Linkedin is not Facebook, but...

...there is so much that could be done to make it more engaging.

I am a big fan of Linkedin and have been a member since day dot but there is nothing in the premium accounts that have remotely enticed me to pay for one. I am hard pressed to find other small businesses who would pay for an annual subscription charged at ￡36 per month just to send 15 emails or see who has viewed my profile. Of course, many of the packages are sales/recruitment leaning for bigger corporates but a huge amount of us on the platform are smaller businesses using it to make connections.

But I didn't want to use this post to lament the packages but rather suggest a couple of things that tend to work quite well for me as a small business owner. I love the fact that Linkedin has less distractions than Facebook and the content I read here is in the main around professional development (even the political ones), but here is where Linkedin can raise it's game. For me at least.

Company/Personal Pages

So this is what I am greeted with when I log into my Facebook page. I can upload images, advertise my business, create events, offers and even start live video to an audience of followers I know. And I haven't even spoke about blogging.

These tools are there to create immediate calls to action which are the life blood for engagement with my audience.

In addition to these immediate tools, I have Insights. I can deep dive into my views, reach, measure the paid and organic reach of posts, videos or photos. Not to mention that gem of actions on my page who clicked for directions, clicked my action buttons or went to my actual website. Allowing me to design and tailor content as to what works best.

Even being able to schedule posts using the Publishing tool is priceless. Whether blog or video for those who have content calendars this is a great way of being able to set in place our content and then go back and measure content using insights.

This is what my Linkedin alternative looks like.

Nuff said.

Advertising model

Having tried to advertise on Linkedin before I can say hands down that it is a lot more cumbersome than Facebook. The Adverts Manager (Facebook) interface is a lot more intuitive than Campaign manager (Linkedin) and it's easier to target a specific audience.

To be fair Linkedin is really good for B2B marketing but for us smaller businesses who also use it for B2C the limitations of the CPC ad model is a shame. If I am running a leadership or presentations workshop for corporates or growing business I can run ads here, but Facebook allows me to create events within the platform get signups and promote those ads with minimal budgets with a more flexible approach to A/B testing of which ads work.

Whilst I will say I have had a higher CTR on Facebook I think Linkedin with a few tweeks to the model could make this work really well. Converstion tracking on Facebook is miles ahead as well. I don't want to have to manually collect leads the way the platform currently does it. Unless I am missing something.

After all if I am here as a small business owner and have built up a good connection with professionals here why should I want to jump over to Facebook, more of a social than professional platform?

I could also mention Groups here have low engagement (I have no answer for that) and Facebook Messenger is becoming a great tool for business colleagues I know of being able to convert sales, promote goods and provide consumer service.

I don't know if Linkedin already have provision for this and I could be missing a trick or too. I am happy to be corrected by members of the team (that's another thing, why are you, yes Linkedin you, so crap at responding) or other marketers who have been able to address the things I said are shortcomings. I loved Linkedin. I really do but if those of us small business owners who are ambassadors are actually more likely to gravitate to Facebook, what does that say about those newbies who you want to attract?

Anyway those are a few of my thoughts. What are yours?

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I am a speaker, faciliator and coach. My main focus is around leadership development. Helping leaders communicate better for themselves and their organisations.

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