Why LinkedIn is more important than ever in 2019

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Ready, steady, target, market

A well-planned LinkedIn strategy is a great way to help a business reach its goals and connect a brand to an audience of active, influential professionals. LinkedIn has organic and paid opportunities to reach a target audience. The first step is to determine an organic, always-on strategy and to build a presence on the platform. This also helps to identify what sort of content resonates best with audiences.

When this is in place, investing in paid opportunities can help boost reach and engagement. As part of paid ad campaigns, Sponsored Content, Sponsored InMail, Text Ads, or a mix of all three, can have a meaningful impact. One of the newer features is the LinkedIn Dynamic Ads offering.

These small, personalised ads are available on desktop only and are placed on the right side of the feed. Due to its ability to customise ads based on a user’s profile, this is a great way to generate leads by driving LinkedIn traffic to a business website.

In the B2B space, LinkedIn really stands out from any other social media platform. Although visibility is important, being able to engage directly with your network is what elevates LinkedIn to the next level. With its publishing platform and career-centric approach to social networking, LinkedIn has become the go-to destination for brands and professionals to share content.

Because anyone can publish articles on this professional networking site, businesses can easily target brand advocates, opinion leaders, potential customers and industry influencers on one platform. This places LinkedIn as the secret sauce to any solid marketing strategy.

Voice your thoughts, literally

LinkedIn Messaging may be the communication tool you didn’t realise you needed. Now available in LinkedIn App’s messaging feature, is the capability to record and send voice messages of up to 1 minute long, to your first-degree connections. This makes for clear, effective communication in a short time, and a deeper level of personalisation with your contacts.

Let’s connect

Part of driving a company’s growth is connecting with a community, and by regularly engaging with these communities. Actively participating in meaningful conversations is one of the best ways to interact and build relationships with employees, partners, and customers. This also opens doors for new business opportunities. The LinkedIn Pages feature is designed to make it easy to engage with companies, connect with the people working there, and to stay up to date on their latest news.

While companies have always had the ability to share images and video content, they can now share documents such as PowerPoint presentations or PDFs to help tell their brand story more effectively.

A revolutionary new feature allows job seekers to set up alerts for the companies they are keen to work with, and it lets the business know that someone is interested in a job there.

Matchmakers (without swiping left)

Although hashtags are not a new phenomenon on social media platforms, using hashtags on LinkedIn will allow employers to better match with the perfect new talent for their business.

Businesses are learning that sharing content about their company culture, and how their employees experience the workplace, are effective ways of attracting the best employees.

Searching for the right hashtags can make it easier to find a workplace with a culture and values that match your own - even searching for specific phrases such as #dogfriendly or #flexibleworkinghours.

A must-have in 2019

While it doesn't get as much attention as other social media platforms, LinkedIn has a specific market niche, and it continues to explore ways in which to create more value with new advertising tools and features designed to help marketers maximise their efforts. With access to 30 million companies and 610 million professionals looking for new ideas and opportunities, LinkedIn is a great platform to explore and help businesses reach their marketing goals.