How Teal Is Leveraging LinkedIn Influencers to Drive Subscribers to The Job Search and Management Platform

With LinkedIn surpassing the one billion user mark, it has undeniably established itself as a dominant force in the B2B influencer marketing ecosystem. However, despite its status as a hub for B2B social engagement, LinkedIn's influencer marketing landscape is still in its early stages. A prime example of this is the platform's recent introduction of a 'brand partnership' tag in April 2023, specifically designed to highlight influencer-brand collaborations.?

The vibrancy of the B2B influencer economy on LinkedIn is evident, with 75% of B2B businesses reportedly utilizing influencers in their marketing strategies. Notably, LinkedIn has become the go-to platform for these influencer marketing endeavors. This concentrated focus on LinkedIn has spurred a significant interest among B2B communication and marketing professionals in understanding how to effectively launch and manage influencer campaigns on the platform. At Media Quake, we've noticed a surge in reader inquiries, seeking insights on engaging with influencers on LinkedIn.?

Responding to this growing interest, we are excited to launch "LinkFluence” an interview series which will explore how B2B brands can best tap into the power of LinkedIn. This new series of exclusive interviews will feature insights from MikeWorldWide executives and other digital marketing experts, LinkedIn creators, and representatives from LinkedIn itself, aiming to answer your most pressing questions about the platform.?

Our inaugural interview features Lia Zneimer, VP of Marketing at Teal, who was recently spotlighted in Fast Company for her pioneering work in launching Teal’s LinkedIn influencer strategy which to date has engaged more than 50+ influencers on the platform driving thousands of subscriptions for the company. In this comprehensive Q&A, Zneimer shares her expertise on how brands can effectively identify and collaborate with influencers and align these initiatives with their broader marketing goals. Check out the full Q&A below:??

To level set, how would you define what a "LinkedIn influencer" is from your perspective??

I think it's tempting to assume that anyone with a large number of followers is, by definition, an influencer. But for me (and for Teal as a brand), it's not just about follower count; it's also about engagement rates and whether your network is consistently interacting with your content in an authentic way. To us, that indicates the person posting is in a position of influence where they're able to impact purchasing decisions, behavior, or usage of a particular tool or product.??

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With over a decade of experience in social media, managing prominent brands like WeWork and Scholastic, have LinkedIn influencers consistently been part of your strategy, or do you view them as a more recent addition to the influencer marketing landscape??

LinkedIn influencers are new for me as of this year (April of 2023). Prior to that, I hadn't seen many brands—especially B2C—play around in the space. And historically LinkedIn rolled out creator features and tools much later than platforms like Instagram and TikTok, so I think it's taken a little longer to catch on. I think LinkedIn influencers are still in their early days and am curious to see how both creators and brands evolve as it becomes more commonplace.??

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Can you elaborate on why you chose LinkedIn influencers specifically, as opposed to, or in conjunction with, influencers on other platforms like TikTok or Instagram??

For us, the goal of our influencer program was to reach people where they are and in a way that resonates with them. We'd had luck building our TikTok presence in 2022 and 2023 thanks to #careertok, growing from 200 followers to over 100K, and experimented with influencer marketing there, teaming up with some awesome creators who were organic enthusiasts of the brand and who were already showcasing Teal in their content. But when we took a step back and looked at where job seekers really think about their job search, it wasn't always TikTok—it was LinkedIn. So we took a big bet and added some creators to our mix. Many of the folks we worked with back in March were new to influencer marketing themselves, and were just getting into the groove of creating content for brands, so it was fun to explore that dynamic in real time and grow together.??

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Could you explain the process of discovering these LinkedIn influencers and what your process is like for assessing their impact and alignment with Teal's brand objectives??

It's wild—I was combing through our stats the other day and by the end of December, we'll have collaborated with more than 50 creators in total this year. Our process is a mix of outbound and inbound. Inbound is pretty self-explanatory (we have a form on our website that folks can fill out to apply for our affiliate program and/or creator partnerships). When it comes to outbound, we look to creators whose content we genuinely respect and admire and who we think might be both influential and impactful in our space (career growth, professional development, job search, etc.). We're constantly keeping an eye out and actively listening on social media to identify emerging voices and people whose accounts we think will grow quickly. Sometimes current creators we partner with introduce us to friends of theirs who they think would also be a good fit—and those word-of-mouth recommendations mean the world. To evaluate impact, we typically look at the median engagement (likes, comments, reposts) on a creator's last 10 posts and compare that to their follower size. If they're consistently earning high engagement with their audience, that's a green light for us to reach out. That said, we've also discovered there are some creators who just aren't the right fit for our brand. We try to align ourselves with HR pros' best practices and recommendations—for example, helping to combat the misconception that the ATS is a bot rejecting your resume. If we see a creator with a large following employ scare tactics or emphasize the "ATS bot rejection," we know it's probably not the best mutual fit.??

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Considering LinkedIn influencers are a newer phenomena, could you give an overview of what the typical agreement with LinkedIn influencers entails? What are some key elements brands should think about including in their negotiation terms??

Beyond the basics (number of deliverables, timelines, creative briefs, etc.), we added a few things to our agreements, including required sign-off on all creative at least 24 hours before the posting date, one round of edits/revisions, and on LinkedIn, light exclusivity, where we ask that the creators we partner with not post sponsored content about any of our competitors within one week of posting about Teal. It's a courtesy on their part, but we hope also helps build trust with their audience. We've found that agreeing to a package of deliverables upfront and signing quarterly agreements (vs. one-offs month-to-month) has been super helpful in terms of streamlining operations. One thing we took out of our contract was usage rights or the ability to put paid spend behind creators' posts; we're not focused on paid social at the moment and doing so helped bring costs down a bit for some creators.??

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What type of content did you commission LinkedIn influencers to create for Teal, and were there particular forms of content (such as short-form posts, newsletters, LinkedIn Live broadcasts, etc.) that yielded better engagement??

We've worked with creators on a huge mix of content—everything you mentioned above and more: listicles, longer-form written content, images, carousels, videos, giveaways, LinkedIn Live events. We really want the creators we team up with to feel empowered to create posts that will resonate with their audience. After all, they know their audience best. We've seen such a huge spread in terms of what worked and what didn't—but at the end of the day, the pieces that yielded the best engagement were the pieces with a clear creative brief ahead of time and pieces of content where we trusted the creator and didn't micromanage the brand messaging. One creator pushed to include a selfie for better engagement and at first we were reluctant because it didn't feel product-focused... but it turned out to drive a ton of sign-ups for Teal. Lesson learned: Give structure, give up total control.??

What are some of the obstacles you encountered while initiating a comprehensive LinkedIn influencer campaign for Teal? What lessons if any did you learn that might help other brands in their process of launching a LinkedIn influencer campaign?

We're fortunate in that I think we were (and still are) pretty early in the space—so there's been room for trial and error and we're learning a lot as we go. A few challenges we've faced:

1. Expecting the unexpected. Early on, I was so focused on who was posting when and relied heavily on posts going out on a particular day so we weren't flooding LinkedIn all at once. But inevitably last-minute conflicts pop up, posts don't get approved in time, and life happens—so building out buffer time and allocating more lead time has been huge.
2. We didn't anticipate so many of our competitors working with many of the exact creators we'd been teaming up with. And while that's great for the creators—we want them to build their personal brands, monetize, and grow—it was a real moment of trying to articulate what sets Teal apart from those other products, and how to position our differentiators in the creative brief ahead of time.

We have some exciting new initiatives in the works that I hope will continue to differentiate us and more importantly, build trust with our partners and their audiences.??

On the topic of metrics, we’ve discussed the analytics provided by LinkedIn’s creator mode with our readers. How do you measure the effectiveness of influencer collaborations on LinkedIn from Teal's perspective??

For us, we like to give the post a little time to breathe once it's live. Sure, it's wonderful when a post takes off quickly, but we know the algorithm can sometimes be hit or miss, so we collect screenshots of the stats a week after the post went live. To measure effectiveness on the back end, we have a certain target cost per view in mind, so we look at the engagement rate on the post, the reach, and the CPV to determine whether it was a success or not. Knowing every creator has home runs and off days, we try to use consistency as a metric and ask ourselves, Is this person's content consistently meeting or exceeding expectations? And then we also look at things like sign-ups to Teal and upgrades to Teal+ driven by each creator's unique link.???

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With LinkedIn reaching a billion users globally, do you foresee an expansion in the use of LinkedIn influencers, or do you believe it will remain a relatively specialized area within influencer marketing??

I think we're just seeing the beginning of the LinkedIn influencer surge. For many brands and companies—especially in the B2B space—I think it'll become a core part of the influencer marketing strategy, but I can also see a world in which LinkedIn users get frustrated with the platform turning into another Facebook or Instagram. And honestly, I think that frustration is super valid, which is why we want to keep our influencer partnerships as authentic as we possibly can.?