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What is Linkedin?

• Linkedin is a social media network for professionals

• One purpose of the site is to allow registered users to maintain a list of contact details of people with whom they have some level of relationship, called Connections.

• Users can invite anyone (whether a site user or not) to become a connection

LinkedIn • Connections

– A contact network is built up consisting of their direct connections, the connections of each of their connections (2nd degree connections) and also the connections of second-degree connections (3rd degree connections).

– This can be used to gain an introduction to someone a person wishes to know through a mutual contact.

– It can then be used to find jobs, people and business opportunities recommended by someone in one's contact network.

– Users can post their own photos and view photos of others to aid in identification.

– Users can see who has visited their profile page.

• Jobs – Employers can list jobs and search for potential candidates. – Job seekers can review the profile of hiring managers and

discover which of their existing contacts can introduce them.

LinkedIn • Newsfeed

– Updates from connections will show up in the newsfeed

– Users can join groups and receive updates to their news feed.

– Users can now follow different companies and can receive notifications about the new joining and offers available.

– Users can "like" and "congratulate" each other's updates and new employments.

Optimizing Your LinkedIn Presence

#1 – Vanity URL

• Make your profile look more professional (and easier to share) by claiming your LinkedIn vanity URL. Instead of a URL with a million confusing numbers at the end, it will look nice and clean like this:

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/samanthadooley/

• Learn how to customize your URL here

#2 – LinkedIn Badge

• If you have your own personal website or blog, you can promote your personal LinkedIn presence and help grow your professional network by adding a Profile Badge that links to your public LinkedIn profile.

• Learn more about the LinkedIn Badge and how to add to your website here.

Optimizing Your LinkedIn Presence

#3 Get Endorsed • You can list skills

which your connections can endorse

Optimizing Your

LinkedIn Presence

Get Recommendations

#4 – Update

• Found on your LinkedIn homepage, Network Updates are essentially LinkedIn's version of the Facebook News Feed.

• Check this feed periodically for a quick snapshot of what your connections are sharing and you can share your own interesting content here too.

• You can also sort by various criteria as well as customize your feed to show only the types of updates you want to see.

Optimizing Your LinkedIn Presence

#5 – Join Groups

• Did you know that if you're a member of the same group as another user, you can bypass the need to be a first-degree connection in order to message them?

• In addition, group members are also able to view the profiles of other members of the same group without being connected.

• Your posts will also show up in the network updates screen for group members – so if I share a link to my blog it will help extend my reach

Optimizing Your LinkedIn Presence

Optimizing Your LinkedIn Presence #6 – Mentions

• Just like Facebook and Twitter, we can mention other users or company in our shares

• By including the @symbol immediately followed by the user's/company's name in your status update.

• As a result, that user/company will get alerted that you mentioned them, and their name will also link to their profile/page in the status update itself.

#7 – Company Page

• Clicking the icon of where a user works will take you directly to the employer’s LinkedIn Company Page.

• Roll over a company icon on a user’s profile to view a snapshot of general company information.

• LinkedIn will gather this information from the ‘About Us’ section of a Company Page, so make sure you include all those details when you’re setting your page up

Optimizing Your LinkedIn Presence

How to create a company page

• https://youtu.be/sFVq2v-NudE

#8 – Create a Showcase Page

• Showcase Pages are niche pages that branch off your main LinkedIn Company Page.

• You can create up to 10 showcase pages for free

Optimizing Your LinkedIn Presence

#10 – Advertise on LinkedIn

• Unlike other social media networks and platforms, users pour information into LinkedIn which gives it extremely effective targeting options for both

– Lead Generation

– Advertising

Optimizing Your LinkedIn Presence

LinkedIn Stats

• 1,398,308 Irish members (April, 2015)

Traffic

Traffic

Mobile Traffic

LinkedIn Revenue

LinkedIn Advertising

Advertising Options on LinkedIn

• Display Advertising on LinkedIn

• PPC Advertising on Linkedin

• Email marketing via Sponsored InMail

• https://youtu.be/fwnENGothDk

LinkedIn Targeting

• https://youtu.be/SgXlOH-1pPk

HubSpot Case Study

Challenge • Reach a professional audience in specific industries, companies, and

job positions • Increase quality of leads • Encourage downloads of thought leadership materials • Improve CPC rates Why LinkedIn? • Precise targeting ensures campaigns reach the right audience • Professional members receptive to business messages • Ad campaigns easy to launch and manage • High clickthrough rates and high-quality leads compared to other

social networks

HubSpot Case Study

• “With LinkedIn, we're able to truly identify our core audience by going a step further and targeting by company, job title, job function and groups. This gives us the unique ability to tailor messaging and target the exact audience segment that we need." - Dan Slagen, Head of Paid Marketing, Hubspot

Background

• HubSpot creates marketing software that helps businesses grow web traffic, generate inbound leads, and convert leads into paying customers.

• HubSpot's software platform allows professional marketers and small business owners to manage search engine optimization, blogs and social media channels, landing pages, lead intelligence, and marketing analytics.

• Since its founding, HubSpot has worked with over 6,000 companies in 45 countries.

Background • HubSpot first experimented with ad campaigns on

social networks other than LinkedIn, but the campaigns did not yield satisfactory results.

• "There's a lot of distraction on other social networks," Slagen says. "People are there for reasons besides improving their businesses, or networking with other professionals."

• HubSpot also needed to precisely target its campaigns beyond simply just location, keywords, and interests, drilling down into specific professional attributes of its potential customers - a capability that other social networks do not provide.

Solution

• We need to connect with B2B companies that are focused on lead generation, which means LinkedIn is the place for us," Slagen explains.

• In addition, LinkedIn Ads provide the targeting precision that HubSpot requires.

• "We're able to truly identify our core audience by going a step further and targeting by company, job title, job function and groups. This gives us the unique ability to tailor messaging and target the exact audience segment that we need. These are unparalleled capabilities not only within the B2B space, but within the entire pay-per-click space."

Results

• Using LinkedIn Ads, HubSpot has been able to achieve click through rates ranging from 0.1% to 0.3% with an average CPC of about $3, "which is actually a fraction of the cost of paid search advertising," Slagen explains.

• "On traditional PPC search engines, we've seen average CPC rates that are significantly higher - as much as three times higher in some cases.“

• With LinkedIn Ads, we've been able to generate a click through rate that is 60% higher than our average across other social networks - and at the same time, the quality of leads coming through LinkedIn is greater than through other social media channels," he adds. "There's no clutter on LinkedIn - members are there to do business."

QUESTIONS?