users, it gives you the chance to prepare a content calendar ahead of time to be more considerate of what type of content you are posting and when. 

While the feature is currently only available to desktop users, LinkedIn says it will be coming to mobile apps soon.

First-Party Audio Events

LinkedIn is rolling out a new, built-in way to hold live audio events on the platform. This means you’ll be able to host audio-based discussions with your followers and other experts in the field without needing to use third-party external apps. 

While hosts will have control over the discussion and who gets to speak, users will be able to engage with the conversation using emojis or requesting to speak in the chat.

Automated Job Postings

LinkedIn has created a way for small businesses with under 1,000 employees to automatically create and share job postings.

Once activated, the feature generates and shares an open role job posting as a pre-scheduled post which can be edited after it is posted.

However, the announcement says that the feature will not be available for what are vaguely described as “basic jobs.”

Follow Other Pages From Your Page

LinkedIn Pages can now start following other Pages, allowing you to have B2B conversations without necessarily going through a personal LinkedIn account. Additionally, this makes it easier to find conversations relevant to your field happening across the platform.

All of these new features aim to expand the functionality of business Pages and make it easier to engage with your audience. By using these, you’ll be able to find new connections, foster better relationships with leads, and be able to become an authority in your field faster.

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LinkedIn Previews 2023’s Upcoming Features and Updates

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To kick off 2023, Linkedin is giving a preview of the upcoming features it is working on. Along with updates to the platform’s job search systems, the company revealed it is prioritizing making content more accessible, new ways to find B2B products and services, better analytics, and more. 

Let’s explore all 7 of the new features LinkedIn revealed:

1. Improving Accessibility for Video Content

To help content creators make their videos more accessible, LinkedIn will start automatically generating captions for all videos on the platform. Currently only available for English users, creators can edit these captions or upload manually generated captions when uploading videos. 

Additionally, LinkedIn is adding a high contract mode on the LinkedIn app to make videos and other content easier to see for those with difficulty seeing. 

2. Standardized Accessibility Job Titles

LinkedIn is making it easier for those working in accessibility to find job opportunities and connections by providing a set of standardized job titles for use across the platform. 

3. Alt Text In Campaign Manager

Another feature intended to make visual content more accessible, LinkedIn’s Campaign Manager has added the ability for advertisers to add alt-text descriptions to images in ads. 

4. Personalized Job Collections 

According to LinkedIn’s research, more people are casually looking for job opportunities than ever – particularly with the goal of finding a position that better aligns with their values and interests. 

With this in mind, LinkedIn is creating personalized job collections to help users find opportunities without conducting specific searches. 

5. Improvements to B2B Product Search

To make it easier to search and filter through the nearly 90,000 B2B available across LinkedIn, the platform is adding new category filters and ways to share information with prospects 

Along with updates to the B2B product search engine, the company is improving Product Pages to better showcase the benefits and unique features of B2B products.

6. Post Scheduling

After years of pleas from users, LinkedIn is finally letting creators schedule posts ahead of time. 

Users will begin seeing a “schedule” button directly next to the “Post” button when preparing a post. If selected, the icon will let you select exactly when you want your content to go live. 

7. Improvements to Analytics

Lastly, LinkedIn is updating its analytics dashboard for creators to include more relevant data like audience insights and top-performing content. 

The company says highlighting these specific types of data will help brands understand their overall growth and performance at a glance.

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LinkedIn Gives Brands 3 New Ways To Improve Their Page

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LinkedIn introduced three new features for Pages recently to make it easier for brands to develop better connections with their audience.

With these new features, your business can improve its content, help guide the conversation in your comments, and highlight your company values more prominently.

While the company only recently announced these features, they have been rolling out to users throughout the past month. So some may just now be getting access, you may have spotted them across the platform already.

Post Templates for Pages

Having trouble generating content that actually sparks reactions and conversation? LinkedIn has introduced new, free, and customizable post templates for Pages to make sharing enticing content easier than ever.

Available in the mobile app, simply tap the “use template option” from the post menu and select from a variety of pre-created templates with clickable calls-to-action. Once selected, each template can be customized with unique colors, fonts, text, and more to deliver a post that stands out and drives conversation.

Pinned Comments

Comments sections on popular posts can be hard to control, but LinkedIn is making it easier to guide conversations with pinned comments at the top of your brand’s posts.

You can also use this to highlight particularly helpful or thoughtful comments from others.

Pinned comments can be changed at any time so you can shape the conversation happening in real-time. 

Any responses to the pinned comment will also appear at the top of the thread, encouraging others to continue the conversation in that direction.

Featured Commitments Section

The new “Our featured commitments” section of LinkedIn Pages makes it possible for brands to showcase their company values to job seekers or potential business partners.

In this section, you can highlight up to 5 commitments to specific values, including:

  • Diversity, equity, and inclusion
  • Career growth and learning,
  • Work-life balance
  • Social impact
  • Environmental sustainability

Once you have selected your values, you can also host content that specifically demonstrates the ways your company upholds these values, such as videos, reports, certifications, or other types of content.

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LinkedIn Makes It Easier To Discover And Follow Creators

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LinkedIn is making it easier to find and follow creators across the platform through a series of new updates announced this week.

The professional social network has been emphasizing its platform’s content publishing tools over the past few years. The goal is to make it easier for individual figures and brands to stand out on the platform by sharing interesting anecdotes, important professional updates, and motivational insights.

These updates continue that theme by opening new ways for those who don’t share connections on the site to discover your content and opt-in to see more of your content in their feed.

Here’s a breakdown of all the new ways users can find, follow, and share your content to increase your visibility on LinkedIn:

Follow Creators Directly from The Feed

When people who aren’t connected to your page see your content in their feed, they will now be able to immediately follow you through a small button in the top right of the post. Additionally, users may be shown a prompt below the post, providing a larger more noticeable call to follow you.

Follow Creators From LinkedIn Search Results

LinkedIn is going to start including creators who are tagged with relevant hashtags in search results for topics or ideas. Even better, the listings will include a small icon allowing users to immediately start following you.

Share Links To Your Profile

To make it easier to reach users on other platforms or sites, LinkedIn is working on a tool that will let you create a shareable link to your page. Anyone who clicks the link will then be taken to a prompt that will allow them to start following your posts on LinkedIn.

New Connections Requests Become Followers

Now, when a user sends a request to connect with your page, they will automatically be added to your followers – if they weren’t following you already.

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LinkedIn To Test Audio-Only Virtual Events

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With new data showing that LinkedIn’s virtual events are experiencing a massive surge in participation lately, the company announced it is testing a new feature for audio-only live events. 

In the recent announcement, LinkedIn revealed that attendance for virtual events on the platform is up more than 230% year-over-year. At the same time, the platform says it also saw 150% more events created year-over-year.

Obviously, a major contributor to the popularity of these events is the ongoing Covid pandemic, which has seen in-person events limited or entirely canceled over the past year and a half.

As this continues to be a problem around the world, the company believes expanding its services to include audio-only events will draw even more users to LinkedIn live events.

As the announcement says:

“This month, we’re taking a big step forward and building on the success of LinkedIn Live broadcasts by launching an entirely new interactive events experience that allows our members to more actively participate in the conversation.

Being an active part of the conversation at an event can help you make new connections, bolster your professional brand and inspire peers. In our new experience, you can participate in the live conversation by raising your hand and joining the speakers, “on stage” to help direct and add to the discussion.”

Since audio-only live events are still in the testing phase, LinkedIn says only a small group of users will be able to host these events when they first roll out. However, anyone will be able to sign up, listen, and participate in these events.

Once the company is satisfied with testing the service over the next few months, the company says it plans to expand the ability to host events to more users, though an exact date when to expect this was not available.

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LinkedIn announces features to attract and retain new hires

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It is no secret that the hiring market has gotten considerably more competitive since the onset of the Covid pandemic. Now, LinkedIn is giving companies new tools to better attract new talent, improve communication, and compare yourself against your competition.

Especially in the wake of “The Great Resignation” (or, as LinkedIn is apparently calling it – “The Great Reshuffle”), the professional social network says it is “excited to introduce a few new LinkedIn Pages features that are designed to help your brand share more about your organization and culture to more quickly attract top talent while retaining your current employees.

Let’s explore exactly what these features are, how you can access them, and how they can help you solve your hiring challenges starting right now. 

Expanded My Company Tabs

For starters, LinkedIn is updating the My Company tab to make it easier to keep your employees connected, share data, and encourage employees to share branded content to their network. 

If you are unfamiliar, the My Company tab is a feature exclusively for brands on the platform with more than 201 employees, which is designed to connect coworkers even when they are working remotely. 

In the upcoming weeks, LinkedIn will be updating this tab with these new features:

  • Easily curate content from your Page Feed to the My Company tab with the simple click of a button.
  • Notify employees as soon as new content is curated and drop them right into the resharing experience.
  • Show employees how their re-share matters with a dynamic visualization of the content that others at the organization are sharing.

Share Your Workplace Policies

One thing made very clear by the current state of the workforce is that skilled workers are looking for more than a stable paycheck. They are looking for an employer that understands their needs and implements workplace policies that encourage a positive working place.

For example, LinkedIn says employees who are satisfied with their employer’s work schedule or location flexibility are:

  • 3.4x more likely to balance work and personal obligations
  • 2.6x more likely to be happy working for their employer
  • 2.1x more likely to recommend working for their employer

By sharing your company’s policies, you can help attract talent with a similar vision for their personal and work-life balance. 

Notably, the social network is giving this info a very prominent place on company pages, with policies being displayed directly in the LinkedIn Page header. That means it is one of the first things potential applicants might see when checking out your company.

See How You Compare To Your Competition

The last big update coming to LinkedIn is an addition to its Analytics tab which allows you to directly compare your page’s performance to up to nine competitors. 

In this new tab, called “Competitor analytics”, you can see how many followers your competitors have right now, along with how their latest content has performed compared to yours.

To find out more about these updates, read the full announcement from LinkedIn here.

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LinkedIn Finally Lets Brands Publish Long-Form Content and More

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LinkedIn is launching new ways for brands to publish content on the platform, including a long-form content format called Articles for Pages and new ways to stream live events.

The new long-form content format provides the first chance for companies or organizations on the social network to publish content that is not restricted by character count while the updates to live streaming better integrate the platform’s streaming features to provide a simpler, more accessible, and more sharable.

Let’s explore these updates a bit more. 

Articles for Pages

While individuals have been able to publish long blogs and articles on their personal accounts for some time, company pages have been restricted to shorter content by arbitrary character counts.

With the new Articles for Pages, brands are finally free to go as in-depth as they want with their content on the social network, with absolutely no length restrictions. 

Importantly, Articles for Pages also comes with informative audience and engagement insights, including audience demographic details.

LinkedIn Live Events

LinkedIn is uniting its “Scheduled LinkedIn Live” and “LinkedIn Events” features together to make live streaming more streamlined and easy to do. 

Under the new title of LinkedIn Live Events, the platform is making it easier to access all of its live-streaming features while also debuting some new tricks and services. 

With LinkedIn Live Events, brands can:

  • Promote a livestream in advance to a targeted audience
  • Notify registrants and select Page followers when the event goes live
  • Generate views on the event page from anyone on the site, whether they’ve hit “Attend” or not, during and after the show.
  • Share the replay of the live content for further reach and engagement
  • Access LinkedIn Live with fewer followers than before
  • Use expanded registration forms for Events to better suit your needs
  • Manage leads with integration with Zapier.

Together, these new features open the door for brands to connect with their audience and promote their products and services in exciting and helpful ways which have been proven to drive leads. They are definitely worth considering if your brand serves professionals or entrepreneurs.

To find out more about LinkedIn’s latest announcements, check out their recent blog post on LinkedIn Pulse.

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