LinkedIn's Big Corporate Events Push Continues 

LinkedIn has released a series of Page updates looking to super charge events, analytics and advocacy.

LinkedIn has been iterating on its Events product through 2020, as COVID puts virtual events in the spotlight.

Through this year, LinkedIn Events has become more visible within both News Feed and notifications, as well as seeing LinkedIn Live integrations announced in the year also.

While LinkedIn’s Event product is still pretty basic, it is improving and does offer good visibility with LinkedIn’s high-quality white-collar user base.

Alex Valaitis, Product Manager LinkedIn

“As more events move online, organisations have found that virtual events offer incredible value because they keep our industries and the communities that they’re built upon, connected as we all work remotely.

But, discovering these virtual conferences, panels and webinars and keeping track of them can be tricky, even among LinkedIn members who actively seek them out.”

The latest Page update sees a new dedicated “Events” tab added to company Pages, which should help improve discoverability and navigation.

With the new Events tab, your Page automatically pulls in a view of your past, present and upcoming events on LinkedIn.

The tab appears on the left-hand navigation of your brand’s Page, making it easy for your followers and visitors alike to find and attend the events they care about.

At present LinkedIn doesn’t offer an easy event ticketing solution, or any third-party ticketing integration, like Facebook does with Eventbrite.

Therefore, while LinkedIn Events offer good targeting and visibility, data capture remains a weakness.

LinkedIn Analytics Snooping

The eagle-eyed amongst us might have noticed back in July a “New” marker within their LinkedIn Page Analytics tab.

Within the Analytics tab, it is now possible to view your Page Followers individually.

Previously, Page Admins could only see their aggregate number of followers and general demographics of those followers. Lacking the tools and insights they needed to understand and grow their follower base fully.

Alex Valaitis, Product Manager LinkedIn

“This provides the transparency needed to better understand audiences, so organisations can more easily share the right content and build their LinkedIn community around the conversations that matter most.”

The new All followers section displays all your current Page followers along with their current place of employment and when they followed your Page.

Followers are listed in order of recency. To see a full list of your Page followers, click See all followers at the bottom of the module.

This latest update provides a useful qualitative slant to LinkedIn’s reporting insights, especially for business to business communicators.

LinkedIn Page results are usually a bit underwhelming at the best of times, relative to how individuals perform on the platform. However, for Pages now, being able to put a face to a number would be very handy for account-based marketers being able to identify engaged prospects.

Employee Advocacy Made Easy

Lastly, LinkedIn has introduced a new “My Company” tab for employee engagement and select non-sensitive internal communications.

Employees can access your organisation’s My Company tab on desktop and mobile by self-identifying as a current employee on their personal LinkedIn profile, under “Experiences.”

This new employee experience will be free of cost, initially launching on Pages of organisations with more than 200 employees.

Alex Valaitis, Product Manager LinkedIn

“We’re excited to introduce the “My Company” tab, a new space for your employees nested within your organisation’s LinkedIn Page, that brings your workforce closer together by helping you celebrate key accomplishments, increase engagement within your employee community and connect colleagues with a single click.”

The My Company tab includes new features like employee milestones, surfaces trending content from your coworkers and recommendations to connect with people you may know at your organisation.

According to LinkedIn, by December, Page Admins will also be able to:

1. Curate posts: Showcase company-curated content for employees to share organically to their LinkedIn and Twitter networks
2. View analytics on curated content: Track and report impact with a detailed analytics dashboard
3. Assign additional admin roles: Grant new “Curator” and “Analyst” roles to best manage your organisation’s “My Company” tab experience

The first two points above should go some way to helping bridge the gap between personal and Page performance within LinkedIn.

LinkedIn claims that engaged employees influence:

• 8x more Company Pageviews
• 4x more Company Page followers
• 7x more job views
• 4x more job applications

So while this final Page update sounds a bit wishy-washy, it could well end up being one of the most useful LinkedIn updates of 2020 for marketers. Maybe.