LinkedIn launches Articles for Pages, integrates Events & Live video

LinkedIn is looking for fresh ways to help brands maximise content posted on the platform, improve event performance and help marketers make smarter decisions.

The first, “Articles for Pages”, is designed to help brands connect with audiences and develop a stronger thought-leadership position.

Marketers can now produce long-form, authoritative content and publish it to LinkedIn, keeping the audience in-app without clicking to an external source.

LinkedIn Marketing Solutions

“While members on LinkedIn have long had the ability to draft and publish long-form articles on the platform, organisations have been limited to character counts for organic posts in the feed. That’s no longer the case with Articles for Pages.”

According to LinkedIn, Articles for Pages allow you to:

1. Engage members with professional content they can read on LinkedIn.
2. Produce LinkedIn content using rich media, pull quotes and more.
3. Entice your audience into robust conversations in the comments section and boost engagement.
4. Encourage your audience to take next-step actions, such as downloading a resource or following your Page.
5. Learn more audience insights about the people interacting and reading your content.

Events and LinkedIn Live updates

There have also been changes announced to Events and LinkedIn Live. LinkedIn will now support an integration between live streaming and Events, which will allow marketers to schedule live events on the platform.

Brands will now be able to promote upcoming live events more efficiently, while access to LinkedIn Live is being broadened out. Brands will now only need 150 followers or connections to go live.

Previously, utilising LinkedIn Live was a surprisingly painful experience, with the aforementioned application process rather vague in its requirements for personal or Page live streaming. To be fair, even in its new reduced format, the application process seems somewhat archaic in 2021.

In combing the reach and engagement of LinkedIn Live with the planning and targeting of LinkedIn Events, this all-in-one simplified experience enables you to:

• Sponsor your stream in advance to a targeted audience
• Auto-notify event registrants and a subset of Page followers when your event goes live
• Amass views on your public Live Event post from anyone on LinkedIn, whether they’ve hit “Attend” or not, during and after the show
• Easily share the replay of your Live Event content for maximum distribution and value

LinkedIn Marketing Solutions

“Virtual events are fast becoming a cornerstone of community-building as more growth activity shifts to the digital space. We want to make it as easy as possible for you and interested attendees to find each other at scale.”

Additionally, LinkedIn has announced the following:

• All Page Admins can go live once a Page is approved.
• Automated and expedited review process for LinkedIn Live applicants.
• An expanded registration form for Events.
• A lead management integration with a partner, Zapier.

The lead management integration with Zapier is particularly useful. While LinkedIn Events are proving to be popular with Pages, the administration is very clunky. However, the new Zapier integration will allow for streamlined attendee management and also ties in nicely with marketing automation efforts and more advanced CRM applications.

New reporting methods

LinkedIn’s last round of updates comprises three features designed to help marketers reach brand-building goals.

1. Brand Lift Testing.

LinkedIn Marketing Solutions

“(The) new feature allows you to measure the impact of LinkedIn Ads on your brand by taking a baseline of your brand’s perception, and then testing the brand impact of those ads against key metrics.”

2. Reach Optimisation.

LinkedIn Marketing Solutions

“You can now optimise toward the number of unique member accounts that are shown ads, easily increasing your brand’s exposure to new and relevant audiences.”

3. Reach/Frequency Forecasting and Reporting.

LinkedIn Marketing Solutions

“With these new features you can easily view the predicted reach and frequency for your Brand Awareness campaigns within the Forecasting Tool and measure their results in the Campaign Manager reporting.”

With a growing emphasis within B2B marketing towards investing more in longer-term brand-building over short term direct response activations, the new reporting features make good sense, in theory. Although only time will tell as to how teams use them if they’ve not yet boarded the How Brands Grow juggernaut that is currently driving strategy thinking in 2021.