10 LinkedIn Features to Promote Your Business

Social Media Examiner is one of the world’s top websites for content relating to social media. Recently, it published a post entitled 10 LinkedIn Marketing Features to Promote Your Business.

?It’s one of the best roundups of ways to use LinkedIn for marketing I’ve come across in some time so I thought I’d add my thoughts about their 10 features.

Here’s the list:

#1: ?Host Long-Form Written Content On-Platform with Articles for LinkedIn Pages

Articles became available on company pages last year and work the same way as they do on profiles. They are an excellent way to build credibility through longer form content that showcases your company’s expertise, client success stories, team members and industry knowledge. Articles have their own tab in the Posts on pages and build up into a library of solid, valuable content that potential clients will want to read.

#2: ?Share Downloadable Content Collections with LinkedIn Carousel Posts

We’re seeing many more of these and they both look great and receive high view numbers. That’s because they’re considered to be document posts which the algorithm looks upon very favourably at present. My most recent one received more than 50,000 views.

#3: ?Boost Audience Engagement with LinkedIn Audience Polls

Polls are another post format performing strongly just now. Many people are using these as lead generation tools and attracting huge vote numbers by asking very general questions that are unrelated to business. My preference is to keep them business-focused and relevant to what I do and to combine them with text that adds value in some way.

#4: ?Manage Public Conversation with LinkedIn Comments Settings

When posting, you are able to decide who’s allowed to comment. However it is limited to everyone or no one. There are more options from profiles but not on company pages as yet.

If you have trouble with spam, then turning off the comments may be a solution. But an alternative is to simply remove the offending comments so you still gain the benefits of employee engagement and the wider viewership that the algorithm will send your way.

#5: ?Host Real-Time Virtual Events with LinkedIn Live

This, I believe, will be the big trend of 2022 – more live video events on LinkedIn. With interactive video already having been announced as a forthcoming feature and any company with over 150 followers now with access to LinkedIn Live, I can see more companies adding this very strong marketing tool into their mix this year. On top of that, video has its own tab, separate from posts, where recordings of lives are stored, giving them ongoing longevity.

#6: ?Integrate On-Platform Video with LinkedIn Native Video

Social Media Examiner reports LinkedIn as saying video posts are 20 times more likely to be shared than other post formats. That sounds great but we know that shared posts don’t do well either for the person sharing the post or the producer of the post. So this doesn’t seem to be a great reason for posting video.

Better reasons are that you can more accurately see how many people have watched at least part of it, some audiences prefer watching to reading, and videos have impact in the newsfeed. As with LinkedIn Lives, they are stored in the Video tab of a company page which makes them accessible for future viewers.

#7: ?Highlight Your Company’s Tool Solutions with LinkedIn Product Pages

Product pages are slooooowly being rolled out to all company pages and will be a game-changer when we all have them. These have multiple benefits including being able to have up to 35 such pages, a tab on the Home page, featured customers, product videos and screenshots, plus recommendations and community hashtags, among others.

#8: ?Spotlight Your Thought Leadership with LinkedIn Creator Mode

Creator isn’t a feature available on LinkedIn pages, it’s for personal profiles. So, it has no direct benefit to pages except through those people who are highlighted on the page, such as the CEO. Posts from team members can be shared to company pages, however, which is a great way to give them more visibility.?

#9: ?Deliver Timely Communications with LinkedIn Newsletters

Newsletters are currently only available from profiles but testing of them from pages is already underway. This tells us that newsletters are likely to come to pages sometime soon.

In terms of branding, this is a positive move because each newsletter edition will carry the company’s branding or logo, a bonus for visibility.

Newsletters are formatted like articles and can contain images, links and videos along with bolded and italicised text, making them visually appealing.

#10: ?Find Clients or Contractors with LinkedIn Services Marketplace

If a company has a project or work they need done, it is easy to find potential suppliers or contractors among those who have the Providing Services section of their profile activated. However, it doesn’t work the opposite way – companies reaching out to clients - as it's not a feature available on company pages. Although, oddly, in the past 24 hours someone has tried to do this (and after I had said no to him in a DM).

So, 10 LinkedIn Marketing Features that will help you promote your business. Of these, I think the big one we’ll see most impact with this year is events. They have the potential to increase our reach, expose us to prospective clients and help us achieve our professional goals on LinkedIn.

Here's the full Social Media Examiner article if you'd like to read it: https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/10-linkedin-marketing-features-to-promote-your-business/