Four New LinkedIn Features Your Tech Consulting Firm Should Explore

Events

LinkedIn began releasing the Events feature on (Company) Pages in 2019, which could not have come at a better time.  Virtual events are marketing essentials, and having the Event feature adds visibility to your events.

The new event feature allows you to highlight your events to your followers and promote to a broader audience. Strategically thinking, thought leadership events, even those that aren’t widely attended, allow you to demonstrate a difference and deliver brand-defining messages that influence your audient.

Some organizations are combining the Events feature and LinkedIn Live, which provides live streaming capabilities. This could be an interesting combination if you have an audience that appreciates this type of content and is willing to bend to the demand of real-time (as opposed to on-demand or scripted events).

Action: On your company Page, select the pull-down for Admin Tools, scroll down the list to “Create an Event.”  Define your event.

Followers

The number of followers of your Page has a positive impact on the organic reach and impressions your page post receives. It’s a pretty straightforward idea: the larger the audience, the larger the number of impressions and the larger your ability to educate, inform, and influence your audience.

LinkedIn has made growing your audience easier with a feature that allows you to increase followers. Administrators now can invite up to 100 people per month to follow their Page. The system works on a “credit” process, where you are awarded 100 credits every month, with no rollover capability. All the admins of the Page share those 100 credits.

There is a minimal downside to inviting people to follow your Page. If your invitation is neglected or refused, you’ll be no worse than if you did nothing. (People who refuse your invitation aren’t likely to be consuming your content anyway). If your invitation is accepted and they follow your Page, you’ll increase your organic reach.

Action: On your company Page, select the “Invite your connections to follow your page” (usually in the right navigation column), and select the contact you want to invite.

Polls

Engagement is the currency of LinkedIn success. With engagement, your posts and content enters more feeds and is seen by more people (impressions). Without engagement, you are demoted to the ocean of millions of ordinary posts seen by very few.

To help you engage with your audience, LinkedIn has released its Poll feature. You can see an example here (POLL).  The feature itself is relatively simple to use, create a poll, and solicit input from your audience.

The beauty of the Poll feature is truly revealed when you begin to learn and use the information provided. For example, in the example poll above, the purpose is to validate the type of content important to the followers of the Page. With that information, the Page can begin to post more of the type of content the followers want to consume. The assumption is engagement will increase if the content is tuned to the likes of the follower.

LinkedIn advertises that you can create a poll using this feature in less than 30 seconds.  Maybe that’s possible, but I advise you to spend a little more time to think strategically and create your polls to be valuable to your audience. Asking the right questions will allow you to align your LinkedIn content strategy, perform research, and gain valuable insight.

Action: On your company Page or personal account, select Add a Poll. Select “Create a Poll,” enter a question, and associated answers.  Post the poll, and you’re done. 

Teams and Notify Employees

As mentioned before, engagement is the currency of LinkedIn success, and one of the most natural methods to gain engagement is to harness the support of your team and fellow employees.

When posting on your Company Page, you’ll be asked to “Notify Employees” once the post is complete. For existing posts, the featured can be accessed by clicking on the three (3) dots menu (currently top right). You’ll see “Notify employees of post.”   This feature does as it says; it notifies employees who have profiles on LinkedIn that a new post has happened. This is hugely beneficial for firms attempting to get their staff involved as one of the common complaints is, “I didn’t know anything had been posted.”

A similar feature allows you to define your teammates. The definition of teammates elevates their activity in your feed, meaning you’re more likely to see their posts, comments, likes, etc. The goal is to provide visibility so you can engage with their content, pulling it into the feeds of your contacts. To maximize the impact of the teammates, feature each member of the firm should define their teammates (manager, peers, direct reports). When this web of connection is complete, its likely multiple people will see posts allowing them to comment, like, and share.

Action: Have everyone in your firm access their “My Network” section of their profile. On the left side of the Page will be “Teammates” listed below “Connections.”  Select Teammates and define the relationships that exist in your firm.  Everyone in the firm must perform this task to maximize impact.

To win at the LinkedIn game, you need to maximize awareness and engagement. Along with the consistent posting of relevant and informative content, these four features will help you elevate your LinkedIn game.

Do you want to discuss a robust LinkedIn strategy for your tech consulting firm? Send me a message on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidclintonsmith/) or email me at David.c.smith@valenspoint.com.