LinkedIn has new features for marketers to get to grips with, including an upgrade for Newsletter, updated Competitor Analytics and new tools for Product Pages.

First up – the upgraded Competitor Analytics dashboard. LinkedIn says it will help brands understand what competitors are up to. The updates are:

• The ability to track follower growth, recent posts and engagement rates.
• Quickly surface trending content from competitors to stay on top of industry news and inspire future content.

The metrics will help marketers benchmark their content creation efforts while allowing them to keep an eye on what the competition is doing and how their content can be leveraged to provide a point of difference.

You will also be able to see how other pages perform in terms of total and new followers. Keep an eye on any sudden increases to see if they have suddenly developed a fresh strategy!

Improved Product Pages

Products listed on Product Pages will now be discoverable via LinkedIn search, while new Product Highlights will show off specific items. LinkedIn says the new search feature will “(help) you bring in more qualified solution-seeking audiences.”

Buyers can search via product, company or category to discover your solutions.

LinkedIn Ads Blog

“Use product highlights to showcase specific product content on your Page and point interested members to key details and conversations. Leverage your on-platform advocates by re-sharing content from your product community to your Page and adding those posts to your product highlights.”

What are LinkedIn Product Pages and how do they work?

LinkedIn Product Pages allow brands to highlight products on LinkedIn.

Product Pages come in two categories: flagship and standard. Flagship categories have the same name as your company – this is useful if you have a single product on offer.

If your page has more than one product, you can create standard pages for them. These are separate pages that link back to your business in the products tab.

New Newsletter developments

LinkedIn continues to develop its Newsletter offering. Its latest update is designed to help brands generate more subscribers.

LinkedIn Ads Blog

“Using LinkedIn Newsletters, you can publish recurring Articles and instantly build a subscriber community via a one-time notification to your Page followers and ongoing notifications to your Newsletter subscribers.”

Newsletters have been successful in helping brands maintain engagement on LinkedIn and keep audiences updated with important news. Newsletters are also a good opportunity for marketers to prove why their company is a knowledge leader.

With over three billion Google searches a day, the ability to improve Newsletter SEO should result in more organic discovery and engagement. Here’s five ways you can do so:

1. Add keywords to the beginning of your tagline. LinkedIn says you should think of this as your ‘elevator pitch’.
2. Make sure your About section is keyword optimised to reflecrt your values, missions and goals. Also include the size of your company, the industry you operate in, what you specialise in and your website URL.
3. Fill out your business profile, including relevant links and company details.
4. Post long-form content that meets the demand of your audience. Happily, Newsletters are perfect for meeting this requirement. LinkedIn says that brands producing “high-quality, meaningful content” is more like to get traction in members’ feeds.
5. Keep your page updated with fresh content – search engines love this! New content gets indexed, which helps search engines recognise your Page as an active and valuable source of information.

With more ways for LinkedIn marketers to get discovered – and fresh ways to be found via search – these updates seem designed to help switched-on brands make the most from LinkedIn.

So, don’t forget to make your Page, products and Newsletters as searchable as possible. The initial legwork could be well worth it.