Top Tips From #EduConnect18

Hats off to my friends, connections, and colleagues at LinkedIn for putting together another amazing conference centering on marketing for the higher education recruitment. There were a lot of big ideas and glimpses into the future of of our industry. I do appreciate coming away from events like these totally inspired, and the Higher Ed Team at LinkedIn did not disappoint.

This year I came to the conference with a mission--to learn more about new products and best practices that we want to tap into for the coming year. There was plenty of that to go around. Here's some key takeaways.

Lead Gen Forms - Earlier this year LinkedIn rolled out a lead gen form product which can now be incorporated into both Newsfeed and InMail ads. There is a slick integration with Zapier that will bridge the data directly into your CRM. According to one attendee, they achieved 3x the leads of a previous campaign for the same money.

Video Ads Have Arrived - There's no question that incorporating the sight, sound, motion and emotion of video into an ad campaign is a fantastic way to improve engagement with your brand. LinkedIn boasts the high 'completion rates' and in an internal study they found that "videos under 30 seconds reported a 200% lift in view completion rates."

When you are creating content for thought leadership ask yourself the question that Suzy Welsh asks every time she produces a video: Would anyone say ‘duh’ to this?” If the answer is yes, scrap it.

And here's one that I'll steal from Michelle R. Weise's presentation. She took the quote from Professor Jim Dator: “Any useful statement about the future should at first seem ridiculous.”

Special shoutouts to the informative LinkedIn product workshops conducted by Naomi Fink and Dylan Ferber. You know your stuff and were incredibly helpful. Ad once again, my sincere thanks to Thea Malley, Felicia Mattson, Michael Levine, and the entire team for a great conference!

--Gary Steel consults clients on Online Marketing and Advertising for Higher Education, and is Google Search, Display, Video Analytics, Yext, and Acquisio Certified.