LinkedIn Expands Stories Feature With Swipe-Up URLs, Private Employee Access
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Internal access to Stories is a way for companies to maintain engagement with their employees during the pandemic, which will likely last for another year for many organizations, LinkedIn says.
Over the past several years, LinkedIn has focused heavily on fleshing out its interactive feature set for business members, so those organizations can enhance their digital marketing efforts. To attract businesses, the company has been concentrating mainly on new features around sales, product promotion, and lead generation via its Pages offering.
“Many of these new Pages features began in our paid-tier, Elevate,” says Rishi Jobanputra, senior director of Pages product management at LinkedIn. “Most of Elevate has now been moved into our free Pages platform, including the announcements we’re making now.”
More Power to LinkedIn Product Pages
In December 2020, LinkedIn announced Product Pages, which takes the form of a new tab on your company’s profile page and acts as a place to connect and share insight with users, customers, and other members who might be experts in your product or the technologies it uses.
At the same time, LinkedIn announced that you could also add links to an external site where customers could provide lead information. Since that announcement, LinkedIn reports that more than 10,000 companies have posted more than 12,000 products to the Product Pages ecosystem, which may not be a huge presence right now, but it does represent a fairly impressive response rate for only a few months of real action.
“Yes, we’re very excited by the response we’ve seen to the Pages enhancements,” says Jobanputra. “We think much of that success is because we’ve made these new features very easy for customers to use. Most simply show up as new options visible to Pages administrators, who can then easily roll them out to customers or employees.”
LinkedIn is now expanding Pages with Lead Gen Forms, which can plug directly into your Product Page, for free. That means no more forcing your Pages visitors to move off-site to gather lead data, which was always a hurdle. Now Lead Gen Forms allow you to gather that data directly off your Pages entry. When a LinkedIn member clicks on a product you’re touting, that person’s LinkedIn profile information automatically populates an in-app form they can submit instantly if they want to learn more about your product.
Image: LinkedIn
The process is entirely voluntary on the member’s part, since they need to click manually to share the data, which helps maintain user privacy. You can then export that data to customer relationship management (CRM) systems, and from there directly into your lead management and pipeline process. For those customers that have really dived into Pages as a marketing medium, these new features have had tangible impact.
“LinkedIn Product Pages is a great way for us to build our product community. Until now, we haven’t had a great way to separate our brand from our products, and Product Pages give us the ability to have a forum where we can engage with our followers, generate leads for our products, and develop new features based on ratings and reviews from customers,” says Lynnette McLaughlin, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Hootsuite.
Stories for Pages
Last year, LinkedIn launched LinkedIn Stories, which was intended as a quick way for the community surrounding a product or company to share new announcements, personal or professional stories, or other news with a targeted audience involved with their Pages.
Last week’s announcement expands on this capability by giving companies the ability to create Stories posts aimed not only at external audiences, like partners or customers, but also their internal audience, meaning employees. LinkedIn feels this is another effective channel companies can use to maintain engagement with their employees during the pandemic, which will likely last for another year for many organizations.
“We also made sure to respect user privacy,” notes Jobanputra. “Pages administrators can set up these internal Stories to be publicly visible or only accessible by internal employees, but the employee also has control over what’s displayed from their personal posts in Pages.”
LinkedIn has also added a new feature to Stories, namely the ability to “swipe up.” By swiping up on a Stories post with your mouse or finger on your mobile device, you can send the reader to any destination URL. This is meant not only for an external customer or partner audience, but, again, for your employees, too.
Pages administrators can enter swipe-up URLs on any Stories posts, so the companies or organizations administering Pages can quickly make important announcements for employees there, and then using swipe-up, send them to supporting content. That’d be things like an off-LinkedIn survey, a PDF form that needs to be filled out for HR, or something similar. Naturally, you can also do the same thing for a Stories post aimed at external customers, like sending them to deeper product information or some other marketing content, such as a recorded webinar or virtual event, for example. Early customers seem impressed with these new Pages enhancements.
“Over the last year we have remotely hired and onboarded hundreds of new team members across our global offices. Given the realities of distributed teamwork today, we’re actively incorporating new ways to strengthen our communities at Asana—both internally and externally,” said Stephanie Hess, Head of Global Communications and Corporate Marketing at Asana. She credits the company’s Pages adoption with making this process both easier and more effective.
According to Jobanputra, LinkedIn is rolling out its new Pages capabilities over the next few months. Current Pages administrators should see them pop up dynamically as new capabilities on their current administration pages.
3 ways to recruit engineers who fly under LinkedIn’s radar
Sergiu Matei is the founder of Index, a platform that helps teams find and hire world-class remote software developers and be globally compliant from the get-go.
We’ve recently been bombarded with news of job surpluses, including predictions that the number of software developer roles will increase 22% by 2030. With the need for nearly a quarter more developers, recruiters are having to scale their search and look under the stones that have previously been left unturned.
It’s easy to assume in the digital age that job candidates are waiting at the end of a mouse click, but the online hiring space isn’t as encompassing as we think. Less than 10% of people on LinkedIn don’t have an education that surpasses high school, despite 87% of developers having taught themselves a new coding language, framework or tool without formal education.
People who live in emerging markets use LinkedIn less frequently, even though these locations harbor some of the world’s most promising tech talent.
Some developers choose not to have a LinkedIn account because it feels like another social media channel to maintain. This aversion makes sense considering engineers focus more on hard skills rather than their online personae.
This week, LinkedIn announced it would start offering its services in Hindi, which will allow the service to reach 600 million people globally. People who live in emerging markets use the platform less frequently, even though these locations harbor some of the world’s most promising tech talent.
Companies can’t let how they’ve hired in the past influence their approach today — doing so means missing not just the quantity of developers, but the quality and diversity of them. The remote revolution didn’t just broaden where we can recruit, it’s expanded who we can bring on board. With that in mind, these are the best ways to tap into the hidden developer gems.
Open up your content, chats and code
No recruiter should think of hiring a developer as the same process as selling a product or service. As Adam DuVander explains in “Developer Marketing Does Not Exist,” resonating with developers requires more education and less promotion than the majority of companies currently provide.
The content you publish can organically pique people’s interest, as long as it has a strategic purpose and doesn’t overly mention your brand or services; for example, blog posts about upskilling, industry trends and exclusive data insights. You could also host events like webinars, round tables, quizzes and hackathons that are less for recruitment purposes and more to showcase the team and culture. Don’t be afraid to be lighthearted with your content, either. Memes, GIFs and videos are a great way to demonstrate that you don’t take yourself too seriously. And once you remove the promotional positioning, developers in the shadows will start to come forward.
People Buy People On LinkedIn Not Companies: Here’s Why
On LinkedIn, people buy into other people, not companies. LinkedIn is all about you, the leader. When people make decisions, it is based on who you are, how they feel about you and other emotional, sometimes intangible feelings. This is true for social media and in real life.
Gut reactions, good vibe, rapport — people build up a trust with you, or not as the case may be. That’s why authenticity is key. People will find out if you’re fake. And since people on LinkedIn buy into other people, that’s why the best course to get more business is to market your company through your personal page on LinkedIn.
I’ve written before about what I call “the Richard Branson effect,” which can easily be replaced with the Elon Musk effect, the Bill Gates effect or any other public figure in business. These types of company leaders have more engagement and followers on LinkedIn than their respective companies. One hundred times more people follow the leader and founder of Virgin Atlantic, Richard Branson, than the company itself.
People buy people. People follow people, not companies. Even when leaders like Michael Dell have fewer followers than their company page, they actually have more engagement levels for their posts.
As another example, if you look at the Microsoft company page on LinkedIn (and bearing in mind that they own LinkedIn), the company has 14 million followers, but sometimes its posts get literally zero comments. They tend to be boring company updates about diversity, the environment, Azure, the Surface products. Who cares?
So, you have to wonder, if Microsoft often gets such little engagement on LinkedIn, then how do small companies have a chance? You have to keep in mind that when the CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, posts, he routinely gets hundreds of thousands of engagements. People buy into Satya, and when he talks about Microsoft, people listen.
They see more authenticity in Satya. It feels more personal. You can’t take the company to the pub, cafe or restaurant but you can take the CEO or Founder.
It’s often the best place to do business in a bar. This is where the real action happens and where the real “you” comes out. You have a drink, you relax, you build a rapport and you share. You then start trusting one another and that’s how business is done. You can’t take a company out for a drink.
I closed my physical office in Singapore, and I have all my meetings at the W Hotel’s WooBar. I invite people to come and meet me there as it’s a break for them away from their home or physical office in the business district.
Their decision of whether to outsource to my company is often based on how well they get along with me. It can of course go both ways. The ones who enjoy my sometimes polarizing personal brand often become my clients. The whole process is based on social selling, not hard selling.
Build a relationship socially with potential clients. Share the good, bad and ugly about yourself on LinkedIn. You then gain permission in other people’s view to share your company through your personal page on LinkedIn. People will come to trust you and buy your service because of you.
Ultimately, selling is about people, trust, rapport and relationships, and you can’t do that through a company website or a company page on LinkedIn; you can only do it through you and your personal page and brand.
So, my advice is don’t waste time on your LinkedIn company page, and instead focus on your LinkedIn personal page to see results. The examples of successful business personalities speak for themselves.
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8 Tools that are a Must for LinkedIn Automation – Times News Express
When it comes to social media platforms, LinkedIn might come across as Facebook’s older, more responsible, and infinitely more boring sibling. When it comes to functionality, however, it is an invaluable resource to professionals all across the globe. As of 2021, LinkedIn has more than 774 million registered members from more than 200 countries, and savvy HR and marketing-minded professionals would be wise not to overlook the vast array of resources it offers.
From networking to brand building, to publishing, LinkedIn can provide a multitude of services. However, all of these options and the wealth of data can potentially hamper efficiency and productivity.
Here are the seven must-have Linkedin automation tools that will help get the results you want in less time.
Lead generating software that responds at the click of a button is good. Software that runs in the background while you accomplish tasks elsewhere is even better. For example, Castanet can manage single or multiple LinkedIn profiles and continuously run to automatically generate appointment requests, connection invitations, and skill endorsements.
Searches can be precisely filtered by LinkedIn profile characteristics in order to seek out quality clients who are more likely to have an interest in your company and the products or services you offer. When you have a connection with your clients, it means better leads and less wasted time on undesirable prospects.
Dux-Soup is a sales tool focused on automated lead generation. Based upon the parameters you set, it automatically contacts sales prospects selected on LinkedIn. It can also send direct messages, endorse skills, send personalized connection requests. A handy feature is its ability to schedule multiple, delayed, personalized messages.
Crystal is an excellent source of information for both sales and HR professionals. It is able to mine data from LinkedIn profiles to predict communication styles and personality types and therefore give you a better idea of how best to approach customers, coworkers, and prospective employees.
Using the DISC personality method, Crystal also offers various training courses to show you how to implement your acquired data into the most effective processes for team building, hiring, and sales generation.
LeadFeeder uses web tracking technology to identify what companies visit your website and are potentially interested in your services. It is beneficial for gauging the effectiveness of your marketing efforts, as it also tracks how visitors find your website and the path they take. It can even offer data on the specific portions of your website being viewed.
One strange downside of LinkedIn is the overabundance of users and potential sales opportunities. LeadFuze uses powerful filters to narrow down prospects, generate lead lists, and acquire verified personal email addresses to initiate contact.
On the HR side, LeadFuze can run filters to search for potential candidates across LinkedIn who are not actively searching for a job. The LeadFuze search allows hiring managers to find contact information for quality individuals who would be unlikely to apply for posted job offerings independently.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is added via a simple Chrome extension. It allows you to view LinkedIn profile data if you are emailing someone with a corresponding Gmail account. The LinkedIn Sales Navigator account gives you additional information about them as you’re engaging in direct contact, making it easier to tailor your communication to the specific individual you’re dealing with.
When trying to gather as much information about a potential client as possible, it can sometimes be an arduous process to search throughout the various social media platforms for the same individual or company. Discoverly streamlines that process by gathering all the information from the most commonly used social media sources and compiling each person or company’s social media presence all in one place.
No more logging into five different places to get a comprehensive view of a prospective client’s web presence. Instead, Discoverly lets you toggle between all the platforms in one location for quick searching abilities.
Conclusion
Whether you’re using LinkedIn to build your brand, generate sales leads, or expand your hiring search, the actual platform can contain so much data that streamlining is necessary. These after-market tools and plugins can help you navigate LinkedIn and make the most out of all the resources at your disposal.
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